Venezuela and Bolivia are actively rejecting Marxist ideology as their nations fail. The Cuban government is turning to foreign capitalists to solve their liquidity crisis, because Socialism has failed there. Socialism is collapsing across our hemisphere. Yet, Democratic Socialism is finding at least empathizers, if not outright sympathizers, all over the Democratic Party.

Zohran Mamdani can literally take pictures with unindicted co-conspirators in an infamous terror attack in New York City, refuse to call for Hamas to end, and say and do any number of outrageous things and there are Democrats backing him anyway, Democrats he has attacked. The Shapiro Administration and Chris DeLuzio are falling all over themselves to help a guy who stiffed his mother-in-law get to Congress from here in the Lehigh Valley. Graham Platner in Maine has damn Nazi tattoos and there are people defending him, saying “he was only 37,” and “he didn’t know what he got tattooed on himself,” as though that sounds better? Martin Heinrich, a ****ing U.S. Senator from New Mexico, literally still says he’s a good candidate. In fact, he goes further, to say he “obviously” doesn’t like this, but the real lesson is “stay off Reddit.” You cannot make this shit up.

You know, when Bernie started running for President as an already old man, it was stupid and all, but there were some half baked policies being discusses. “Medicare 4 All,” “Defund the Police,” and “Green New Deal” were all somewhere between not fully thought out plans (that could have been finished plans) and poorly thought up, stupid ideas that took actual problems and created new problems from them, but there was policy here. We are now at the point where “globalize the Intifada” and “you have to accept some Nazis to win back men” are actual arguments of the American left. I guess we could see this coming when “tough guy from Braddock” got a guy elected in 2022 who was in no way ready to serve in the U.S. Senate for Pennsylvania, but one would have thought that Fetterman’s utter and complete failure as a human being, let alone as a Senator, would have stopped that. It’s bad enough that he won’t fight for people’s health care, the guy has literally turned into an internet troll against the people who supported him in 2022 over Israel, an issue where I may agree with him more than not, but still find his cavalier, childish behavior disgusting.But we’re not just considering doing that again- we’re doing it on steroids.

Kamala Harris did not lose in 2024 because she moved too far right. That might make you sleep better at night, you might even be able to twist some parts of the story to make that seem plausible. Trump hasn’t gone up in every one of his three elections though, in raw votes and percentage, because the Democrats moved right. Millions of Biden voters, objectively considered the most moderate Democratic nominee in the post-Obama era, didn’t sit out the 2024 Election because the Democrats moved right. It’s a nice story that “Dearborn cost Harris Michigan,” but they voted against Biden in the primary and moved the numbers zero, they voted against Whitmer in 2022 and she won easily. Sure, in very blue enclaves it doesn’t matter if you nominate Zohran Mamdani, he’ll probably win. And then you can hope that he is able to enact some of the more popular policy stuff on housing and buses, and maybe all the “Intifada” talk goes away. At best, it’s a net neutral in competitive Congressional Districts, and my guess is it is much worse in the five or so neighboring seats to the city that might decide who wins the House. Of course, that message gets ignored. So much of the Democratic Party has decided to believe the myth that Dem-Socialist Populism is the only way to turn out the youth, who are the only way to win an election. They’re not only wrong, they’re exactly wrong.

Every vote Democrats have gained in the Trump era has come from the exact opposite of this populist brain rot. Kamala Harris became the first Democrat in my lifetime to carry college educated white men. Democratic midterm success in 2018, and to a large extent in 2022 was built off of college educated white voters and middle class Black and Latino voters. Joe Biden rode increased Black voter turnout and gains with college educated white voters to the most votes in American history. Bernie Sanders actually did worse the second time he tried to run for President. I get it, the guy has a following, he can get a crowd and a donor off the internet for you. What he can’t do is win you an election outside of a deep blue district. If you watched Sara Gideon get savaged in the closing days of the 2020 Maine Senate race with attacks that she supported “defunding the police,” and you think the answer to that is to nominate the guy with the Nazi tattoo who wants to take the party in a left populist direction, you’re a lunatic. It’s stupid, it’s not backed up in data, and it’s not backed up in facts. If you want to move on from “centering identity politics,” because “Hillary and Kamala lost,” I get that there’s a strategic argument to be had about what we talk about and how, but that’s very different from selling out the people who might vote for us for people who are loons and wackos, won’t vote for us, and will make us look even crazier than we already do. We’ve spent a decade trying to shame Republican supposed moderates into abandoning Trump, and they’ve spent a decade calling us hypocrites. In these people, we actually might prove them right.