Socialism talk will sink Democrats: How left-wing overreach could backfire big-time in 2020
By Richard Cohen
Feb 25, 2019 | 8:00 PM
I don’t quite know what a handbasket is, but the Democratic Party is heading in one to electoral hell with its talk of socialism and reparations. Given a Republican incumbent who has never exceeded 50% in Gallup’s approval ratings poll and who won the presidency thanks to a dysfunctional Electoral College, the party is nevertheless determined to give Donald Trump a fair shot at re-election by sabotaging itself. In fact, it’s veering so far to the left it could lose an election in 1950s Bulgaria.
Democratic socialist ideas appear to be making significant headway in the party. The Democratic part is fine, the socialism part is not. It suggests a massive government intrusion in the economy that has not worked elsewhere — post-war Great Britain or that contemporary mess called Venezuela — and that, in a cultural sense, is un-American. Time and time again, the American people have shown they want nothing to do with socialism. While socialist movements have at times been politically strong in Europe, such has not been the case in America. This, in fact, is one of the original meanings of the phrase “American exceptionalism.â€
If Americans are not about to embrace socialism, they certainly are not about to support reparations. This proposal, which seems to have come out of nowhere, has the support of Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Julian Castro and Marianne Williamson. This supposed redress for slavery — nothing can redress slavery — polls abysmally. Sixty-eight percent of Americans oppose making payments to descendants of slaves, and 72% oppose paying reparations to African-Americans in general. Among whites, 81% oppose payments to descendants of slaves.
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