We conservatives so often point to the extremism of today’s Democratic Party that we might risk numbing ourselves to the seismic shift that has taken place among its ranks. This is important, folks, and so in the following pages I specify how deep and widespread it is, and how much further left the party has moved even in the short years since Obama’s term expired—and it was already far too left then.
During the 2008 presidential campaign I repeatedly outlined Barack Obama’s radical past and his far-left views. Too many breezily dismissed our warnings, and I pray that they do not do so today—or the tattered flag shown on this book’s cover will tear completely in two.
We did tons of investigative reporting on Obama’s record—work that the Obama-worshipping mainstream media mob wouldn’t do. We are one of the only TV shows anywhere that vetted Obama. We took a deep dive into his associations with militants like Frank Marshall Davis and ACORN, and revealed Obama’s use of the cynical, manipulative tactics of community organizer Saul Alinsky. We also gave you volumes about his close relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the pastor behind the infamous “G-d d—n America” sermon, and an adherent of the radical black liberation theology.
We reported in depth on Obama’s links to leftist extremists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, cofounders of the Weather Underground—a communist revolutionary group that bombed public buildings, including the United States Capitol, the Pentagon, and New York police stations.1 After the Pentagon bombing Ayers and Dohrn became fugitives. When the Weather Underground issued a “Declaration of a State of War” against the United Sates government in 1970, Dohrn was placed on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List.2 Obama claimed Ayers was just “a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” but I told you differently, and I was proved right when it emerged that Obama and Ayers were partners in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an education foundation that funneled more than $100 million to community organizers and radical education activists.3 With one exception, the media wholly ignored Obama’s relationship with Ayers. Had Donald Trump had such a nefarious relationship, you can be sure the media would have asked him about it a thousand times, which is a perfect example of why American patriots don’t trust the media mob.
Don’t listen to anyone who tells you Obama wasn’t a leftist president, and especially don’t listen to the liberal media. They lied to you throughout the Obama years, and they’re still lying today. I wish Americans had heeded our warnings because Obama was serious when he vowed to fundamentally transform the nation. He proved it during his eight long years in office by ramming through Obamacare on a party-line vote, appointing activist judges, issuing unconstitutional executive orders, downsizing our military, traveling the world apologizing for America, engineering long-term economic malaise, waging war on coal and coal miners, haranguing the cops, conferring legal status on more than one million illegal aliens via Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and aggravating race relations in this country.
I’m not rehashing the Obama-Biden years out of some obsession. This book is about America’s present and future, but we must learn from past mistakes—and as a society we made a major mistake in failing to recognize the threat Obama posed to the republic. Our battle against the left is a constant, never-ending struggle in which we must never lower our guard. Though Obama may seem less extreme than today’s crop of hard-core leftists, his presidency paved the way for their ascendancy. He moved society as far left as was politically possible at the time. However, as shown by the backlash after the Democrats forced through Obamacare—when they lost sixty-three House seats, control of the House, and six Senate seats4—there were limits to how far Obama could take his transformation. We should remember this shellacking when Democrats and Never Trumpers gloat over the Republicans’ loss of congressional seats in the 2018 midterms.
Even as Obama remade America, he sometimes projected a false image of moderation and bipartisanship that his media cheerleaders obediently amplified. He famously pretended to oppose same-sex marriage until he decided it was politically feasible to announce he had “evolved” on the issue. Even his adviser David Axelrod later admitted that during the 2008 campaign Obama lied in saying he opposed same-sex marriage—for reasons of political expedience.5 He downplayed his health-care ambitions, claiming to reject a government-run, single-payer health-care system even though years earlier he’d privately told his labor union supporters that that was exactly what he wanted.6 But try as he might, Obama couldn’t always hide his militant partisanship.
I’ll never forget his revealing utterances. While referring to his political opponents in a 2008 speech, he said, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”7 All throughout Obama’s first campaign for president, he mentioned me more than a dozen times—even threatening me by saying, “I’ll put Mr. Burgess [an Obama supporter] up against Sean Hannity. He’ll tear him up.” He told his supporters they were “his ambassadors” and urged them to “argue with [their neighbors]; get in their face.”8 Implying Republicans were lazy obstructionists, he said, “We’re down there pushing, pushing on the car. Every once in a while we’ll look up and see the Republicans standing there. They’re just standing there fanning themselves—sipping on a Slurpee.”9 Obama also often displayed his socialist leanings. He famously told Joe the Plumber, “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”10 And let’s never forget his infamous line: “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”11
Today’s Democratic leaders and presidential candidates dispensed with even the pretense of moderation. Whereas Obama at least pretended you could keep your health insurance plan, which was named “Lie of the Year” by the left-leaning PolitiFact,12 Senator Kamala Harris launched her presidential bid with a promise of eliminating private insurance. Every one of the Democratic presidential candidates on the stage at the July 30, 2019, Democratic presidential debate supported a public option for Obamacare that even the liberal 2010 Democratic Congress rejected.13 All the candidates at the June 27, 2019, debate supported federally funded health care for illegal immigrants. Two of the top candidates, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, supported “Medicare for All,” an outright government-run socialized medicine scheme.
