Dace Potas
In recent years, populist anti-establishment movements have been growing across both of America’s political parties.
Republicans are well ahead of the curve on this matter, now fully consumed by MAGA, but Democrats are now in danger of being consumed by the allure of socialism. Republicans, too, are facing new decisions about what behavior ought to be allowed within their party, particularly with regard to members of the far right.
Republicans are further along in their flirtations with populism, but both political parties are trying to relegate extreme ideologies within their tent to the corner, hoping that eventually they will simply go away. Worse, to an extent, parties are interested in harnessing the strength of these movements to help their more mainstream causes. Doing so would be a mistake.
Both Democrats and Republicans allow extremism to fester
Both of America’s major political parties have already fallen victim to populist, or anti-establishment, whims, but new movements risk worsening the problem to an extent not yet seen.
Democrats are at a major inflection point. I warned about the socialist plot to take over the Democratic Party following Zohran Mamdani’s win in the New York City mayoral election. Given the success of the far left in such a high-profile race and the lack of victories from establishment Democrats in Washington, DC, Democrats seem likely to embrace socialist politics as within the tent of their party for this upcoming election cycle.
Democrats have already tried for years to live with the anti-Israel faction of the left within their constituency, and that course of action has done nothing but give them headaches. Now, a self-described democratic socialist will be mayor of America’s greatest city, giving misguided credence to their argument that they should be driving the Democratic message.
The timelines align perfectly for socialists, as they can ride the momentum of Mamdani’s win, but the upcoming elections will happen too soon to suffer the consequences of his eventual policy failures.
At the same time, Republicans are dealing with their own cancer in the form of the alt-right lunatics corrupting the GOP. People like Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens are not so subtly trying to expand their influence within the American right, and they are succeeding.
This new wave is a part of the consequence of failing to stop the populist right’s takeover of the Republican Party during the rise of Donald Trump, but nonetheless stands as a tipping point between the potential for some reform within that movement and further descent into wickedness.
Such a divide isn’t merely a squabble among the online right; it is infecting prominent right-wing institutions. The Heritage Foundation, a prominent right-wing think tank, recently came under fire for standing by Carlson after he hosted White supremacist Fuentes on a podcast.
This isn’t the first time Republicans have been confronted with this fight for their political soul. When Trump’s brand of populism originally infected the Republican Party in 2016, the GOP establishment was not proactive enough in rooting it out. Republican leaders then decided it was better to try to live with MAGA, using it to achieve electoral success while still maintaining their conservative principles. Since then, Trump has entirely taken over his host and reappropriated America’s “conservative” party for his own purposes.
America’s political parties are too weak to fix themselves
In the modern era, voters have much greater say in who their party’s candidate is than they did in the past. Some people view this as democracy in action, but strong parties serve as a moderating force, insulating their nominations from the frustrated spontaneous wills of their voters. Put simply, strong parties can choose candidates they view as more electable in a general election over the more volatile will of voters.
The result of weakened parties is that populist movements, such as Trumpism or Sen. Bernie Sanders’ brand of socialism, have gained increasingly larger shares of their respective party’s influence, in many ways against the will of the party establishment.
On the right, institutions like the Republican Party, The Heritage Foundation and others have a responsibility to purge themselves of individuals who help advance White supremacist or otherwise evil ideologies. But their work doesn’t stop there. They have institutional responsibilities to condemn and separate from actors who aid or abet those ideologues.
The same thing applies to the left. The Democratic Party should have made clear long ago that the antisemites and socialists within their party are not welcome. Some left-wing institutions have realized the need for internal policing of these movements, but not until after they received major outside consequences. They are yet to realize the need for internal policing for their own sake.
The left as a whole has irresponsibly allowed these corrupting forces to exist within its Big Tent. As much as Democrats wish to push these groups into a corner, they remain in their electoral strategy.
As it stands, the strength of these awful movements is likely only to further consume our political parties, pushing America further into this populist nightmare.
Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.
