Nearly Half Of Democrats Say They Have ‘Favorable’ View Of Socialism: I&I/TIPP Poll.)
But Democrats rushing to embrace the current socialist fad should beware, because the last one was (thankfully) short-lived here in the U.S. In 1919, only five socialists won mayoral elections. Even in the middle of the Great Depression, there were only three socialist mayors in the country.
A “historical note” by the New York University Libraries says the party had trouble containing its “revolutionary wing” right off the bat. And the 1917 Russian Revolution, it says, “encouraged the left wing of the party to demand a more militant program and, when this was not forthcoming, to secede from the party in 1919 and establish the Communist Party.”
You can already see these strains among the current crop of socialists, who have spent years fomenting visceral hatred of, and violence against, their political opponents, and who, once in office, start turning off the voters who put them there. Which is why they tend not to last more than one term. (Only one of the current crop has been in office more than three years.)
Earlier this month, the Democratic Socialists of America adopted a platform that calls for things like: scrapping the U.S. Senate and the Department of War, granting amnesty for all illegal immigrants, and “replac[ing] the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.”
As the City Journal notes, “As more and more DSA members take power, the group they belong to keeps getting more radical—a tension they will inevitably have to resolve.” A separate City Journal article points out the party’s “emerging militant network.”
Republicans ignore these developments at their own peril, since they can’t fight something – even if that something is as toxic as socialism – with nothing. And dismissing it as “junk food of modern American politics,” as GOP strategist Luke Ball told Fox News recently, isn’t going to cut it.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
I & I Editorial Board
The Issues and Insights Editorial Board has decades of experience in journalism, commentary and public policy.
