In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior writers and experts, these in-depth pieces go beyond the headlines to give readers the full picture. You can find our full list of In Focus pieces here.The next mayor of the District of Columbia is likely to be a Marxist. In Los Angeles, the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks are battling it out for control. New York has already fallen to a champion of Third Worldism.And, for the first time in U.S. history, a significant bloc of Congress will openly hate the country it represents. We aren’t talking about anti-Americanism in an abstract or hyperbolic sense. The Zohran Mamdani slate that swept the Democratic Party primaries is explicit in its aim to dismantle the republic.
Members of Democratic Socialists of America want to abolish the police, prisons, and borders and “seize the means of production,” as the future congresswoman from New York’s 11th Congressional District, Darializa Avila Chevalier, once argued. The co-founder of a group that called for “nothing short of the total collapse” of the “American empire” with the goal to “eradicate America” and “Western civilization,” Avila Chevalier doesn’t deny she’s a communist. And why should she?There’s a temptation to dismiss and whitewash the rise of the socialists. We shouldn’t. Sure, the DSA is still constrained by the constitutional order, but they aren’t constrained by Democrats.“The roof is collapsing on the Democratic Party establishment tonight,” Van Jones warned on CNN as he watched the New York primary results come in. “This is a battle between the establishment and this insurgency.”What battle? The establishment has surrendered to the DSA’s hostile takeover on every front. Establishment Democrats such as Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) had the chance to sideline “Squad” members when they first appeared, yet the former speaker eventually coddled them, perched them on important committees, and appeared on magazine covers celebrating their ascendency.If Democrats were unwilling to sideline illiberal bigots such as Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MN) back then, what makes anyone think they’ll stand up to the socialists now?Major Democrats virtually tripped over themselves to endorse Nazi SS tattoo man Graham Platner in Maine, who is a Mamdanite in all ways save the flannel shirt.Democrats are about to send Adam Hamawy, a man who volunteered for an al Qaeda front and spent years being friends with “The Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman, to Congress. Other than a gaggle of outsiders such as Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), already on the outs with his party, there is barely a hint of pushback. Indeed, there is support.“One of the things that makes the Democratic Party great is it’s a big tent party,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) said of socialists who explicitly demand the overturn of Article I of the Constitution. “We need to stay that way.”Democratic voters, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said, “choose candidates, not party leaders. And party leaders need to listen to what voters are telling us, and right now they are demanding our party be bolder.”One supposes that if a person already supports abolishing the Electoral College and packing the Supreme Court, supporting the eradication of all checks and balances isn’t much of a jump.Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) helped a fellow socialist, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, win both the Democratic primary and the general election. (Heather Khalifa/AP)
