There are not one but two Lefts in America. Campaigning for 2020, Joe Biden tacked to the center, notably toward social democracy which appeals to the labor and ethnic left, and won.

Social democracy, while sounding similar, is actually antithetical to Bernie Sanders' democratic socialism, which Biden disavowed. Then, once elected, he tacked toward that very "democratic socialism" which progressives love and the labor and ethnic left detests.

The political chickens are now coming home to roost in a way that portends a 2024 Biden loss to Donald Trump. A very recent New York Times/Siena College poll shows President Biden losing ground, bigly, to former President Trump, in five out of six swing states: Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

This poll confirms my long-held theorem that there are not one but two Lefts.

I have long held that there is the labor and ethnic left. Then there is the progressive faction, the tail that wags the Democratic Party dog.

The progressives give lip service to supporting blue collar workers, Blacks and Latinos, and the youth. Yet progressive leaders are predominantly white, college-educated, privileged, middle-aged white collars.

Progressive policy priorities (apart from gaining opulent offices, TV appearances, and well-paid speech gigs for themselves) almost always, in practice, seem to be about matters such as abortion, feminism, gay rights, climate change and wokeness. None of these are priorities of the labor and ethnic left, many of whom find these inconsistent with deeply held religious creeds.

The left-leaning legacy media have been having a field day with the fracturing of the Republican base which manifests most visibly as the Chaos Caucus in the House bringing down one House speaker and several speaker aspirants.

Have at it, guys! Such is your glee that most of you have taken your eye off the ball thus contributing to the splintering of the Democratic base, allowing it to go largely unnoticed and, thereby, metastasize.

This is a much more serious matter than chaos in the House. It will cost the Dems the White House (and, maybe, the Senate).

Biden is experiencing, and maybe even causing, a fragmenting of the Democrats' base of epic proportions.

In October, I wrote of Biden here at Newsmax, too generously and, it now appears, prematurely:

"We conservatives could take a lesson from one shrewd politician named Joe Biden. One of the most fundamental qualities of political leadership is the ability to keep your base united, if only against its common enemy.

"Joe Biden has always been a party animal. ...

"Elected president, Biden moved left. Some believe, or hope, that he went so far left as to compromise his re-electability.

"Don't you believe it. Biden shrewdly made concessions, both rhetorical and operational, to his party's far left flank keeping his extremists pacified.

"Thus, he prevented the kind of internal fracture that the GOP is now suffering from. Knowing he has plenty of time to move back to the center after securing renomination."

Case in point. Biden, pushing the cause of electric vehicles, a shibboleth of the progressives, has thereby made the American auto industry far less competitive.

Angering the rank-and-file, labor left. And anyone who is really paying attention.

Even the center-left Washington Post editorial board, to its credit, observed:

"The public has an interest both in strong wage growth and an internationally competitive automotive industry, capable of sustaining large, job-creating investments — including those in an impending transition to electric vehicles that will help the country meet its climate goals.

"That transition has hit a rough patch lately, as sales growth for expensive EVs has slowed. U.S. automakers have lowered EV-production expectations as a result: Ford recently announced it was losing $36,000 on every electric vehicle it sold and must cut $12 billion in planned EV investment."

Translation? High paying jobs are great!

As a longtime member of the AFL-CIO, I concur! Except, like my fellow rank-and-file, when Uncle Sam's diktats destroy our jobs!

UAW leadership, under political pressure, went along with the gag, the workers themselves understand that losing $36,000 per vehicle is not, in a word beloved by progressives, "sustainable." No wonder that Biden is now running five points behind Donald Trump in Michigan, which Biden took in 2020.

The labor and ethnic left is about bread-and-butter issues, like better jobs at better pay. The progressive left is about romantic notions and hang the costs (borne by we of the proletariat, not by the privileged progressives).

The New York Times' Nate Cohn gives a low whistle past the graveyard: "There are plenty of reasons to think the race could change considerably," acknowledging Biden's political peril: "Mr. Biden has a big problem that's severe enough to cost him the presidency if his campaign can't address it over the next year."

Joe Biden made the wrong left turn.

Ralph Benko, co-author of "The Capitalist Manifesto" and chairman and co-founder of "The Capitalist League," is the founder of The Prosperity Caucus and is an original Kemp-era member of the Supply-Side revolution that propelled the Dow from 814 to its current heights and world GDP from $11T to $94T. Read Ralph Benko's reports — More Here.