If you are paying any attention, you will have noticed by now that all of the energy in the Democratic Party at the moment comes from the faction calling itself the Democratic Socialists of America. As I reported in this post on June 24, DSA candidates had just won primaries for three safe-Democrat congressional seats in New York City, as well as eight safe-Democrat state legislative seats in the state, six in New York City plus one in Buffalo. In a ninth race in Syracuse that was still too close to call on June 24, the DSA candidate has since declared victory as well. Most of these districts had incumbent establishment Democrats (still far-left progressives), only one of whom had beaten back the DSA challenge. Since the New York primaries, a DSA-backed candidate has won the a congressional primary in Colorado (defeating a 15 term incumbent), and others are running in August primaries in states including Missouri, Michigan and Wisconsin.
The DSA calls itself the “Democratic” Socialists, but is there anything democratic about the form of government they are advocating? After all, East Germany called itself the “German Democratic Republic,” and North Korea even today calls itself the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.” There has never been anything “democratic” about either of those two. Certainly, neither of them ever allowed voters an opportunity to oust the party in power.
And meanwhile, prominent voices in the DSA have begun either unashamedly adopting the “communist” label, and/or advocating policies or tactics explicitly associated with communist icons like Marx, Lenin or Trotsky. Pushback has been slow in coming from the complacent Democratic establishment, but there has been at least some from the few remaining “moderates” in the party.
And then President Trump joined the nascent chorus in his July 4 speech at Mount Rushmore, where he referred to the ongoing events as a resurgence of a “communist menace.” Excerpt:
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