I, along with many others, have written a great deal about the Democrat Party’s love affair with socialism – an affair that has become more intense as the party has lurched further and further leftward.
Here is the latest example of how that affair is progressing, excerpted from Reid Wilson’s article for thehill.com:
SAN FRANCISCO — Democratic activists booed former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) on Saturday after he warned party faithful about the perils of embracing socialism and socialist positions ahead of next year’s presidential race.
Hickenlooper, a former governor of a purple state Hillary Clinton won by just 4.9 percent of the vote in 2016, said Republicans would use the Democratic flirtation with socialism to paint the entire party as outside the mainstream of the political spectrum.
“If we want to beat Donald Trump and achieve big progressive goals, socialism is not the answer,” Hickenlooper told delegates to the California Democratic Party convention.
Some delegates, meeting in perhaps the most liberal city in America, booed.
Booing a presidential candidate for speaking against socialism? Wow.
Yes, it is true that San Francisco is atypically leftward, even by Democrat standards. But it is also true that Bernie Sanders, who self-describes as a socialist and isn’t even a Democrat – he only registers Democrat to run for President – is second only to Joe Biden in polling among Democrat presidential hopefuls.
There is no getting away from the fact that the Democrat Party has become two separate entities – mainstream and socialist. And there is no getting away from the fact that its socialist wing currently has most of the momentum.
You can argue that Joe Biden’s lead in the polls says otherwise, but it’s a bad argument. Biden, apart from having near-universal recognition, leads precisely because socialism has overtaken the party. By coming across as at least something of a moderate, he is virtually the only choice for Democrats, so he co-opts almost the entire segment of voters who still are in that camp.
What happens when the almost two dozen left wing alternatives cull down and the rest of the vote is not split among them? Will he have a big lead then?
The bottom line is that the Democrat Party has a real problem here. Very much like the Republicans’ “tea party” problem of years ago, which is still being dealt with now, albeit on a less intense level.
If Democrats don’t figure out a way of squaring this ideological circle, and fast, they are in for a world of political hurt.
Frankly, I don’t see that happening in the near future.
