There’s nothing like success to blind people to an ugly truth.
Right now, the new shooting star, or shining object, in American politics is the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) party.
You may have noticed they’ve been on a hot streak lately, winning competitive primary matchups in New York, Philadelphia and Denver.
Because their patron saint is the slick and charismatic New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose obsession with Israel has sucked up much of the media attention, hardly anyone has talked about DSA’s actual platform.
That platform is scary.
As Bret Stephens summarized it in The New York Times, it “calls for abolishing the Senate. And abolishing the presidency. Also, abolishing the Pentagon. And phasing out the police. And getting rid of border enforcement. Plus a 32-hour workweek, free health care, guaranteed housing, an end to capitalism.”
He forgot to mention rewriting the Constitution.
Charles Cooke, writing in National Review Online, says the platform “demands the abolition of every load-bearing structure in America.”
In short, the Democratic Socialists of America are coming for America.
But that truth is too harsh, so DSA party bosses are distracting voters by focusing on the capitalist bad guys.
“The world is in chaos, but for the bosses, it’s all going according to plan,” it says on its website. “We can see their plan in the countless heartbreaking images coming out of war zones like Beirut, Gaza, and Tehran. We can hear it in the rumble of bulldozers making way to build detention camps and data centers. We can feel it in the air as the summer heat becomes unbearable, and in the pits of our stomachs when faced with the price of gas and rent. We’re promised magical technology with AI, but in reality, the bosses lay us off and track our every move. The billionaire class is dividing workers against each other, and it’s making us desperate and miserable.”
And what is DSA offering on its website as an alternative?
Oh, only a life anyone would kill for.
“You enjoy your work; it’s interesting to you, and you’re well trained for it.
“You work as much as you are able and no more than needed, and you would control your own labor and see it going to good use. It’s not just a job to pay the bills.
“Speaking of bills: you don’t really have them anymore. You have no debt. You don’t need health insurance. You don’t pay a mortgage or have a landlord, because comfortable housing is a human right.
“Your retirement is publicly funded. Food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation aren’t for-profit businesses; they are common goods and utilities.”
Do you see a pattern here? Say the juicy stuff and stay away from the dark stuff.
The juicy stuff– taking down the billionaire class so you can have the great life you deserve– sounds so much more appealing than the dark stuff– “we’re demanding the abolition of every load-bearing structure in America.”
The master of this subterfuge is the savvy Mamdani, who makes socialism look as sweet and innocent as a community library. As he said recently to Jon Stewart:
“If you and I were to introduce the idea of a building that lends out books for free, we would be slandered in the same way that so many new ideas are slandered today, and yet that’s the library. The same thing with the fire department, the same thing with public schools.”
But as Robby Soave points out in Reason, “This is all completely ridiculous. If a government provides some public services, this does not mean the government is socialist. Socialism should not be defined as maintaining a slightly more generous welfare state. Socialism is a political and economic system in which the means of production are owned in theory by the workers themselves rather than fat-cat capitalists.
“In actually existing socialist systems, the means of production is owned or at least controlled by a powerful central government with sweeping powers to allocate resources, set prices, and determine who does what.”
Besides the historical evidence that such socialist systems are doomed to implode, there’s the pesky detail that it doesn’t sound at all like America.
You’d never know that by listening to a smiling snake oil salesman like Mamdani.
“[Mamdani] quite deliberately misrepresents the definition of socialism in order to make it seem benign and unobjectionable,” Soave writes. “He is doing this frequently enough—and consistently enough—that he may be succeeding in tricking a great number of people into accepting a nonsensical, discredited, and dangerous ideology.”
What’s fascinating is that when the media does ask the right questions, DSA officials find it very hard to deny that dangerous ideology.
As covered by Cooke, here is DSA co-chair Megan Romer in a recent interview with Shannon Bream of Fox News, as Bream ticked off items of the DSA agenda:
BREAM: Abolish the Senate?
ROMER: True.
BREAM: Okay, replace the presidency and Supreme Court as we now know them?
ROMER: Yep.
BREAM: Abolish ICE?
ROMER: Absolutely.
BREAM: Abolish borders and give amnesty to anyone currently in the U.S. illegally?
ROMER: As a long-term plan, yep.
BREAM: Defund the Pentagon?
ROMER: Absolutely.
BREAM: Abolish prisons, at least in large part?
ROMER: Yeah, again, as part of a long-term program, yeah?
BREAM: OK, so no prisons. Government or public ownership of most large corporations?
ROMER: Yeah, absolutely.
So, why is the mainstream media not asking those tough questions?
Forgive my cynicism, but could it have anything to do with the first word in the party’s name?
For the media to expose DSA would mean admitting that their cherished Democratic party is being taken over by a radical anti-American movement, which might, God forbid, help the “other team.”
It’s well known that the seeds of this socialist movement were planted years ago when the Democratic party largely abandoned the working class in favor of social issues like race and gender. Now, they’re forced to contend with a socialist insurgency that mentions “working class” in every second sentence.
It must be disillusioning. How do you go after a party that looks like it’s helping the very people you were supposed to help all along?
Look at John Stewart, who fashions himself as a Democratic truth warrior, getting all chummy with Mamdani in his interview. Instead of asking hard questions, he allows Mamdani to paint socialism with this utopian brush: “It means making the choice every day to fight for working people. It means you believe that everyone in your city deserves to live a dignified life, no matter how much money is in their pocket.”
Study that seductive language and it’s easier to understand the DSA’s current hot streak.
Of course, politicians always overpromise, downplaying the reality that nothing is free, that everything is a trade-off, that citizens must sacrifice and do their share.
The DSA, though, is on a whole other level: It’s downplaying the demolition of America.
Who will get that word out?
If the media won’t do it, the mainstream Democrats must have the courage to tell the ugly truth about these rebels in their midst.
If they won’t do it for their party, they should at least do it for their country.
And they should do it fast, before these shooting stars go too far to catch.
