Buckle up, Americans. The seesaw of national politics continues its violent gyrations. It wasn’t so long ago, remember, when the striking electoral success of Barack Obama's left-leaning Democratic Party in 2008 and 2012 split the Republican Party, precipitating a years-long battle for supremacy among various GOP factions.
This ultimately led to the triumph of an insurgent minority begun by the Tea Party in 2010 and culminating by 2016 in the complete makeover of the party on the basis of the economic nationalism and cultural populism/patriotism championed by Donald Trump—MAGA and America First.
The final victory of the new Republican Party in 2024 rested principally on its assault on globalization and climate extremism which had devastated America's working class and led millions of its members to abandon the Democratic Party.
That year’s electoral overthrow of the Biden-Harris regime split the Democrats and precipitated an intense battle for supremacy among the various factions of the party, mirroring the turmoil that engulfed the Republicans post-2008.
Though the transformation of the party is far from complete, it is clear that the insurgent minority led by the socialist Bernie Sanders since 2016 is now poised to become the party's dominant force going forward.
Sanders exacted a high price for his support of Biden: effective control of the entire personnel and policy apparatus of the Democratic Party which empowered his progressive followers to unleash a host of radical initiatives after 2020.
These measures, enacted mainly through executive orders, included de facto open borders, the Green New Deal with its attendant war on fossil fuels, weaponization of the Justice Department against political opponents, identity politics, and trans rights.
With these came a disastrous foreign policy featuring a doomed proxy war against Russia, passivity towards Communist China, destabilization of the Middle East, and persistent undermining of democratic Israel.
The triumph of the progressives and their success in effecting a radical makeover of the entire Democratic Party was made evident in the recent November off-year elections and the simultaneously occurring government shutdown.
The poster child for the extremism of Democratic candidates was Jay Jones, who won election as Virginia attorney general despite publicly admitting to bragging about his fantasy of murdering former Republican House of Delegates Speaker Todd Gilbert, describing Gilbert and his wife as “evil” and guilty of “breeding little fascists” while hoping to witness these children “dying in their mother's arms.”
In a remarkably disturbing show of ideological solidarity, not a single Democratic candidate or officeholder would describe Jones's nationally reported remarks as “disqualifying” or call on him to withdraw from the race.
Today the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have a growing number of chapters in all 50 states, and although registered membership is only about 80,000–disproportionately in blue states– thousands of others while not formally accepting the socialist label actively espouse the policy positions of the DSA while working to strengthen its ascendancy within the Democratic Party.
Perhaps the best evidence for this growing ascendency is the rapid changing of the guard in the Democrats’ overly geriatric class of officeholders, as more and more are leaving or being pushed out of positions they have held too long.
Even those hoping to survive must pay a strictly enforced price of acquiescence in the new radicalism of the rising power within the party. Not even 85-year-old Nancy Pelosi was spared from a well-funded primary challenge which she escaped only by announcing her retirement after 20 terms in office. It now appears Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer could be the next to be defenestrated.
Today the youth, energy, passion, and conviction within the Democratic Party rests with the extreme Left. When AOC, Ilhan Omar, Jasmine Crockett, et.al. first appeared on the scene, the punditocracy saw them as exotic outliers; today they are recognized as compelling figures with great appeal at the grassroots level, particularly among the young, and also among the donor class.
And now with the convincing election of the unapologetically socialist Zohran Mamdani as Mayor of New York City, the fully radicalized Democratic Party has found the undeniably charismatic leader it has yearned for since the departure of Barack Obama.
In a striking bit of symbolism the newly elected Mayor of New York received a message of congratulations from the thrice-elected extreme-leftist Muslim Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, which flaunted the slogan, Our Time Has Come.
What the “Time” of Mamdani and his fellow radicals who now rule the Democratic Party will mean for America, it is too soon to say. What can be said with certainty, however, is that the dreadful political polarization that has so damaged our country's values and institutions is about to be markedly worsened.
William Moloney studied history and politics at Oxford and the University of London and received his doctorate from Harvard University. His articles have appeared in the Wall St. Journal, USA Today, The Hill. The Washington Post, Washington Times. Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, Denver Post and Human Events.