10 Questions Every Democrat Must Now Be Made Answer

issuesinsights.com

With the rapid takeover of their party by the Democratic Socialists of America underway, it’s time for every Democrat to answer for what the DSA believes in.

As the City Journal’s Stu Smith reported, the DSA has adopted a new platform that is, incredibly enough, even more radical than its previous one. Although it still hasn’t been published on its website, an advance version, which Smith obtained, is straight-up Marxism, declaring “the entire global system of capital” as its enemy and promising to “build a new society from the ground up.”

We doubt that many Democrats – much less the general public – have a clue what the DSA actually stands for. As Smith notes, “The DSA has largely avoided scrutiny, despite its increasingly extreme rhetoric and practices.”

But ignorance is no excuse. Because, as our I&I/TIPP Poll found, nearly half of Democrats have a favorable view of socialism. Because DSA members are the rising stars in the party, its driving force. Because leaders in the party are bending over backward to appease their socialist comrades. (House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries congratulated the latest socialist primary winners, and when pressed on CNBC “to reject those things,” blurted out, “Donald Trump is the president of the United States of America. Are you kidding me?”)

So, as a public service, we’ve come up with 10 questions that every Democrat must be asked – by the press, by the public, in every interview, at every event – and be made to answer. Everyone deserves to know where they stand on these issues.

Let’s start with the easy ones.

1. Do you support paid family leave for all families, free pre-k through college education, and canceling all student debt?

These are pretty standard ideas pushed by Democrats these days. Never mind that the 10-year price tag of the DSA’s “Freedom to Flourish” plan would be more than $3 trillion, to say nothing of the open invitation these “freebies” would create for fraud. (You can almost hear Minnesotans licking their chops.)

2. Do you support universal healthcare?

That’s another one on the DSA’s agenda that’s shared by most Democrats these days. Price tag: more than $3 trillion a year.

3. Do you support reparations for slavery?

If so, consider the price tag of up to $14 trillion, and the fact that it would only exacerbate, not ameliorate, racial tensions.

Now we get to some tougher questions.

4. Do you support defunding the police and closing prisons?

The DSA’s platform calls for both, except it uses jargony terms such as “demilitarizing” the police, “disempowering” police unions, and “abolishing the carceral forces of the capitalist state.” Democrats have been on both sides of this issue, depending on which way the wind was blowing.

5. Do you support a federal jobs guarantee?

Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders proposed this one years ago. That isn’t entirely surprising for a guy who honeymooned in the Soviet Union, which “guaranteed the right to employment and payment for their work in accordance with its quantity and quality” in its constitution. (But yes, please keep explaining to us how there’s a big difference between Democratic Socialists and Communists.) Back in 2018, the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities figures the annual price tag for such a guarantee would be $543 billion.

6. Do you support wide-open borders?

The DSA wants to abolish ICE, “legalize migration,” grant amnesty to all illegal aliens, and end visa caps and quotas. What say you, Democrats?

Now for the really hard questions.

And remember, there’s no skipping questions, and no credit for non-answers.

7. Do you support nationalizing “the largest corporations and essential industries?”

Who’s up for a government takeover of Apple, Chevron, Walmart, Walt Disney, and NVIDIA? The DSA says this will ensure “democratic control and accountability to the people.” Sure, because it worked so well in Cuba, Russia, Venezuela, etc. Do you agree, Democrats?

8. Do you support defunding the Department of War and closing all overseas military bases? Should all aid to Israel, military and economic, be cut off?

Yes, that is in the DSA’s platform.

9. Do you support abolishing the Electoral College, the president, the Supreme Court, and the Senate?

That, too, is in the DSA’s platform, which says that “for the working class to govern, we need a new political system,” by which they mean getting rid of two of the three branches of government, along with the Senate, so that everything is “subordinate to Congress.” Some might call that downright un-American. What say you, Dems?

10. Final question: Do you agree with Sen. John Fetterman that Democrats are “drifting firmly into communism”?

We’d say that the party is rushing into communism, not drifting. In any case, if you’re a Democrat, and your answer to this question is “no,” then why are your fellow Democrats so afraid to condemn the DSA?

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board