The latest edition of Hillsdale College’s Imprimis features Kimberly Strassel’s assessment of a dangerous political movement’s growing popularity.
Of the many alarming statements uttered this past year by America’s rising tide of “democratic” socialists, pay closest attention to the one that landed in early August, via the godfather of this modern movement, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
Democratic political strategist James Carville had criticized Hasan Piker, the socialist provocateur who claims that “America deserved 9/11,” that the terrorist group Hamas is “a thousand times better” than Israel, that communist Mao Zedong (whose policies killed 65 million Chinese) is “one of the great leaders of this world,” and that his critics are “rabid, ultra-Zionist pigs.” Carville made clear: “I have no intention of ever being in the same political party with [Piker],” adding that he believed “an overwhelming majority of Democrats agree with me.”
Sanders shot back: “If Mr. Carville doesn’t want to be in my party, the party I belong to, that Piker, that [Michigan’s socialist-aligned Democratic Senate candidate] El-Sayed belongs to, he can start his own party.”
The “my party” construction is striking, given that Sanders has long expressed contempt for both our major political parties, disparaging them as captured interests. Since his first successful election in 1981, he has styled himself a “democratic socialist” and run as an Independent on the Vermont ballot. He’s endured the Democratic Party only to the extent that it allowed him to leverage its resources to his advantage—caucusing with it in the Senate to gain seniority and using it as a platform for his presidential runs. Always while holding his nose.
But things have clearly changed. Sanders is done raging against the machines. His goal now is to own and operate one of them. His growing army of democratic socialists are working to capture the Democratic Party from within, replace its agenda with their own, and purge it of dissenters. It’s a time-worn tactic: if you can’t beat them, infiltrate them. And the elected leadership of the Democratic Party is doing nothing to stop the takeover.
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