I don’t really know how far to the left Nancy Pelosi is, perhaps further than she lets on. But my guess is that she’s not very happy about the radical wing of the Democratic Party, the one whose members stayed seated when President Trump said in his SOTU address that the U.S. will never become a socialist country.

They have a name, too: Justice Democrats. It’s the latest euphemism for the radical left. The American public may have finally caught on to the previous euphemism, “progressive.”

Justice Democrats aren’t fooling around, and they’re not bothered by many of the considerations that dog their more moderate colleagues. Justice Democrats must feel that the time is right to lay at least a few of their cards on the table and to oppose those party members they call “radical conservatives.”

We know the name of the photogenic Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but some of the others are quite obscure so far—and by “others,” I include those behind her rise. From Politico:

“I am talking about the radical conservatives in the Democratic Party,” said Saikat Chakrabarti [AOC’s chief of staff]. “That’s who we need to counter. It’s the same across any number of issues—pay-as-you-go, free college, “Medicare for all.” These are all enormously popular in the party, but they don’t pass because of the radical conservatives who are holding the party hostage.” Not long ago, this would have been an outlier position even among American liberals. Today, it’s the organizing principle of a newly empowered segment of the Democratic Party, one with a foothold in the new Congress… Although it’s Ocasio-Cortez who gets all the headlines, she arguably wouldn’t be in Congress in the first place without the group Chakrabarti founded: Justice Democrats, a new, central player in the ongoing war for the soul of the Democratic Party. It was the Justice Democrats who recruited her in a quixotic campaign early on, providing a neophyte candidate with enough infrastructure to take down a party leader. And it is the Justice Democrats who see Ocasio-Cortez as just the opening act in an astonishingly ambitious plan to do nothing less than re-imagine liberal politics in America—and do it by whatever means necessary. If that requires knocking out well-known elected officials and replacing them with more radical newcomers, so be it. And if it ends up ripping apart the Democratic Party in the process—well, that might be the idea. “There is going to be a war within the party. We are going to lean into it,” said Waleed Shahid, the group’s spokesman.

Here’s an article by Shahid that maps out the plan. This group means business. I suggest you read it.

Will they overplay their hand? I hope so, but I am not the least bit sure that will be the case. The ground has been prepared for them in so many ways, particularly the Gramscian march through education.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is quite popular in the Democratic Party, especially among the young. See this poll, which indicates that 74% of Democrats and Democrat-leaners would at least consider voting for her for president, if she were eligible to run—although at 29 years of age, she can’t run yet.

[Neo is a writer with degrees in law and family therapy, who blogs at the new neo.]



