The Democratic Party, like most political parties that feel themselves on the verge of some sweeping victory, is having an uneasy conversation with itself, to say the least. The radicals, intoxicated on revolutionary fervor and smelling blood in the water, seem to be convinced that the new age has finally dawned, and the time is ripe for a general uprising. They get this way every couple of years or so, of course, but this time they appear to be making a concerted effort at mutiny, pulling the Democratic Party as far left as their zeal enables. So how will this impact the Democrats’ electoral fortunes, not only this time around, but in coming years?

A couple of weeks back, in an act of obeisance to their far-left flank, the rank-and-file of the Democratic Party elected to do away with much of its adult supervision by stripping their “superdelegates” of most of their powers in presidential primaries. The superdelegates, you will recall, were about the only thing that stood between Bernie Sanders and the 2016 Democratic nomination for president, reasoning as they did that Mrs. Clinton’s mere confusions over economic principles were politically more palatable than Mr. Sanders’s outright hostility to them. This decision appears to point the way to a Sanders resurgence in 2020, or perhaps the advancement of Elizabeth Warren, whose election would pretty much doom any advancement for the nation.

The primary victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York serves as another vivid marker illuminating the way to a radicalization of the Democratic Party, similar to, and perhaps exceeding, that which took place in the late 1960’s. Not only did the vacuous young revolutionary beat an incumbent Democrat, whose own record was not exactly a paeon to centrist moderation, but she did so on an openly absurd socialist platform.

Colorado has not been immune from this. The state has always had its little cocoons of unreality (Boulder serving as de-facto capitol of la-la land) but Democrats in the state (with notable exceptions) have generally been more of the centrist variety, remaining tethered to terra-firma.

It’s a tether which some appear intent on severing. Aside from the recent endorsement of a ballot measure which would tear the economic heart from our state and the elevation of their most extreme candidate to nominee for governor, symptoms of the left-wing coup have been popping up with regularity in the state Democratic Party. What’s particularly interesting is that it has not been singularly targeting their most moderate elements. The brief insurgency of Saira Rao was directed at Congresswoman Diana DeGette, for Heaven’s sake. State Representative Joe Salazar, who seems to be vying with far-left activist and Hugo Chavez admirer David Sirota for the mantle of spokesman of this movement, mounted a very nearly successful bid to become the Democrats’ attorney general nominee, only narrowly losing to Phil Weiser. Weiser’s public positions, delineated rather clumsily at the Club 20 debates, sound as though they could have been drafted by Salazar or Sirota themselves. (Weiser apparently views the AG’s office as a platform for launching air strikes against private enterprises, in particular those which keep us healthy and warm.)

Speaking of Sirota, House District 9 proves an interesting and illustrative case. It sits in southeast Denver, a solidly Democratic seat held by a solid Democrat, Paul Rosenthal – a delightful fellow, San Francisco bred, and about as liberal as one could imagine, on as many issues as one could imagine. Alas, apparently not liberal enough. Rosenthal was targeted by not one, but two insurrectionists from the left. Ultimately the more extreme of those two – Sirota’s wife Emily – clinched the nomination and, presumably, the seat. Mr. Rosenthal’s heresy was in listening to unauthorized voices and daring to stray from leftist orthodoxy when his reason and intellect, both of which he possesses in abundance, questioned it however slightly.

This is perhaps not surprising for a district party which appears to be seriously considering replacing the Pledge of Allegiance with something written by, say, Maya Angelou or Bob Dylan.

We know it’s happening, but no one as yet possesses the crystal ball that will inform us with any degree of certainty what practical political impact it will have. Conventional wisdom and history do indeed suggest that, as in other mid-term elections, the minority party stands to make potentially significant gains; they also suggest, however, that collectivist extremism still fails to resonate with the American public, which one presumes will grow impatient and lose tolerance for leftist absurdities, recognizing that the answers are not, in fact, blowing in the wind. The alternative – that Mr. Salazar, Mr. Sirota, Mr. Polis, Ms. Warren, and young Ms. Ocasio-Cortez are the political and economic future of the United States – would serve as final proof that God has grown weary of shedding His grace on us.