The Democrats’ radicalism goes way beyond health care. Every candidate at the February 7, 2020, debate either cosponsored or supported the Green New Deal, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s utopian plan to remake the American economy at a cost of unknown trillions of dollars. Indisputably, Democrats have become the party of socialism, open borders, sanctuary cities, the elimination of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), underfunding the military, abortion on demand, infanticide, environmental extremism, gun confiscation, higher taxes, radical identity politics, suppression of free speech and religious expression, and among some Democratic members of Congress, undisguised anti-Semitism. They’re also the party of intolerance, smears, lies, character assassination, besmirchment, and fake Russian dossiers. They are singularly obsessed with their hatred for President Trump and his supporters. As the Brett Kavanaugh Senate Judiciary Committee hearings showed, they have abandoned any sense of fundamental decency, fairness, or common sense.
What are Democrats thinking? Why are they showing their hand so openly? Have the American people taken a sharp turn to the left? They haven’t, but there are worrying trends. Conservatives still outnumber liberals by 9 percentage points, but this gap has shrunk from 19 points in 1992. Gallup reported that in 2018, 35 percent of Americans described themselves as conservative, 35 percent as moderate, and 26 percent as liberal. The majority of Republicans call themselves conservative, but for the first time, a majority of Democrats identify as liberal.14
These numbers don’t indicate socialism would be a winning message in the country overall. And of course, it’s possible Joe Biden will suddenly moderate his message after winning the party primaries. However, he did the opposite to win the Democrat nomination over Bernie Sanders. It’ll be nearly impossible for Biden to walk back his newfound radicalism. Besides, he seems to mean it. After all, the base of the party is very radical, as are their younger cohorts in Congress, led by AOC and her “squad” of like-minded extremists.
Like Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic congressional veterans sometimes show they understand the need to appear more moderate, but when push comes to shove, their policy positions are not much different from the squad’s. In fact, more than 25 percent of Democrat lawmakers voted with AOC 95 percent of the time in the first quarter of 2019, and even more damning, Pelosi initially held the coronavirus relief bill hostage to her demands for including Green New Deal provisions in the legislation.15 There is simply no truth to Pelosi’s dismissive claim that the party’s AOC wing represents only “like five people.”16
Indeed, as Karine Jean-Pierre of MoveOn.org made clear early on, it won’t be easy for the Democrats’ establishment wing to rein in the radicals. “[T]here’s one thing we already know about the 2020 Democratic nominee: She or he must offer a clear, unapologetically progressive alternative to Donald Trump,” writes Jean-Pierre. “Because [voters have] made it abundantly clear that the last thing they want to see in their nominee is a middle-of-the-road Democrat who won’t go far enough to turn our country around.”
Consider that for a second. Democrats controlled the executive branch for eight years under Obama and produced nothing but problems, from health-care chaos and unaffordability, to economic stagnation, to foreign policy aimlessness. Under President Trump, prior to the coronavirus panic, the nation was reinvigorated, with an unprecedented economic boom, strong foreign policy leadership, deregulation, exceptional judicial appointments, and energy independence. What, exactly, would the left have us turn around? Do they want a rebirth of malaise, executive overreach, and an America-last foreign policy? Do they want to reimpose the Obamacare mandate? In fact, yes, you can bank on it.
“Progressive candidates don’t hesitate when it comes to supporting universal health care, or the fight for the $15 minimum wage, or the right to vote,” says Jean-Pierre. “I can tell you this: [the Democratic presidential nominee] will be the most progressive candidate the Democratic Party has ever seen.”17 Do you hear an implied “or else” at the end of that sentence? You should, because it’s there. The party’s ultimate rejection of Sanders in favor of Biden doesn’t disprove Jean-Pierre’s prophecy. Considering where the party is today and Biden’s leftward turn, Biden will be the most progressive candidate the party has nominated. The Democratic base is feeling emboldened and uncompromising. Even if the party leaders were open to a more moderate course—and there’s no evidence of that—their base wouldn’t allow it.
