‘The Federalist’ editor in chief Mollie Hemingway, Friday with FNC’s John Roberts, comments on the Democratic Party embracing what has been called “Democratic Socialism.”
JOHN ROBERTS: These candidates on the far left, they’re not just in it to get elected. They’re in it to boot out the establishment.
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: What Mamdani is talking about there is a very real thing that the Democratic Party went through, really when they decided in 2008 to support Barack Obama.
Prior to that, Bill Clinton had been the leader of the party. Yes, he was on the left but center-left. He was able to reposition if he felt he had gone too far or if the public reacted.
With the election of Barack Obama — and there’s no confusion about it, Barack Obama runs the Democratic Party now — you’re seeing more and more of this type of extremism.
With President Obama and earlier followers, they would hide their radicalism. Now it’s out there in the open, and in really blue districts, you’re seeing they’re letting the freak flag fly about what they’re going to do.
JOHN ROBERTS: And places like Washington, D.C., where Janeese Lewis George won the primary. I don’t think there’s ever been a Republican mayor in Washington, D.C.
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: The second-largest party is not the Republican Party. It’s almost exclusively Democratic and has the governance to prove it.
JOHN ROBERTS: She’s a shoo-in for mayor. Here’s what the Washington Examiner wrote about that: “Her policy proposals are cartoonishly bad. At a time when Washington’s economy is shrinking, its budget deficits are growing, downtown office vacancies are growing, Lewis-George wants a new business activity tax.”
Establishment Democrats say candidates like Janeese Lewis George, Graham Platner — they’re not Democrats. They’re socialists or communists.
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: That’s what the Democratic Party has become. It causes them problems with national elections. They’re almost toxic to a working-class voter.
But when you have these cities that are already hurt by some socialism, it creates, like, a socialism death spiral, where you get a lot of businesses to leave the city, or you get more moderate voters to leave the city, and the people that remain just call for more and more extremism.
The businesses in D.C. are having such trouble already. Any solution that has been handled with crime, that’s been a federal solution, not a city solution.
JOHN ROBERTS: Here’s what Janeese Lewis George said about what voters want. Listen here.
JANEESE LEWIS GEORGE: No matter what city you live in in this country, Democrat or Republican, everyone has an interest in their family having affordable child care and having affordable health care. These aren’t just sort of values attributed to one party or one ideology. These are values attributed to the American people.
JOHN ROBERTS: I think both of those things are things that people could agree on. But what about the rest of it?
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: So it’s absolutely true that the political parties need to care about these issues of affordability. Whichever party has a reasonable solution to being able to buy a home and run a business and have a family, that party will succeed.
The situation is, though, that she wants to increase regulations so much that it really does cause businesses to shut down. It makes it more difficult for people to be able to afford child care or stay home with their children.
This is a big situation. I just want to say one thing: You don’t have to make D.C. a state. It’s such a small city. You could retrocede it to Maryland.
JOHN ROBERTS: Maryland has their own problems as well: 495 and the bridge, which is jammed every day.
This is a brush fire to a red tide rising. Bernie Sanders wants to turn it into a tidal wave. Listen here.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: In the last eight months, progressive and democratic socialist candidates all over this country have been winning major victories… It was all of you and the people of New York City, 100,000 people came together to tell the establishment enough is enough. That is the message reverberating all across this country in small towns and large cities.
JOHN ROBERTS: He wants to turn America into a socialist nation.
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: This is relevant to what I just talked about. When Barack Obama chose Joe Biden to be the next person to run–
JOHN ROBERTS: Until he un-chose him.
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: Yeah, he presented himself as if he were moderate, even if he ended up being quite left-wing on the open borders and other major issues where the left totally dominated his presidency. But you can see here people are being more open about what they want to do if they take power.
I think Americans should take that seriously, whether it’s packing the court, dramatically increasing regulations, or reopening all the borders, which is something that you saw in a lot of these candidates. They claim they oppose any deportation and they want the borders open. These are real threats they’re making.
JOHN ROBERTS: To their credit, they’re being transparent about it, unlike the governors of New Jersey and Virginia, right?
