A few days ago, I watched a musical TV tribute show “Fifty Years with Peter, Paul, and Mary” in which they played all their great songs, most of which I remembered from the 1960s and into the 70s. What I missed during those years about the group was their involvement in various movements during those years from Martin Luther King 1962 Washington Rally to the 1969 Vietnam War protests. One of their most popular songs was “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”, a protest against war that robbed a young girl’s innocence, young men becoming soldiers, and the resulting graveyards, with a final stanza proclaiming, “Oh, when will they ever learn?”
This TV show was broadcast while I was contemplating our nation’s radically divided political environment, and where had all the Americans gone? the Moderate Democrats? The Conservative Republicans? Had they all been tuned out of politics entirely?
Then in the Wall Street Journal on June first, conservative Republican Mike Pence appeared out of the woodwork with his opinion piece, “A Republican Time for Choosing”. Pence’s main point was that the Republicans’ “momentous” choice is between “conservatism”, the traditional Republican position, and “populism”, the derogative term they used for fellow Republicans after they lost power within their party in the past three presidential elections.
The Rust Belt workers who voted for Trump again in 2024 were voters whose jobs were shipped overseas, which resulted from conservative Republicans’ previous globalist policies. From his comments, Pence would rather lose America to the Progressives than lose his old conservative Republican party to Trump’s new Republican Populists, who have successfully defeated the Progressives twice.
Pence proclaimed that “populism is progressivism in disguise”, however, he fails to acknowledge that Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump are the only three presidents from either party that have directly opposed the progressivism initiated by Woodrow Wilson against the founding principles of our country set out in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution and replacing them with a new elite American-style autocracy.
During Obama’s two terms, building on President Wilson’s progressive roots in America, Barack came close to accomplishing that objective. If the Trump/Pence 2016 campaign, using Trump’s populist approach with Rust Belt voters, had not defeated Hillary Clinton, another eight progressive years of a Hillary Clinton presidency would have completed that transformation.
Where have all the other Moderate Democrats gone? Rahm Emanuel is the only Moderate Democrat left standing, and still speaking, not to join the progressive takeover of the Democratic Party. Being a Jew with a strong Zionist background runs counter to contemporary progressive profiles. Emanuel was senior advisor to President Bill Clinton. He left his position as Chief of Staff for President Obama to run for mayor of Chicago, and the Biden Administration sent him all the way to become the Ambassador to Japan. So, it appears Emanuel is persona non grata to hold major positions in future progressive ranks. Can he revitalize a moribund moderate Democratic majority?
The final question from our Peter, Paul, and Mary political ballad is “Where have all the American’s gone?” Poster Scott Rasmussen reports in his new 2026 book, “Out of touch: The Elite One Percent and the Battle for the American Soul” that America is a 10/10/80 nation. His polling shows that 10 percent on each side of the political spectrum share Woodrow Wilson’s Elitist government by the unelected Elite One Percent, who he describes as America’s real enemy.
Progressives are led by the Elite One Percent of the population that denounce individual freedom and believe that we would all be better off following rules written by their preferred experts, whereas 80 percent of Americans still embrace freedom, equality, and self-governance.
“Oh, when will we ever learn?”
TW3
John Whitmore Jenkins
June 11, 2026