Early in 2019, Congresswomen AOC and Rashida Tlaib made Pelosi squirm as they presented their radical proposals. AOC announced her plan to raise income taxes to help pay for her delusional “Green New Deal” to end the use of fossil fuels in about a decade. Without a hint of self-consciousness, she compared her program to President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. “If that’s what radical means, call me a radical,” she said.18 But eventually we saw Democrat leaders, one by one, fall in line behind AOC’s crazy ideas.
Naturally, impeaching Trump was a top priority for the newcomers. Hours after being sworn in to Congress, Tlaib told a cheering crowd at a MoveOn.org event that “we’re going to go in there and we’re gonna impeach the mother——r.”19 That quote became pretty famous, though some people forget she was retelling what she’d said to her thirteen-year-old son. But forget Tlaib’s inappropriate way of talking to children. Notice that the crowd went crazy for a vow to impeach Trump before his phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky even occurred. And why not? The exit polls from the 2018 midterm elections showed that almost 80 percent of Democratic voters favored Trump’s immediate impeachment—and some 6.5 million Democrats had already signed a petition to impeach him.20 Some party veterans, like the late Elijah Cummings, cringed at the newcomers’ unmasked radicalism and militancy, knowing the country wasn’t ready for it, but their nods to restraint were mere posturing. The party was dead set on impeachment, just waiting on a suitable pretext, as we quickly saw.
AOC, Tlaib, and the rest of the squad are in sync with the Democratic base, and they are the party’s future. They are not outliers, and—truth be told—they are not that far apart from the old guard except in their style and bluntness. “I was not sent to Washington to play nice,” said Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley.21 Still, the stylistic differences are enough to provoke skirmishes between the two wings. Retired Democratic senator Joe Lieberman said, “With all respect, I certainly hope [AOC is] not the future and I don’t believe she is.”22 AOC responded with a flippant tweet: “New party, who dis?”23
Even when the old guard occasionally distances itself from the upstarts, we often find them forced to backtrack and fall in line. For example, Pelosi initially opposed impeachment. Earlier in 2019 she announced that Trump is unfit for office “ethically,” “intellectually,” and “curiosity-wise,” but insisted impeachment would be too divisive. “I’m not for impeachment,” said Pelosi, claiming it’s “so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it.”24 Though not one House Republican supported impeaching Trump for the Zelensky call, she caved to the leftists’ demands, morphing from reluctant veteran to enthusiastic general of the rabid neophytes.
So it’s hard to deny that the newcomers are driving the agenda.25 And they are working hand in hand with their base to purge any actual moderates from their ranks—even some who identify as progressive. “You don’t just get to say that you’re progressive,” warned Congressman Pramila Jayapal, cochair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.26 Politico reporter David Siders explained during the primaries, “So many Democratic presidential prospects are now claiming the progressive mantle in advance of the 2020 primaries that liberal leaders are trying to institute a measure of ideological quality control, designed to ensure the party ends up with a nominee who meets their exacting standards.”27 Progressive donors, said Siders, are also conspiring to ensure they fund candidates who are committed to pet leftist causes, such as “Medicare for all, debt-free college education, and non-militaristic foreign policy.”28 Bernie Sanders helped the purge by responding, after being asked whether there’s such a thing as a pro-life Democrat, “I think being pro-choice is an absolutely essential part of being a Democrat.”29 The Democratic Party used to have a significant pro-life contingent, but now the party has no use for them.
The radicalism on display by the Democratic candidates this past year worried James Carville, a spin doctor and attack dog for President Bill Clinton. “We have candidates on the debate stage talking about open borders and decriminalizing illegal immigration,” he complained. “They’re talking about doing away with nuclear energy and fracking. You’ve got Bernie Sanders talking about letting criminals and terrorists vote from jail cells. It doesn’t matter what you think about any of that, or if there are good arguments—talking about that is not how you win a national election.”30 Note that Carville didn’t actually condemn these extremist proposals—in fact, he said there may be “good arguments” for them. He just thought it was politically damaging that Democrats were advocating them publicly.
