In late June, a 28-year-old Democratic Socialist – who had called for nationalizing health insurance, guaranteeing public jobs to the unemployed, and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — won a primary challenge against a high-ranking House Democrat.
And centrists have been lamenting Team Blue’s imminent self-immolation ever since.
Last week, the center-left’s “radical pragmatists” warned NBC News that if progressive Democrats keep ignoring their preferences, they “will lead the party to disaster in the midterm elections and the 2020 presidential contest.” The moderate reactionaries of the Never Trump movement wholeheartedly agree. Days after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s victory, New York Times columnist (and world-champion concern troll) Bret Stephens wrote that “democratic socialism” was “political hemlock”; “social democracy” was a “dying force”; and “Democrats who aren’t yet sick of all their losing should feel free to embrace them both.” Meanwhile, former Republican James Comey (a man who knows a little something about inadvertently aiding Donald Trump) implored Democrats not to “lose your minds and rush to the socialist left,” since “America’s great middle wants sensible, balanced, ethical leadership.”
But the Democrats’ ascendant left wing shrugged off these warnings. Since Ocasio-Cortez’s upset, prominent Senate progressives have called for abolishing ICE, ending cash bail, and canceling Puerto Rico’s debt — while the House’s Medicare for All caucus has welcomed (self-styled) moderate democrats into its ranks.
Now, one month after voters in the South Bronx put “democratic socialism” in the headlines, realAmerica has registered its outrage at the Democrats’ hard-left turn — by giving the party a larger lead in the generic congressional ballot.
Since the Democrats (supposedly) embraced open borders and slow-motion Stalinism, their party’s poll numbers have gone up, while both Donald Trump — and his favorite immigration agency — have seen their own standing decline (the former, only modestly).
To be sure, month-to-month polling changes are typically more noise than signal. And even if Democrats did gain support over the past four weeks, there’s little reason to assume that this constitutes a public endorsement of the party’s leftward lurch. A lot of big, weird news broke in July; Trump’s trade wars, the Helsinki press conference, or the family-separation fiasco could all theoretically explain Team Blue’s polling boost.
Regardless, it remains the case that, over the past month, the Democratic Party became simultaneously more closely associated with “socialism” and more popular.
You might think that this development would make Bret Stephens question his political acumen — or at least, wait for new evidence that the Democrats’ left wing is, in fact, politically toxic before writing another column centered on that claim. If so, then you might be on the committee that awards the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary — because you’ve given Bret Stephens far too much credit.
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