Steve Scalise

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and longtime Democratic consultant James Carville agree on very little except for their mutual love of Louisiana, but in July they were singing similar political tunes on one subject.

Namely, both Scalise, R-Jefferson, and Carville warned about the radicals and socialists who are making big inroads in the national Democratic Party.

They both are correct.

“We've been talking about it for months, this move to the Marxist socialist left by the Democrat Party,” Scalise said, in one of several sets of remarks, only slightly hyperbolic, on the topic. “They've become an unrecognizable party…. This is surely not your father or grandfather's Democrat Party. They've fully embraced socialism.”

For his part, Carville said hard-Left Democrats are a “part of the problem” within the party, calling himself a “proud liberal” but “not a leftist.” Carville added that “I don’t believe you ought to break (things) up.”

And: “These people are so f — ing stupid I don’t know what to say about it.”

Specifically, both Carville and Scalise were referencing a string of Democratic primary wins by democratic socialists, including Brad Lander’s victory over Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., Darializa Avila Chevalier’s defeat of five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., and Melat Kiros’ surprise triumph over incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo. — and also the strong run by radical Abdul El-Sayed in the Aug. 4 Michigan Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.

Again, these are not people merely as far left as “social democrats” of the European variety, but instead they self-identify now (or very recently) with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which is an American organization much further leftward than the supposedly anodyne social democrats.

They don’t just want a more “generous” government; they want to reject the U.S. Constitution and tear down a host of cultural institutions and mores that most Americans see as essential parts of a healthy society.

To Fox News’ Shannon Bream on July 26, DSA co-chair Megan Romer said the organization wants to abolish the U.S. Senate, replace the offices of the presidency and Supreme Court, completely abolish borders and offer blanket amnesty to illegal immigrants, abolish prisons (“as part of a long-term program”) and have the government own most large corporations.

The DSA website calls for the creation of transgender sanctuary cities. And of course they want to defund the police, adopt the financially and arithmetically impossible Green New Deal, provide Medicare for All, defund the Department of Defense (!) and eliminate “the entire global system of capital,” among many other radical (or even crazy) ideas.

The DSA and numerous left-wing Democrats also are outlandishly anti-Israel in ways not easily distinguishable from dangerous anti-Semitism. It’s not just that they oppose policies of the current Netanyahu government; they all but call for Israel to be wiped off the face of the earth through what the DSA calls Palestinians’ “right of return” to “a free Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital.”

Michigan candidate El-Sayed, for his part, campaigned in April with well-known terrorist-sympathizer Hasan Piker, who has justified Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 massacre of Israeli citizens and said it “doesn't matter if f***ing rapes happened on Oct. 7,” praised the supposed “mujaheddin” who attacked U.S. soldiers and said “America deserved 9/11,” among other vile statements.

El-Sayed protested that Piker’s statements were taken “out of context,” as if any context possibly could justify such expressions of hatred and solidarity with terrorists.

Other than El-Sayed, who is running neck and neck in Tuesday’s primary, the other radicals mentioned above are likely to win their fall campaigns in relatively safe Democratic districts. In Congress, they will join fellow radicals Ilhan Omar, Rashida Talib, Ayanna Pressley, Summer Lee and Delia Ramirez (Google them, please!), all of whom are outlandishly beyond the pale.

Worse, as these candidates and elected officials gain traction, the rest of the party moves further leftward, so that even El-Sayed’s opponent Haley Stevens, currently a U.S. representative, is treated as a moderate despite left-wing interest group ratings consistently in the high 90s (of 100) and conservative ratings in the low single digits.

To say the least, Stevens and plenty of other Democrats in Congress aren’t responsible “moderate-liberals” in the tradition of Louisiana’s former Sens. Mary Landrieu or Ohio’s former senator/astronaut John Glenn.

None of which is to say today’s Republicans don’t have their own major problems with extremism and bad ethics — many of which this column has criticized at great length, and will continue to do so.