Is there anything more dangerous to America than political extremism? The answer is yes — and that would be extremism disguised as moderation.
Every commonsense Democrat knows that socialism and antisemitism have no place in the party — not if they want it to win, let alone serve the public interest. Why, then, are some moderates focused less on rejecting these ideas than on finding ways to camouflage them?
This is exemplified by a public letter to Zohran Mamdani from the moderate Democratic group Third Way last week, imploring him to “end [his] affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America” in order to help the party “win in places much more purple and red than New York City.”
The letter rightly lays out the radicalism of the DSA platform: abolishing prisons, disarming police, abolishing the U.S. Senate and nationalizing businesses, to name a few. But it implies that the danger is one of perception, not substance. As if the problem with these ideas is that voters might notice them.
Make no mistake, Mamdani has fully embraced the DSA’s ideas throughout his career. No reasonable person would trust his half-hearted attempts to distance himself from the worst of them now. The only responsible action for Democrats is to state with moral clarity that Mamdani and his ideas have no place in the Democratic Party.
Yet that is not happening. The response to his primary victory from party leaders has been, by and large, a chorus of silence. While many undoubtedly hope he loses in November, they aren’t willing to say it, lest they upset the leftward fringe of their base. That is not leadership; it is an abdication of leadership.
This new posture takes the abdication further. Democrats are making the cynical calculation that if the wolf cannot be forced out, they’ll dress it in sheep’s clothing. But rebranding radicals is worse than doing nothing. It not only forfeits the chance to stop them; it helps them in their effort to hijack the party by offering them a free PR makeover.
This betrays one of the most immutable lessons of history — do not appease those seeking to conquer you. Without the courage of your convictions, you have nothing. You allow yourself to be redefined and replaced by the strongest insurgent. And right now, that’s the Democratic socialists.
The party and the country desperately need moderates with backbone, and they are out there. Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) has called for Mamdani’s expulsion from the party. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) has also stood boldly against his extremism.
Not long ago, voices like theirs defined the Democratic Party. In the Clinton years, moderates stiff-armed the far left and proved that government could be strong without being overbearing — that markets could be free but fair and that the American Dream could be expanded without resorting to socialist handouts.
That was the promise of moderation: a genuine third way between two poles, not a halfway house between the left and the far left.
The stakes of returning to this are much greater than whether Democrats can win in purple districts. The stakes are America itself. What is the future of a country that oscillates furiously between two fringe visions for its future? Neither the far left nor the far right represent the majority of Americans. Where is the courage to speak for that majority?
The problem with socialism is not one of perception but, of reality. The Democratic Party at its best stood for truth and fought boldly to expand America’s promise. That is the tradition worth reclaiming.
Democrats today must decide whether they will be the party that confronted socialism with courage, or the one that flinched when it mattered most.
Nancy Jacobson is a co-founder and CEO of No Labels. Holly Page is a co-founder of No Labels and former senior director of the Democratic Leadership Council.
