“One of the things that makes the Democratic Party great is it’s a big tent party,” Sen. Cory Booker said at the Texas Democratic Party Convention. He was responding to harsh criticism of the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in the Democratic Party by Sen. John Fetterman.
Fetterman, disgusted at the lurch to the far left by his party, said, “Yeah, no, I mean, these — the kind of people they are trying to run out of office, they are just good, traditional kinds of Democrats you would expect in New York City now,” Fetterman told Fox News’ Sean Hannity.
“And now this has just become — really, it’s just been the dancing days of the dirtbag left. You know, some of these candidates are outrageous. You have candidates, they’re ‘abolish ICE,’ ‘abolish the police,’ ‘abolish the border.'”
Booker sounded sanguine about the rise of the socialists.
“I think we need to understand that our party is not homogeneous,” he said. “One of the things that makes the Democratic Party great is it’s a big tent party. We need to stay that way. The focus has got to be the November elections.”
I imagine the last chancellor of the Weimar Republic, Franz von Papen, said something similar when he suggested that the nationalist coalition accept Hitler and the Nazis and bring them into the government.
By late 1932, the Nazis had become the largest party in the Reichstag. The conservative elites — led by von Papen, a former chancellor, and a circle of nationalist politicians — wanted to establish a more authoritarian, right-wing regime but lacked popular support.
Papen engineered a plan to bring Adolf Hitler into the government as Chancellor in January 1933. He believed that by bringing the massive Nazi movement into a nationalist coalition, they could harness Hitler’s popularity while keeping him under control.
“Within two months, we will have pushed Hitler so far into a corner that he’ll squeak,” he said.
He was partially right. Within two months, von Papen and the rest of the Weimar cabinet were the ones in a corner, and Hitler had seized total power thanks to the Reichstag fire set by the Nazis and the befuddlement of the 84-year-old President Paul von Hindenburg. Though celebrated as a hero of the Great War, an aging and pliable Hindenburg proved no match for Hitler, who easily manipulated the president while outmaneuvering Papen.
If you think von Papen was dumb, how about the help that Alexander Kerensky, the last prime minister of the Czarist regime, gave to the Communists in their bid to take over the government?
When Kerensky became prime minister in 1917, Russia was still fighting in World War I despite its massive unpopularity. The prime minister urged the army to conduct a massive offensive, dubbed “The Kerensky Offensive” by the left, which ended in failure. It was the last straw. Unrest, facilitated by the Bolsheviks, spread across the country.
In August 1917, the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian army, General Lavr Kornilov, marched troops toward Petrograd in what appeared to be an attempted right-wing military coup.
Panicked and lacking loyal troops to defend the capital, Kerensky made a fatal compromise: he turned to the radical left for help. He released imprisoned Bolsheviks and fully armed their paramilitary wing, the Red Guards, to help defend the city.
What could go wrong?
The coup collapsed before any major fighting happened, but the damage was done. The Bolsheviks were now armed, organized, and viewed by the public as the true saviors of Petrograd, while Kerensky looked weak and helpless.
The DSA is on the rise because both major parties are failing the voters. While Republicans may believe they’re escaping the wrath of the electorate, GOP-leaning voters are likely to stay home in droves and not vote in November.
No one Democrat is stopping the DSA. It’s not implausible that many more Democrats in urban areas will lose their seats to the well-funded socialist candidates. That includes the House minority leader, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries. At the very least, Mr. Jeffries and others will be compelled to move even farther left to pacify the DSA and save their seats. Considering the spinelessness of the “establishment,” we can expect Democrats to embrace a widening array of Marxist policy ideas.
Some analysts point out that the primary voters for the Mamdani slate were largely high-earning, young, non-native New York voters, not the working class, immigrants or rank-and-file voters. Marxists are most often over-credentialed bourgeois with savior complexes. On the other hand, all energy on the Left is with the anti-American faction.
According to Gallup, 66 percent of Democrats hold a positive view of socialism. The younger you are, the more you lean toward collectivist ideas. An Axios-Generation Lab poll found 67 percent of college students hold a positive or neutral association with “socialism,” compared to only 40 percent with “capitalism.” What do we expect after decades of cultural and academic attacks on free enterprise, liberty and American history?
Democrats like Booker may believe they’re expanding their coalition by welcoming the DSA into their ranks. The DSA doesn’t see it that way. They’re in the process of eliminating the Democratic Party and establishing themselves as the sole opposition to the GOP.
The DSA isn’t out to “remake” America. It doesn’t want to “transform” the United States. If the DSA ever gets control of Congress and the White House, it will try to destroy the U.S. as we know it. Democrats who acquiesce in this will have no one to blame but themselves.
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