Much has been written about the right-ward shift of the Republican Party, but far less about a mounting left-wing movement among Democrats. While the media tends to dismiss the right-wingers of the GOP as “wingnuts,” it typically refrains from categorizing even the extreme left of the Democratic Party in a similar manner.

President Barack Obama has accelerated this leftward trend in two ways. First, his administration, particularly in contrast to that of former President Bill Clinton, has laid the rhetorical basis for a move to the left by shifting the party agenda on social, environmental and economic policies. Clinton may have declared that “the era of big government is over,” but under Obama an ever-expanding federal government has become the essential raison d’être for the party.

Yet if Obama’s soaring rhetoric set the stage, his weak record of achievement has sparked mounting concern among left-leaning activists. Obama’s success has hinged in part on the far-left portions of the party controlling their more-fevered passions, particularly about ever-increasing income inequality and bans on fossil fuel use.

But now many on the political left are openly critical of the president, notably for his close ties to the moguls of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. These moguls have been the predominant beneficiaries of his economic policies while middle-class incomes have continued to languish – and even fall.

This disenchantment can be seen among many professional progressives and their allies in the associated media. Michael Moore, for example, recently suggested that in the future Obama would be remembered simply for being the nation’s “first black president.” This disenchantment is also spreading to the Left’s grass-roots, with the president’s favorability ratings dropping even in such progressive bastions as New York and California.

This situation resembles that which conservatives confronted in the waning days of the Bush administration. Bush’s failure to construct a successful market-based economic agenda, as well as his ill-conceived foreign policy engendered widespread anger on the right. The initial Tea Party insurgency had its roots in the movement by Bush, a “big government conservative,” to bail out the nation’s giant financial institutions.

Now, it’s the Left’s turn to be disappointed, and some, such as liberal commentator Sally Kohn, suggest that it’s time to create their own progressive version of the Tea Party. These liberal critics, correctly, in my view, have been mortified by the Obama administration coziness – taking a page from Bush – with large financial institutions as well as increasing inequality.

The new left Democrats have little interest in embracing Obama’s clever meme of portraying himself as a moderate, bipartisan figure, something that helped him both win suburban voters and raise a ton of money from parts of the corporate elite. Instead of expanding crony capitalism, which has been the Obama default, but the new Left openly seeks to reshape the economic system itself.

This leftward shift has been intensified by the growing geographic bifurcation of our political culture. Just as the Republican’s rightward shift reflected the domination of the traditionalist South and, to some extent, the socially conservative Great Plains, the Democratic march to the left similarly mirrors the party’s growing reliance on its urban Northeast and West Coast base.

Up until the early 2000s the Democrats were highly competitive, at least in local elections, in the Great Plains, Appalachia, the Intermountain West and even parts of the Southeast. Democrats from these areas, like the old Northeastern Republicans, exercised a moderating effect on the national party.

But under Obama, such elements of the party have crawled towards extinction. Since 2009, for example, the number of Blue Dog Democrats in Congress, a grouping of moderates, has dropped from 54 to a mere 15. The broader New Democrat movement, which was spearheaded by Bill Clinton and of which I was a part, has already all but dissipated.

Some middle-of-the road Democrats, of course, may somehow survive this year’s election; it will generally be due to the awfulness of Republican candidates or the presence of independents that could draw from the GOP base. But the overall Obamaism has redefined the Democrats from a broad national party to one that is essentially bicoastal, and urban.

Nowhere is this shift more evident than in energy policy. Tough controls on carbon emissions appeal to the well-educated urban liberals, mainstream media, entertainment and downtown real estate developers who are their main funders – all primary funding sources.

But this approach undermines support for the party in energy producing areas such as West Virginia, Louisiana, the Dakotas and Texas as well as those industrial states, such as Indiana, that rely heavily on coal and other fossil fuels.

In the new Democratic calculus, greens, wealthy venture capitalists, Hollywood producers feminists and ethnic warlords matter much more than coal miners, factory or construction workers.

All these groups benefit directly from the current U.S. energy boom, and have reasonable cause to fear the administration’s intention to curb their activities through the EPA.

These kinds of people – often fairly conservative in their social views – no longer have a voice in a Democratic Party whose voice is now almost totally shaped in places such as New York City, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland. In the past, Democrats needed to address the sensitivities of religious Catholics, Evangelicals and others. This is not the case in places where nature-worshipping Druidism is more important than traditional religion.

But you have to give the new Left Democrats credit for not playing the double game of faux class warfare, like the Obama administration, which has played the populist card while, in reality, serving as patsies for crony capitalists. In the place of Obama’s empty rhetoric, they are building a new openly redistributionist agenda that does not seek to pay off one group of capitalists for the benefit of another.

This new, more ideologically rigid, Democratic Party is already a reality in places like New York, where Mayor Bill de Blasio has worked to force market-rate developers to provide more subsidized apartments to lower-income residents even in luxury buildings, increased taxes on the affluent, and proposed ever more Draconian environmental policies.

De Blasio also has broken with the mildly reform-minded Obama educrats, targeting charter schools and essentially handing the schools to the teacher’s unions. In the new left Democratic Party, union-backed calls for more money for schools are common, but little emphasis is placed on actually making them function better.

Perhaps the most politically effective theme of the new left Democrats has been the push for higher minimum wages. Proposals in Los Angeles and Seattle to boost wages to almost double the current $7.25 federal rate. Although this is likely a popular move, many analysts see this rapid escalation at the lowest end of the employment sector – covering upwards of 37 percent of L.A.’s private sector workers workers – could reduce entry level employment and accelerate the already rapid decline in the full time workforce.

But to some new left Democrats, mandating higher wages for the poor helps expand a permanent base of voters dependent on government to set their wages, as well as cover their health care and housing expenses. Yet if this might help build the party’s core, the strong leftward approach could hurt the Democrats as much as ideological rigidity hurt the Tea Party-dominated Republicans in 2012.

In that election, Republicans running for higher office often adopted policies – on trade, immigration, and social issues – that put them in conflict not only with middle-of-the-road suburban voters, but also with important business interests, including those that tilt towards the Democrats. To be sure, any meaningful attack on capital gains, or moves to curb the massive avoidance of taxes by corporations and individuals, might offend party donors in places like Silicon Valley, Hollywood and Wall Street, who generally prefer progressive politics be defined largely by social and environmental issues.

The new left Democrats may also find that their embrace of Draconian environmental laws – including forced use of high-priced, subsidized “green” energy – could hurt manufacturers, homebuilders, and logistics firms which often employ many usually reliably Democratic voters, notably Hispanics. As the economies in the urban Democratic bastions become ever more dependent on social media, tourism and financial engineering, the job opportunities for middle income Democrats will contract, leading many to look elsewhere, usually in more solidly Republican areas.

Ultimately, like the Republicans after 2008, the Democrats could end up boxed into an ideological corner, forcing their presidential candidates, including Hillary Clinton, to adopt positions further left than they themselves might prefer. Having convinced themselves that they will be bailed out by lunatic “wingnuts” on the Republican right, the Democrats may find that themselves dealing with their own group of zealots, who could similarly marginalize their party in the post-Obama political world.

Staff opinion columnist Joel Kotkin is R.C. Hobbs Professor of Urban Studies at Chapman University. He is the executive editor of www.newgeography.com. His new book, “The New Class Conflict,” has just been released by Telos Press Publishing.