The Democratic Party’s leadership could easily be overrun by the Democratic Socialists of America. Normal Democrats had better keep that from happening.
Democrats are obviously afraid. On “Meet the Press” Sunday, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly was asked if he agreed with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “a war criminal” who should “be arrested” while attending the United Nations General Assembly. Mr. Kelly sidestepped the issue. He said he was “not happy” with Mr. Netanyahu’s decisions and hoped he loses Israel’s October elections. That was timid, but at least he didn’t endorse Mr. Mamdani’s arrest threat.
Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine took a different approach during an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” Hillary Clinton’s 2016 running mate welcomed the democratic socialists and even tried to make their extreme positions more palatable.
Fox News anchor Shannon Bream asked Mr. Kaine about an article in the Atlantic that called the DSA “a parasite” and warned “the left-wing faction is hijacking the Democratic Party.” In response, Mr. Kaine praised his party for having “always been known—and mostly this is good, sometimes it’s not—as a big tent.” He then rejected “litmus tests” for DSA members.
Neutral wasn’t enough for the Old Dominion’s junior senator. He then said that many DSA members he knows don’t want to abolish the Senate, presidency or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement—they merely “want reforms” and “effective border policies.”
In fact, the organization’s platform calls for defunding what it calls the Department of War and abolishing the Senate, ICE, national borders and the “police and prison system” as well as having a unicameral Congress choose the president and all federal judges.
Mr. Kaine surely knows all this. But he doesn’t want to offend the DSA or alienate voters who find their views repugnant, so he pretends not to see their radicalism. That will embolden them.
Some wise Democrats acknowledge the danger the DSA represents. Recently two sons of Chicago, Bill Daley and Rahm Emanuel, wrote in these pages about the DSA threat to their party’s viability.
Another politician who appears willing to take on this fight is Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. When asked about Darializa Avila Chevalier, who defeated the incumbent in a New York congressional primary, he was blunt. He didn’t think she was someone he “would agree with on many things” or “share similar values.”
“She ran,” he observed, “as a socialist.” It wasn’t a compliment.
Mr. Shapiro saw Ms. Chevalier’s victory and the DSA’s other primary wins as a call to action. He said the Democrats haven’t had “a battle over what we believe in” since 1992.
In that year, Democrats had been trounced in three straight presidential elections. After running for the nomination in 1984 and 1988, the Rev. Jesse Jackson sought to be a kingmaker in ’92.
At a June conference of Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition in Washington, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton made his move. The Washington Post had recently run an interview with the rap artist Sister Souljah who said: “If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?” The day before Mr. Clinton was to appear at the Rainbow Coalition, he learned that Sister Souljah had done so as well.
With Jackson sitting immediately to his left, Mr. Clinton said the rapper’s remarks were “filled with a kind of hatred that you do not honor,” adding “if you took the words ‘white’ and ‘black’ and reversed them, you might think that David Duke was giving that speech.” Afterward, a visibly upset Jackson defended the rapper as “misunderstood” and criticized Mr. Clinton for “very bad judgment” in raising the issue.
The Clinton campaign credited the controversy with helping him win the general election. It signaled to voters he was mainstream, sane, strong and unafraid of a fight.
