The socialist uprising inside the Democrat Party is one of the more fascinating spectacles in American politics right now, and it's not hard to see why. The party has drifted so far left over the past thirty years that what used to pass for radical is now standard Democrat policy. But even by today's standards, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have found a way to out-crazy the Democrats.
Take the DSA's new "Workers Deserve More!" platform. It calls for abolishing the Senate outright, then replacing the presidency and the Supreme Court with bodies that answer to Congress. It wants an entirely new constitution written from scratch. It pushes to defund the Department of War, eliminate Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and dismantle what it calls police "carceral forces."
And that's just the start.
The platform also demands nationalizing major corporations and industries under government control, slapping steep new taxes on the wealthy, and granting blanket amnesty to every immigrant currently living in the country. It's the DSA's official platform, and Democrats aren’t exactly trying hard to distance themselves from this nonsense.
But why not?
Democrats appear to believe they can use the DSA uprising as a foil, letting the socialists play the extremist role so the rest of the party looks sane by comparison. That's the real reason behind all the "big tent" talk coming out of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) lately.
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Charles Hurt made this same point on The Five last week. "Democrats do as they always do, which is they go crazy for a little while and they run off with the DSA socialist wing of the party," Hurt said. "And then at the last minute, they're like, oh my gosh, we're going crazy, let's do normal."
And who will be the normal? He mentioned Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) as Democrats waiting in the wings to be the “normal” alternative, but he doesn’t think AOC can pull it off. Hurt noted that whoever Democrats eventually settle on as their next normal candidate, the search itself gives away how far the party has drifted. His verdict on the whole exercise was blunt. "But the problem with all of it is, it's all inauthentic," Hurt said. "All of it is just political gamesmanship."
I don't think it's going to work either.
If anything, the socialist uprising in the party is doing Republicans a favor, energizing GOP voters who now have a fresh, tangible example of where unchecked leftism leads. Here's the thing: the DSA's supposedly fringe positions aren't nearly as far removed from the DNC's actual platform as Democrat leaders want you to believe.
In fact, 192 House Democrats voted against a resolution condemning socialism just last week. How does the party think that socialists are going to make Democrats look more moderate when Democrats don’t do a darn thing to distance themselves from socialism?
So why would the DNC think letting the DSA run wild is going to buy them political room to look moderate? Every time a Democrat dodges a question about socialism, voters notice. Every time a Democrat refuses to denounce the DSA's agenda, voters notice that too.
In the end, Republicans get to keep their opponents on the defensive over the rise of socialism in their ranks, while Democrats are stuck. They can't denounce socialism outright without alienating the base that keeps pulling their party further left every cycle. That's the trap the DNC built for itself, and no amount of "big tent" spin will get them out.