It’s not just the Democrats’ policy positions that are extreme. They have embraced an extreme form of political correctness. Obama, who as I mentioned has more political savvy than his would-be successors, has warned his party against their tendency to shut down debate. “This idea of purity, and you’re never compromised, and you’re always politically woke, and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly,” Obama warned in October 2019. “The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws.”31
Given his track record, it’s doubtful that Obama has had an awakening on policy, but he clearly understands, like James Carville, that the more Democrats display their extremism and the more they try to shut down debate, the worse their electoral prospects. But the party won’t listen. It’s amazing how quickly the Democrats have dropped the mask—just a few short years ago, in Obama’s second term, Democrats were advocating immigration policies that President Trump was pushing in his first term, such as constructing new barriers on the southern border,32 yet they now decry Trump’s policies as a fascist attack on the inalienable right of the entire world’s population to cross our borders.
Even a couple of self-described New York Times “fact-checkers” admitted that the policy positions of many in the Democratic presidential field were “well to the left of where the party was just a few years ago.”33 They acknowledged that every one of the candidates supported health-care plans that “would generally require substantially more government spending, higher taxes, an increased public-sector role in private markets and a reversal of the deregulatory push championed by Trump.” Yet they unconvincingly disputed Trump’s claim that these would-be Democratic Party presidential nominees are socialists—mainly because only Senator Bernie Sanders self-identified as one. “Even Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who is the most ideologically aligned with Mr. Sanders among the 2020 contenders, says she is not a socialist,” insisted the fact-checkers. “When she is asked about the difference between her and Mr. Sanders, her stock answer has been that she is ‘a capitalist to my bones.’ ”34
Seriously? They expected us to take Warren’s word for it? She wanted a complete government takeover of health insurance, a Green New Deal to exponentially expand the government’s power over much of the rest of the economy, and a new wealth tax, and we’re expected to believe she is a die-hard capitalist? Also, have these diligent fact-checkers forgotten about “democratic socialists” AOC and Rashida Tlaib—as if so-called “democratic socialists” are less socialistic than “socialists.” And what reasonable observer could deny that former candidates Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke, and the others leaned far left?
Some Democrats try to deflect the socialist label, but the party’s policies speak for themselves. “The progressive wing of the new House Democratic majority has lost no time in pushing radical proposals that are far out the mainstream of American politics, but which accurately reflect their hard-left worldview,” writes columnist James S. Robbins, a former Department of Defense official. “It is refreshing to see them being so open about promoting socialism in America. The days of President Bill Clinton’s ‘New Democrats,’ ” he notes, “are long gone.”35
Even certain reliably progressive media commentators voiced concern over the Democrats’ leftward drift. The New York Times’ Thomas Edsall feared that the Democratic presidential contenders were embracing “bold progressive policy initiatives” that would appeal to liberal primary voters but not to the general electorate. He offered one possible explanation, first proposed by University of Mississippi political scientist Julie Wronski: Democrats are more diverse than the mostly “homogenous white, Christian conservative” Republican Party. To appeal to African Americans, Latinos, environmentalists, and others, “[T]heir candidates need to start embracing boutique policies for these groups that may not align with a general election ‘median voter’ model of espousing moderate policies.”36
However, there’s a simpler explanation: the Democratic base, which especially reigns in the primaries, is in fact extreme, and primary candidates had to cater to that extremism. Additionally, Democratic strategists were surely aware of Pew polling data showing that “consistently liberal” Democrats have a 70 percent turnout rate in elections compared to 47 percent of “mostly liberal” and 41 percent of those with “mixed views.”37 In short, if a Democrat wanted to win the primary, catering to the left was virtually the only option.
Democrats today are also decidedly left on social issues and are indignant toward any who disagree with their superior values, treating them as moral reprobates simply for embracing ideas that supermajorities of Americans have held for centuries. At CNN’s LGBTQ Equality Town Hall in Los Angeles in October 2019, Elizabeth Warren was asked how she’d reply to an old-fashioned supporter whose faith teaches that marriage is between one man and one woman. “I’m going to assume it is a guy who said that,” she remarked. “And I’m going to say, ‘Well, then just marry one woman. I’m cool with that.’ ” After a pause she added, “Assuming you can find one.”38
Keep in mind that leftists like Warren claim conservatives are the bullies. We are the mean and intolerant ones, not progressives. And yet, here’s Warren ridiculing religious believers for clinging to those “old-fashioned biblical” values—you know, the ones Jesus taught. In her follow-up from moderator Chris Cuomo, Warren cast “people of faith” who disagree with her on this issue as hateful, insisting she is the one who follows the true teachings of the church. “I mean, to me, it’s about what I learned in the church I grew up in,” said Warren. “First song I ever remember singing is, ‘They are yellow, black, and white, they are precious in his sight, Jesus loves all the children of the world.’… And the hatefulness, frankly, always shocked me, especially for people of faith, because I think the whole foundation is the worth of every single human being.”39 Former Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke went even further, vowing to strip colleges, churches, and other charities of their tax-exempt status if they refuse to support same-sex marriage.40
Even Joe Biden, the falsely billed “moderate,” shows the difficulty in trying to buck the leftists controlling his party. As a senator he had supported the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding for abortion except in cases of rape or incest, but under an onslaught of leftist criticism he shamelessly reversed himself in June 2019. “Women’s rights and women’s health are under assault like we haven’t seen in the last 50 years,” said Biden. “If I believe health care is a right, as I do, I can no longer support an amendment that makes that right dependent on someone else’s zip code.”
