Kerby Anderson

Columnist Kyle Smith says that the Left have a hamburger problem. Let me explain. He borrows the phrase from Josh Barro who coined the phrase to explain why progressives and Democrats seem to be losing so much. He writes, “Democrats’ problem isn’t that they’re on the wrong side of policy issues. It’s that they’re too ready to bother too many ordinary people about too many of their personal choices, all the way down to the hamburgers they eat.”

John Stuart Mill referred to British conservatives as “the stupidest party.” Kyle Smith says that today, the Democrats are “the annoying party.” Not only do they criticize eating hamburgers, they also complain about every perceived social ill right down to the team name of the Washington Redskins. He says that when average Americans think about the current nanny state, those on the Left think Americans imagine Mary Poppins. Instead, he said they are often thinking of Nurse Ratched from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

In twenty years, perceptions have changed. Back in the 1990s, Republican leaders were often accused of intruding into people’s lives because they were promoting family values and telling kids to just say no to drugs. Today, Americans who want to be left alone are more likely to side with the Republican Party rather than the Democratic Party that seems filled with political busybodies.

Will this perception change? Jonah Goldberg does not think so because he says that the Left are the aggressors in the culture war. And the culture war will never really end. The moment the Left wins a victory; they immediately push forward to the next fight, which is often so extreme that even Democrats would not have embraced it a few years ago. The day after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, progressives started pushing transgender issues.

This is why we are hearing people talk about the sad reality that the Left has a hamburger problem.