Beware Blue State Governors Who ‘Pivot’ to the Center but Govern from the Left

The cultural “vibe shift” to the Right is real, but the Left continues to have a firm grip on the Democrat Party.

As many Democrat wannabe influencers throw tantrums to appease their activist base, a few blue state governors have tried to position themselves as competent managers who’ve suddenly moderated on the Left’s most toxic positions.

This “pivot” is a mirage.

One of these blue state so-called moderates is Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who was once considered a potential running mate for former Vice President Kamala Harris. In fact, he was such a strong candidate that many saw his inability to secure the nomination as suspicious.

The legacy media has been all too happy to present Shapiro as a reasonable Democrat who bucks the far Left and gets things done. However, his actual record—and inability to oppose the Left’s radicalism—reveal the truth.

Even in a relatively flattering profile of Shapiro in the Free Press, Sean Patrick Cooper concluded that while Shapiro could make a Bill Clinton-like triangulation to appeal to moderates and pull his party out of its self-created mess, he’s largely been unable to break with the left-wing powers that be.

“The Democratic Party desperately needs a reckoning. It needs someone of stature who will say out loud how profoundly the party has gone astray,” Cooper wrote. “The problem is that Shapiro is unwilling to assume that role.”

Cooper also faulted Shapiro for failing to condemn the Left’s antisemitism.

The problem with Shapiro goes beyond even his inability to publicly stand up to the Left. While the Pennsylvania governor doesn’t use the typical language of the Left on, say, policing, he has generally maintained even its most extreme policy positions.

Take, for instance, transgender men playing in women’s sports. The issue isn’t controversial or “divided,” at least among American voters. The American people are against it by most measures at a nearly 80%-to-20% margin. 

There’s a reason California Gov. Gavin Newsom, another Democrat attempting to make a mostly bogus pivot to the “center,” recently said on his podcast that having men in women’s sports might not be fair.

Of course, Newsom hasn’t made any proposals to change the laws in his state, which is among the most extreme on the transgender issue. Shapiro doesn’t appear to be budging, either.

Shapiro has been all for having men in women’s sports. In 2021, when he was attorney general, Shapiro lashed out against a proposed law to keep women’s sports free of biological men. He called the law “cruel” and said that it was “designed to discriminate against transgender youth who just want to play sports like their peers.”

He also said he’d veto the bill, which tried to keep men out of women’s sports.

As an aside, I think what’s cruel is allowing a man to spike a volleyball into a woman’s face, leaving her permanently crippled in the name of “tolerance.”

When asked Wednesday to comment after school districts and parents sued Pennsylvania to prevent boys from competing in girls’ sports, Shapiro said that Pennsylvania would be “a place that would be warm and welcoming to all.”

He framed the issue as protecting children.

“I understand that there are those who want to score cheap political points by bullying a trans kid,” Shapiro said.

Shapiro’s office told The Daily Signal that the governor’s comment was “very specifically in response to the lawsuit in question,” which took aim at the state’s laws on gender identity.

Shapiro has gone even further on the transgender issue in the past.

According to an August report in the Daily Caller, Shapiro “collaborated with transgender activists to target professionals who help children resolve gender distress without life-altering medical treatments.”

On a handful of “bipartisan” issues like school choice, Shapiro has been all talk but little action. In fact, he’s actively torpedoed school choice efforts in Pennsylvania.

From my colleague, Tyler O’Neil, who wrote about Shapiro’s record when his name was being floated for VP:

While campaigning for governor in 2022, Shapiro pledged to support school choice, supporting the Lifeline scholarship, which would directly fund students, empowering parents to choose the best schools for their kids.

Yet when the House of Representatives passed a bill including Lifeline scholarships, Shapiro threatened to veto the very proposal he had campaigned on.

Shapiro has used his social media to boost his profile with cringy TikTok-style videos—all the rage among Democrats—and to mock pro-life constituents.

The pattern is clear, and it applies on the macro scale, too.

As the Left’s hold on national power crumbles, its political machinery largely remains in place. President Joe Biden ran in 2020 on returning to “normalcy” but ended up governing like a woke radical.

It seems unlikely a younger, more mentally competent version of that kind of Democrat—who has a history of giving the DNC whatever it wants—will behave much differently.

Nothing has really changed other than, at best, rhetoric.

This article has been updated to include a comment from the office of Gov. Josh Shapiro.

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