Since the Democratic Socialist movement has taken center stage on the political Left, the traditional power structure of the Democrat Party has gone quiet. What was once a fringe faction dictating talking points on college campuses is now driving the Democrat Party’s policy agenda, the messaging, and the energy. From calls to defund, or the dismantling of entire sectors of the government, the Socialist wing is not whispering anymore. It is leading, and it is doing so without pushback from the people who are supposed to be in charge. So, where is the Democrat leadership?
Where is Hakeem Jeffries? As the House Minority Leader, he’s supposed to be the face of the party in the House, the counter to the Republican Speaker. Yet as his most vocal members openly embrace Democratic Socialism as the party’s future, Jeffries is nowhere to be found. There are no clarifying speeches, no drawing of lines, no defense of the mainstream Democrat brand that built his majority in the first place. His silence is not strategy, it is surrender.
Where is Chuck Schumer? The Senate Minority Leader should understand better than anyone what this shift means. He has watched his own state of New York become the laboratory for this movement, with Democratic Socialists winning elections and primaries and setting the terms of Democrat political policy. Instead of asserting leadership, Schumer has chosen invisibility. He won’t confront the movement, he won’t co-opt it, he won’t even acknowledge that his own caucus is being redefined in real time while he simply stands by and watches it all happen.
That is the real story on the Left right now. It sure appears like the normal key Democrat leadership has abdicated. They are not leading a “big tent”, as they continue to profess, but are hiding inside it while the Democratic Socialist wing redecorates it entirely. If Jeffries and Schumer won’t speak for the traditional Democrat Party, someone else will and that won’t be good for the country.
“In practice, socialism doesn’t work. But socialism could never have worked because it is based on false premises about human psychology and society, and gross ignorance of human economy.” – Friedrich Hayek
Being About The Journey 