Barney Frank Warns the Left is Destroying Democrats

Whatever I was expecting from former Rep. Barney Frank’s closing act, it wasn’t this.

Former Rep. Barney Frank, a liberal icon who was a key architect of the landmark Wall Street regulations Democrats enacted in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, has entered hospice care at his home in Maine. And as one of his last acts, he is preparing to release a book repudiating his party’s left flank.

A champion of liberal causes during his 32 years representing Massachusetts in the House, Frank says progressive Democrats have “embraced an agenda that goes beyond what’s politically acceptable.”

“Until we separate ourselves from that agenda, we don’t win,” he said in an interview Tuesday.

His latest book is set to be released later this year (“I face a literal deadline, so I don’t know how we’ll adjust to that,” he said of the timing). He’s hoping “to use my reputation and my record of being on the left to give courage to many of my colleagues who I know agree with me but are inhibited from saying so.”

“For a lot of my colleagues, the argument has been, ‘well, we don’t support defund the police or open borders, and we don’t say we do,’” Frank said. “But my point is, no, it’s not enough … to be silent. We have to explicitly repudiate it.”

“It’s one thing to advocate something knowing that you’re going beyond the current viewpoints, and another to make it a litmus test,” he said.

The trouble with the deadline is that it’s literally too late. The time when anyone would have listened to Frank was because when he was in Congress and had some influence. At this point he’s encouraging some of his former colleagues to resist leftist insanity like using abolishing prisons, police and borders as a political litmus test past the point where he’s able to do anything.

Rep. Frank, who has plenty of ills on his record, helped create this monster and only on his deathbed is he finally speaking out against it.

I hate to say this, but too little, too late.