Interestingly, the month before, Biden had announced his reversal on this issue to an ACLU volunteer, but his campaign preposterously claimed he’d misheard the question. “He has not at this point changed his position on the Hyde Amendment,” his campaign clarified.41 But he just couldn’t go the distance. Maybe just a month earlier Biden didn’t quite view “health care as a right,” or maybe he had a different feeling about certain zip codes. Who knows? But this is the type of left-wing ideological purity we’ve come to expect from a party being consumed by its own radicalism.
The Democrats may be courting electoral suicide with their radicalism, but their extremist proposals often resonate with the younger generation, which has a growing affinity for socialism. This is alarming but not surprising, seeing as today’s young people have been thoroughly indoctrinated in leftist ideals in both popular culture and in the education system.
In 2014, the Pew Research Center found that 43 percent of 18 to 29-year-olds positively respond to the word “socialism.” Older generations are less favorably disposed, with 33 percent of 30 to 49-year-olds, 23 percent of 50 to 64-year-olds, and 14 percent of those 65 and older reacting positively.42 More recent polling is even worse. A 2018 Gallup poll showed that young Americans not only view socialism positively but dislike capitalism. Only 45 percent view capitalism favorably, while 51 percent view socialism positively.43 Incredibly, since 2010, Gallup polling has shown that a majority of Democrats view socialism positively. Its 2018 poll put that number at 57 percent.44
A 2019 Gallup poll showed that 43 percent of Americans overall say socialism would be a good thing for the country, while just 51 percent say it would be a bad thing.45 That’s shocking—and we can’t let this stand. Taken together, all these polls show that capitalism is being systematically discredited in America.
We can take some comfort from recent polls revealing that the majority of socialism supporters don’t even understand what socialism means. But that won’t help unless conservatives do a better job of reaching them and disabusing them of their warped ideas.46 We old folks have our work cut out for us. We must ensure Americans can define socialism and understand its devastating impact historically. Socialist policies have failed everywhere they’ve been tried. I flesh this out in Chapter Four.
Patriots can never rest easy with so many Americans warming up to socialism, even while a slim majority still reject it. History shows that leftists don’t need majority support to bring about radical economic and social change. In a December 2018 analysis, progressive writer Peter Beinart applied this lesson to the Trump era. He argued that left-wing candidates don’t necessarily even have to win elections to exert their influence. “Who wins an election is often less important than who sets the agenda,” writes Beinart. “And, ideologically, the Democratic Party has veered so sharply left that ‘establishment’ or ‘centrist’ Democrats now frequently support larger expansions of government, and more vehemently scorn Big Business and Big Finance, than most liberal Democrats did a few years ago…. For the first time in more than 40 years, the left is shaping the Democratic Party’s identity.”47
For Beinart, what distinguishes a leftist from a liberal or progressive—though all three terms are often used interchangeably—is that leftists are committed to “radical equality,” believing that “economic inequality renders America’s constitutional liberties hollow.”48 Only twice in American history has the left had enough power to force Democrats to adopt its ideas—in the 1930s and 1960s. Both times the left derived its power “through mass movements that threatened the public order.” Both movements began outside the Democratic Party. To keep order and prevent further extremism, Beinart says, “Democrats passed laws that made America markedly more equal”49—in other words, America was blackmailed by the radicals.
Both these leftist successes were possible because the American left mobilized behind them, Beinart argues. That’s why we should take seriously the left’s current mobilization. The “third left,” as Beinart calls it, began in 2011 with Occupy Wall Street—young people protesting the financial crisis. Other triggers followed, such as George Zimmerman’s acquittal for killing Trayvon Martin, which “launched Black Lives Matter.” Bernie Sanders, he notes, went outside the Democratic Party structure for support—principally from the Occupy network and eventually Black Lives Matter. This was significant, because Sanders’s “campaign became a funnel through which the activist left entered the Democratic Party’s mainstream.” Since then the left has gained greater control of the party and “remade” it in certain respects.
