“We all know that AOC and this crowd are a bunch of communists,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said this week, referring to New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive Democratic members of Congress.

Voters can expect more of this rhetoric from Republicans. A lot more.

And opinion writers around the country who want Donald Trump run out of the White House are increasingly warning Democratic voters to take it seriously.

Because the fact is, Americans overwhelmingly reject socialism. Whether they are turning their noses up at actual policies or just the label doesn’t really matter. Most Americans still view themselves as “moderate,” or politically middle of the road. A 2018 poll found that 76 percent of respondents “said they would not vote for a ‘socialist’ political candidate.” A more recent poll reached the same conclusion: 71 percent of Americans do not have a favorable view of socialism.

Here’s a sampling of columnists, ranging from left-leaning to Never Trump conservative, who have recently cautioned the Democratic Party to avoid going too far left if it really wants to retake the White House next year:

Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist:

I’m struck at how many people have come up to me recently and said, “Trump’s going to get re-elected, isn’t he?” And in each case, when I drilled down to ask why, I bumped into the Democratic presidential debates in June. I think a lot of Americans were shocked by some of the things they heard there. I was. ...

Dear Democrats: This is not complicated! Just nominate a decent, sane person, one committed to reunifying the country and creating more good jobs, a person who can gain the support of the independents, moderate Republicans and suburban women who abandoned Donald Trump in the midterms and thus swung the House of Representatives to the Democrats and could do the same for the presidency. And that candidate can win!

But please, spare me the revolution! It can wait. Win the presidency, hold the House and narrow the spread in the Senate, and a lot of good things still can be accomplished. “No,” you say, “the left wants a revolution now!” O.K., I’ll give the left a revolution now: four more years of Donald Trump.

That will be a revolution.

Four years of Trump feeling validated in all the crazy stuff he’s done and said. Four years of Trump unburdened by the need to run for re-election and able to amplify his racism, make Ivanka secretary of state, appoint even more crackpots to his cabinet and likely get to name two right-wing Supreme Court justices under the age of 40.

Yes sir, that will be a revolution!

Read more.

Jon Healey, Los Angeles Times deputy editorial page editor:

Trump wants to run against something scarier than he is, which is why he has been trying so hard for months to paint Democrats as radical socialists — or worse. You think tariffs are bad? How would you like five-year plans?

That’s where Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez et al come in. Trump wants the most liberal and controversial House members to become the face of the Democratic Party so he, the most disruptive and norm-violating president of modern times, will seem like the political equivalent of comfort food, or at worst the devil you know. ...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) has worked hard to remind her caucus and the nation that Democrats are a broad, mainstream party, not just a wish-fulfillment fantasy of the left. As they try to move forward, working on such crucial issues as healthcare affordability and the surge in migrant families, they’ll need to find a way to put the heart of the party on display. Not just the four faces that Trump wants the public to see.

Read more.

Harry Olsen, Washington Post columnist:

I disagree with many Democratic policies, but almost all Democrats do not want to rip up the U.S. economy root and branch. Ocasio-Cortez and her chief of staff, however, do. That means Democrats face a decisive choice.

The ideological ancestors of today’s Democrats faced the same choice and passed the test. They stood firm in favor of evolution rather than revolution. They were willing to lose votes on the left and the right to maintain connection with the center. President Harry S. Truman, a Democrat, was written off as a goner when the progressives and the racist Southern Democrats both split from his party to run their own candidates. But Truman kept faith with the American center by letting both extremes walk, and he won one of the greatest political upsets in history.

Democrats should follow Truman and say goodbye to their party’s bomb throwers before it’s too late.

Read more.

George Will, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist:

The painfully revealing first phase of the Democratic presidential sweepstakes culminated with two remarkably efficient debates. This phase clarified the top four candidates' propensity for self-inflicted wounds. When replayed in Trump's negative ads, what they have already said might be sufficient to reelect him. ...

If, as [centrist Democratic presidential candidate Michael] Bennet believes, the Democratic nomination competition has become "more fluid," it is because Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden have imprudently spoken their minds. And they probably are not done shooting themselves in their already perforated feet.

Read more.

Max Boot, columnist, CNN analyst and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations:

Democrats deserve credit for engaging with big issues such as climate change and income inequality and coming up with bold, imaginative solutions.

The problem is that most of their ideas are impractical. Elizabeth Warren alone has proposed up to $36.5 trillion in new spending over the next 10 years; her tax plan won’t come close to covering the cost of nearly doubling federal spending. Bernie Sanders’s response: Hold my beer. He just proposed to wipe out $1.6 trillion in student debt, thereby providing a budget-busting subsidy that would benefit many well-off college graduates. ...

Trump wants to portray Democrats as open-border socialists, and in their eagerness to court progressive primary voters, the candidates are playing into his hands.

Trump doesn’t need his own agenda if he can terrify independent voters in swing states about what would happen if the Democratic agenda is implemented. I doubt that any Democratic president would actually be so extreme; it would be nearly impossible to pass far-left legislation in a closely divided Senate. But Democrats would be well advised to tone down their rhetoric. Don’t forget that 35 percent of voters — like me — describe themselves as moderates. Only 26 percent call themselves liberals.

Read more.

-- The Oregonian

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