Victor Davis Hanson: The Democrat Party Is Being Taken Over by a New Socialist Movement

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Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. We are witnessing in this year of 2026, for the first time, really in over a century, a resurgence of socialism. And it's a strange kind of socialism. It's the democratic-dass socialism of America. And what it is, the Democratic Party has been taken over by young zealots who do not believe in free market capitalism. They do not believe in the unique story of the United States. They do not believe in this 250th-year anniversary in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the exceptional virtue and brilliance of the American nation. It's mostly a critical message they have, past and present. So who are these people and why are they coming into prominence? In Maine, we have Mr. Platner. He's a former veteran.
He's running on, I don't know what his ticket is. All he seems to do is talk about millionaires and billionaires and the privilege and everybody's being exploited. But notice he does not say, I want to do the following. I want this particular program and this is how I'm going to fund it. You don't get any details. It's mostly a critique of free market capitalism and the American tradition and the American status quo. In Michigan, we have Mr. El-Sayed. He was a health official for the city of Detroit, very young epidemiologist with a PhD. He is even more critical. He adds an Islamist tinge to socialism. He was the one that said basically, don't criticize the death of the supreme leader in Iran because my constituents might take offense, meaning most of his Michigan constituent based is Muslim. In that sense, at odds with the majority of Americans who much welcome the news that this theocratic fascist in Iran was dead. Then we have Mr. Bernie Sanders. He's been around for years. He's in his mid-80s now, a perennial candidate for president. He feels very happy that at the end of his life, somebody finally is listening to his socialist message. We have Mr. Mamdani. He is the mayor of New York. He, I don't know what he was doing before he ran from, he had one term in the legislature. He was a rap singer. He's an immigrant from Uganda, the Indian American community, one percent of the population in Uganda. They're sort of, to use Mamdani's own phrase, settler, colonialist in a foreign country. Then his parents, very highly educated, very successful, very wealthy. One is an endowed professor. The other is a very celebrated and heavily subsidized filmmaker. And now he's the mayor of New York and trying to implement a socialist agenda. What do they all have in common? Well, ideologically, they feel that they can take over the Democratic Party and, by extension, America. And then they can raise taxes to an enormous level, raise entitlements, and do what Obama had once promised. Remember, he said he wanted to spread the wealth. And the idea is that we would have an equality of result, not a quality of opportunity. And we would have millionaires and billionaires' taxes that are now on the ballots in certain states. We would see millionaires flee, as they are, from California to red states. It's a pretty radical message. We haven't seen anything like this since the perennial socialist, Eugene Debs, from, I guess it was 1900 to 1920 He ran for president five times. The final time, 1920, he was in prison. He got over a million votes.