Beinart also notes that today’s Democrats “are embracing Big Government policies dismissed as utopian or irresponsible only a year or two ago,” such as tuition-free college and federal job guarantees.50 He imagines that if Democrats regain the presidency and Congress and try to enact ambitious leftist policies, they’ll likely meet stiff resistance from a conservative minority that would rely on the filibuster and the Supreme Court to obstruct the Democrats’ agenda. He contends that the history of the 1930s and ’60s shows that if such an impasse occurs, Democrats will succeed only through outside pressure from leftist activists, which is likely to occur because the activists are more mobilized today than they have been in decades.
If activist pressure doesn’t work to soften GOP opposition, says Beinart, Democrats may resort to legislative trickery to advance their agenda. They could expand the use of the “reconciliation” process to pass legislation, limit the use of the filibuster, or even try to pack the Supreme Court like FDR attempted. We should pay attention to this warning, coming from a leftist sympathizer, that Democrats could bend or break the rules to get their way. In fact, they’ve been a party of lawlessness for some time. Obama demonstrated this with his unconstitutional executive orders (his “phone and pen”), his administration’s harassment of conservative groups and taxpayers through the IRS, and his abuse of counterintelligence programs to illegally spy on the Trump campaign. Obviously, as the Democrats see it, to achieve a goal as ambitious as fundamentally changing America, they may have to take some liberties here and there with the rules, laws, and constitutional rights of American citizens. The current slate of Democratic candidates and their supporters look ready to do whatever is necessary—legal or illegal—to finish the job.
Beinart anticipates a further GOP backlash in the event Democrats resort to such measures. With the two sides thoroughly polarized and vying for their respective positions, Beinart says this “third left” movement will prevail only if it can “convince Americans that the true cause of radicalism is injustice, and the best guarantee of social peace is a more equal country.”51
The Democrats’ elaborate schemes to abuse their power are ironic considering their main complaint against President Trump is that he maliciously “abuses his power” and “interferes” with “our democracy.” In fact, this leftist Democratic Party has no respect for the system they pretend to uphold. If they did, they wouldn’t be attacking it with designs from abolishing the Electoral College, to packing the Supreme Court, to effectively eliminating our borders, to stripping our civil liberties. While complaining about alleged Republican corruption they are active agents of chaos, trying to undermine the system itself at every turn—whatever it takes to make America “more equal.” Just as the Democrats themselves were the ones interfering with the 2016 presidential election while falsely accusing Trump of having done so, they are the ones threatening our constitutional order while pointing the finger at Republicans.
Democrats tirelessly accuse Trump of being a tyrannical autocrat—an authoritarian who flouts the Constitution and believes he is above the law. During the impeachment trial, Congressman Jerry Nadler even accused Trump of being a “dictator,”52 apparently unaware that dictators don’t allow themselves to be impeached. Once again, the Democrats are projecting—it is they who refuse to accept elections they lose, pay for phony dossiers falsely accusing their political opponents of treason, and skew our constitutional norms for their own political benefit.
In fact, Beinart’s prediction that Democrats might try to pack the Court has already come true. Frustrated that President Trump has appointed justices and judges who will uphold the Constitution rather than bend it to the left’s political ends, multiple Democratic presidential candidates proposed adding justices to the Court. Beto O’Rourke, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Kirsten Gillibrand all said they would add judges or consider the move.53 While Biden didn’t join the Democratic field on this issue, he has shown his flexibility under party pressure, so we have no assurance he won’t eventually come on board.
