The late conservative icon Irving Kristol memorably quipped that a “neo-conservative” – i.e., a reformed leftist, like him – is “a liberal who has been mugged by reality.”

Kristol, who came of age amid the economic upheaval of the Great Depression in 1930s New York City, emerged from college as a member of the Young People’s Socialist League. He even identified as a Trotskyite. (Remember Leon Trotsky, the onetime Bolshevik who was too far to the left even for Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin?) What a difference a little time can make; by Kristol’s death at 89 in 2009, he was one of the reigning patriarchs of the American right.

Which isn’t necessarily to say every left-wing firebrand on campus today is tomorrow’s button-down conservative. But Kristol’s observation does provide perspective for some telling survey findings about Colorado reported in The Gazette this week.

The survey was jointly scripted by Democratic and Republican pollsters for the Colorado Polling Institute. Its findings reflect among other things the impact of young, educated, politically left-leaning newcomers to the Front Range. The data underscored how the emergent left has helped Democrats come to dominate state politics over the past several election cycles – yet also has served to divide Democrats themselves into two increasingly distinct camps.

And while the survey was conducted in Denver – whose electorate is decidedly to the left of much of the rest of Colorado’s – the findings have implications statewide. Notably, Colorado’s noisy new left – with a growing presence in the legislature as well as in local governments – is on a collision course with the state’s long-dominant mainstream.

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On no issue is that more apparent, the survey found, than on how to address homelessness on the streets of the state’s metro areas. The poll found it’s a top issue among most of those surveyed – but that there’s a sharp divide over how to respond as a matter of public policy. It might even amount to a litmus test of sorts.

Perhaps not surprisingly, most survey respondents support “sweeps” by local authorities that shut down rampant, illegal camps of street dwellers in parks, along sidewalks and other public spaces. However, as the overview accompanying the poll noted, “The only groups who oppose continuing sweeps are voters ages 18-29 and socialists” – while older Democrats “very strongly” favor the sweeps.

One of the youthful leftists who oppose a crackdown on the street dwellers is 26-year-old Denver activist and schoolteacher Tim Hernández. He recently was appointed to fill a vacancy in one of Denver’s seats in the state House of Representatives, where he’ll join the majority Democrats’ growing left wing.

As The Gazette reported, Hernández has called the sweeps “degrading.”

He and his cohorts are at loggerheads with older Democrats who want an end to proliferating camps of addicts that blight neighborhoods, drive crime and of course spread the drug culture. They have grown weary of alcohol-and-drug-addled “campers” relieving themselves in their kids’ park playgrounds, hustling them for money at intersections and passing out in their front yards. Go figure.

Could it be Hernández and his ilk simply haven’t lived enough yet to have been “mugged by reality”? Do the young leftists – imbued with righteous indignation by an outspoken sociology professor a few years earlier – lack a real stake in homelessness? Like a mortgage and kids?

Maybe Hernández won’t be another Irving Kristol. But it’s likely he someday will be a homeowner and maybe a dad. And over time, the world will appear very different.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board