ANALYSIS/OPINION:

To hear the big media tell it, the Republicans are angry, split and spoiling for a fight with each other. This is not altogether bad. Democrats and cats have fought for years and the result is more cats and more Democrats. Maybe it will work for Republicans. If Hillary Clinton, plagued by persistent health issues, decides that leaving the field is the better part of inevitability, if not valor, the Democrats will see how divided they are.

Bernard Sanders and his millennials would no doubt consider Hillary’s unlikely withdrawal as heaven-sent (if they actually believed there was anybody in heaven). Mr. Sanders is a proud socialist and campaigned as one. The fact that he did as well as he did is testimony to how far the Democratic Party has moved to the left.

Hillary has promised to govern in ways the faithful will cheer, or at least some of them, but she and the old party establishment that rallied behind her know better than most that theirs is no longer the party of Roosevelt, Kennedy or even Bill Clinton. It has morphed before their very eyes into a European-style free-stuff socialist party, with hints of admiration for state control of just about everything that moves.

If Mrs. Clinton were actually to abandon ship before November, her replacement would be named not by the new Democratic Party base, with its affection for Bernie, but by the Democratic National Committee, whose members, though considerably left of most Americans, are nevertheless regarded by Mr. Sanders and his fans as unreconstructed capitalists, compliant tools of the rich ruling class.

A Rasmussen Poll asked Democrats last week whom they favor if Hillary is forced by health concerns to leave the field. The results are revealing. Rasmussen polled Democrats generally, not just the activist base that dominated the party’s primaries and caucuses, and 48 percent said Bernie. Only 22 percent said the new nominee should be Vice President Joe Biden. Fourteen percent said they thought it should be Tim Kaine, her running mate.

Another poll reveals how far leftward the party has moved even since the year 2000, when only 27 percent of the Democrats described themselves as liberals, and now 41 percent describe themselves that way (though many prefer “progressive,” which the party adopted after “liberal” became something of a dirty word). But these descriptions would confuse anyone who remembers that “liberal” was used to describe FDR, JFK and Harry S. Truman, who would be regarded by many young Democrats today as hidebound reactionaries, hardly fit for polite progressive company. Last spring still another poll suggested that 6 in 10 Democrats identified themselves as socialists, and those under 45 favor socialism over capitalism by a resounding 46 percent to 19 percent. These are opinions of those who never had to live in a socialist economy.

Earlier this year, the Des Moines Register polled those likely to attend the Iowa caucuses and found that 43 percent describe themselves as socialists, and the opinion ranged across all demographic groups. Those least sympathetic to socialism were black voters and Democrats over 65, who have been the most reliable Democratic voters over the years. It’s the younger voters who understand that this isn’t the Democratic Party of their fathers and grandfathers, and they’re glad of it.

These are the Democrats that Donald Trump is appealing to, trying to persuade them that they won’t be deserting the Democratic Party, that the party has deserted them and the faith of their fathers. This is how re-alignments happen. It’s enough to give the professional politicians a frightening case of the heebie-jeebies.

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