Similarly, in light of Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump becoming president without winning the popular vote, Senators Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren support, or would consider, abolishing the Electoral College. Here again, Biden didn’t join the pack, but we can’t rely on him not bending later. The framers wisely designed the Electoral College to establish republican government instead of pure democracy in order to bolster the power of the states, reduce electoral fraud, and protect minority rights. “Our founders so deeply feared a tyranny of the majority that they rejected the idea of a direct vote for President,” says legal scholar Tara Ross. “That’s why they created the Electoral College. For more than two centuries it has encouraged coalition building, given a voice to both big and small states, and discouraged voter fraud.”54
But Democrats don’t like the results that the Electoral College sometimes yields, so they are attacking this institution from numerous angles. Senators Brian Schatz, Dick Durbin, Dianne Feinstein, and Kirsten Gillibrand introduced a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College and elect presidential candidates by national popular vote.55 Knowing this proposal had little chance of succeeding, progressives proposed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPV) to circumvent the Electoral College and the Constitution’s high bar for amendments. Under the plan, states would agree to ignore their own voters’ choice and select their presidential electors based on the national popular vote.56 “If you think that through, it really… hijacks the Electoral College… to do exactly what the American Founders rejected, which is to create a direct election system, a national popular vote, a direct election for president of the United States, rendering state lines irrelevant, rendering state governments and state laws potentially irrelevant in the process,” says Trent England, director of Save Our States, a program to preserve the Electoral College.57
England helped launch the organization in 2009 after several states adopted the NPV from 2007 to 2009. This effort worked well until Trump’s Electoral College victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, which revived the momentum for NPV. Now some fifteen states, plus the District of Columbia, with a total of 196 electoral votes, have joined the compact.58 The agreement won’t take effect unless the signatory states have a total of 270 electoral votes. If that happens, the Electoral College will be effectively nullified and presidents will be elected by national popular vote, despite the fact that it’s unconstitutional. The framers viewed the Electoral College as a crucial constitutional safeguard, but since it’s not working to the Democrats’ advantage, it has to go.
Beinart apparently believes leftist militancy is justified because the “third left” will effect transformational change only if it can convince Americans that its radicalism is a natural response to society’s injustices and that its goal is “a more equal country.” Beinart is not considered radical compared to many on the left, so his justification of this militancy is an ominous sign that should serve as a wake-up call to conservatives.
As long as patriots resolve to defend this nation’s guarantees of liberty, the left will have difficulty extorting the electorate to cater to their demands in exchange for social peace. Progressives are free to try to persuade Americans that socialism is a superior and fairer system, but not through threats of violence. Such tactics would meet resistance in any period of American history, but today, leftists will find it even harder to prevail because grassroots conservatives and the Republican Party have never been more united. Awakened to leftist extremism, hatefulness, and intolerance, and fully aware of what is at stake, we have begun to fight back under the leadership of Donald Trump. We must continue to do so. I believe that we will win this battle if we conservatives make the case relentlessly and convincingly to the American people, especially younger people, that America’s founding principles are no less worthy now than when conceived by the framers and that the system of government they gave us is still the best guarantee of liberty and prosperity.
Conservatives must refute Beinart’s flawed premise. The promise of this country has never been income equality. Its guarantee has always been, and must continue to be, opportunity for all. Forced equal outcomes are themselves unfair and destroy liberty and prosperity. We must never let the American people or their elected representatives be held hostage to radical mobs who threaten social unrest unless their socialist demands are met, and who offer social peace only in exchange for our abandonment of the American dream.
Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, economic conditions for all income groups improved under President Trump, and wages were at an all-time high, which would have made the left’s task of seducing voters into accepting socialism that much tougher. Regardless of what impact the virus-induced economic slowdown will have on voters, conservatives must continue to explain the dangers of socialism. Income inequalities have always existed, and not because of capitalism. Under a socialist system income may be more evenly distributed, but only because everyone has less except for the ruling class, which has existed in every socialist country throughout history.
There’s also something more basic we should consider. Conservatives and progressives have fundamentally different outlooks on economic growth and opportunity. The left generally believes economies are finite, which means that if the wealthy get wealthier there will be less for everyone else. Free market advocates know that economic growth expands the pie, and that one person’s gain is not necessarily another’s loss. Indeed, studies show that even when there are increases in income inequality, there is not generally a decline in upward mobility.59 That is, Bill Gates growing rich does not keep other Americans from improving their own standard of living. If anything, it opens doors of opportunity for them. “Standards of living have increased for everyone—as have incomes—and mobility, however one measures it, remains robust,” write Heritage Foundation scholars Rea Hederman and David Azerrad. “Simply put, how much the top 1 percent of the population earns has no bearing on whether the bottom 20 percent can move up.”60
We have direct evidence of this with the Trump economy. To the chagrin of class warfare demagogues, under Trump’s economy—again, prior to the coronavirus downturn—Census Bureau records show that while Americans’ standard of living is improving across the board, the share of income for the top 20 percent fell by the largest amount in a decade, and households between the 20th and 40th percentile had the largest increase in average household income in 2018.61
But the facts don’t matter to Democrats. They focus on income inequality because they have no ideas to help the poor, argues Akhil Rajasekar in the Federalist. And make no mistake, Biden has been pandering to middle-class voters on income inequality like the rest of his rivals—while simultaneously raking in money from his rich donors.62 Even if the income gap between rich and poor or between rich and middle class increases with free market policies, should you oppose those policies if everyone’s living conditions improve? If socialist policies decrease the income gap but all groups are worse off, what have you gained? “Here is the problem with thinking in terms of inequality,” writes Rajasekar. “By focusing on closing the gap, one is only concerned with the differential between the two classes, regardless of how each class is doing independently…. Diverting existing wealth by force of government will close any economic gap, no matter how large. But, as the post-revolutionary French will attest, pulling down those at the top is never a sustainable solution to inequality. Instead we must seek to raise our overall economic health so that bridging the wage gap becomes a natural side-effect of market conditions, not a forced outcome.”63
That’s true. The left’s economic policies kill economic growth, so they resort to class warfare. But they can’t have it both ways: if they foment jealousy and resentment among Americans and pursue policies to equalize outcomes, they will shrink the economic pie. Increasing taxes and transfer payments smothers economic growth, which explains why Democratic icons Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama urged us to lower our expectations and accept permanent economic malaise. Each time, their respective conservative successors—Reagan and Trump—proved them wrong. But as long as the left, when in power, implements radical policies based on class envy, they’ll never preside over a robust economy. To embrace growth policies, they’d need to abandon class warfare, and that’s not in their DNA.
Conservatives also generally believe it’s morally corrupting and biblically forbidden for people to dwell on other people’s possessions. Thus, the left’s obsession with class conflict is detrimental not only to our economy but to our moral and spiritual health. The American dream involves the freedom to work hard and prosper—it is not about coveting your neighbor’s property and having the government seize it for you.
I have highlighted Beinart’s piece because I think it’s revealing about the left and the Democratic Party—written by a progressive connected to their thinking and inner workings. It’s one thing for us conservatives to speculate about the motives and future intentions of the left and the Democratic Party. It’s another to let the words of their thought leaders illuminate their mind-set.
I believe it’s important we take seriously his view that leftist radicals are more mobilized than they’ve been since the 1960s and that they are exerting enormous influence over the Democratic Party. Now we face a double threat from activists mobilizing their fellow leftists outside the party structure and from those inside the party itself. Even when these radicals get blowback, they are undeterred and do whatever it takes to advance their agenda. For the left, the end justifies the means, and that’s even more true of leftists today, because the greater their ideological intensity, the less their respect for democratic norms, the Constitution, and the rule of law.
Beinart defends the activists against Republican claims that they act like a “mob,” such as during the Kavanaugh hearings. He suggests it is Trump who has encouraged his crowds to commit violence. It’s been a common ploy of Democrats and Never Trumpers to paint Trump and his supporters as violent, but Trump supporters are overwhelmingly law-abiding, Constitution-respecting patriots. In fact, a sting video by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas showed that fights at Trump rallies, which were breathlessly hyped by the media during the 2016 elections, were being deliberately provoked by left-wing provocateurs who were running a dirty tricks operation for the Hilary Clinton campaign.64 We are not the ones hounding people out of public places or denying youths a dissenting voice on college campuses. We are not the ones dressed in black beating our political opponents in the streets. That is the province of the left—today, just as it was in the 1960s.
We have watched endless bullying from our political opponents and their malcontent community organizers and activists. We have witnessed their unwillingness to live and let live. We have seen their vilification of all who don’t kowtow to their agenda and demands. They no longer fool us with their simulated anguish over President Trump’s threats to our system. They are the ones who threaten the system. They are the ones who interfere with elections. They are the ones who disrespect the Constitution and undermine the checks and balances that hold it in place. They are the ones whose political candidates are dedicated to overthrowing American values, traditions, and institutions.
And we are the ones who must stand in their way. That not only requires our ongoing vigilance but our studied awareness of precisely how they intend to achieve their goals. We must not only promote “informed patriotism”—fully understanding what is so wonderfully unique about America and why it is worth preserving. We must also fully inform ourselves of the ideas and policies that threaten it—meaning the particulars of the leftist agenda this current crop of Democratic leaders intends to advance. We must do a better job convincing our fellow Americans that Democrats mean business and must be defeated.
To be honest, it’s laughable to suggest that the Democratic Party isn’t radical and out of control. It’s undeniable if you look at their policy proposals—a true horror show in the making. So let’s do that now.