WSJ: Dems May Have a Bigger Problem Than Platner

Platner isn't the Democrats' only problem in this cycle, however. In fact, thanks to the Democratic Socialists of America and gutless Quislings like Khanna, the party has stocked up on potential toxins in this midterm cycle. In New Jersey, Democrats handed an all-but-sure House seat to a man with ties to both al-Qaeda and the Blind Sheikh in Adam Hamawy. In Michigan, Democrats are close to nominating an anti-Israeli Islamist to the US Senate ballot in Abdul El-Sayed. The DSA is making Israel a litmus test in every corner of the country and pushing radicals against incumbents in every instance – even progressive incumbents, like Dan Goldman, Diane DeGette, and Adriano Espaillat.

Darializer Chevalier unseated Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and a key appropriator for House Democrats. Espaillat was already a progressive, and as the WSJ reported yesterday, Democrat leadership is growing concerned with who displaced him:

Avila Chevalier is at the forefront of a shocking blitz by Democratic socialists that has upended Democratic politics. She was one of three New York congressional candidates who won their Democratic primaries after receiving Mamdani’s endorsement. Her victory startled party leaders more than the others. She usurped a five-term incumbent and chairman of the Hispanic Congressional Caucus who had built a well-oiled political machine in a district covering upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx. 

Democratic strategists said her win signaled voters’ openness to supporting controversial candidates as long as they are viewed as bucking the system.

“This is no longer a left-versus-right moment,” said Patrick Gaspard, a former top aide to President Barack Obama and informal adviser to Mamdani. “It’s an outsider-versus-insider moment in our politics. Too many people are feeling as if systems are rigged against them and the people they have elected to these seats are way too comfortable and cozy.”

Centrist Democrats expressed frustration with Avila Chevalier’s victory, saying it offers Republicans a fresh opportunity to frame the party as far-left extremists, endangering its chances in hard-to-win purple and red areas. 

“Its like a bunch of gifts under the tree for Republicans,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of the moderate think tank Third Way. “She has done and said things that are so wildly outside the mainstream that it would be very easy for them to weaponize.”

Oddly, the WSJ doesn't appear too interested in explaining those statements and actions. Allow me to fill in the blanks, or rather, to relate how CNN's Andrew Kaczynski filled in those blanks last month. If you want to know what the DSA agenda truly is, just read who Chevalier's heroes are:

Avila Chevalier, a sociology PhD student whose victory sent shockwaves throughout the Democratic establishment, has been under fire for a since-deleted Twitter account, previously reported by CNN, that included phrases such as “seize the means of production,” along with calls to abolish police, prisons and borders. Other controversial tweets include one that said Black and Arab men are both “Fetishizing ugly colonizer women” and another that described wiping her dirty hands on the American flag in lieu of a napkin. ... 

The account’s bio read in 2020, “how communist of you.” Archived posts and retweets during this timeframe included a recommendation that Karl Marx’s Capital was an “essential must-read,” a complaint that public libraries did not carry enough Marxist literature by Lenin and other revolutionary writers, and a retweet from a Communist-identifying account lamenting that bookstore “banned books” displays did not include The Complete Works of J. V. Stalin.

One archived retweet from 2020 quoted Assata Shakur, the former Black Liberation Army member who, in 1977, was convicted in the murder of a New Jersey state trooper before later escaping prison and fleeing to Cuba. In the quote, Shakur said she “preferred Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il Sung, Che, or Fidel (Castro)” before studying Marx and Lenin because the two “white dudes” had made contributions to “revolutionary struggle” that were “too great to be ignored.”

Chevalier has endorsed the entire pantheon of Communist murderers, in other words, and not just in a distant misspent youth. These statements all come from the past seven years, and they did not get issued in a vacuum, either. 

Yesterday, Platner complained that people lied about him being a communist, when Platner literally posted about his becoming a communist based on his experiences in the military. Platner later claimed to only be trolling the Internet at that point, and at least he wasn't demanding that libraries stock up on Marxist revolutionary writing while praising mass murderers like Stalin and Mao and serial killers like Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Platner may have just been a troll, but Chevalier and the DSA are the real thing. 

That makes the attempts to shift the blame to Republicans a sign of desperation. Platner's flirtation with communism and embrace of socialism might have been easy to slough off, but Chevalier is a serious revolutionary and isn't even trying to hide it. She exposes the true nature of the radical revolutionaries in the DSA as well as the danger of allowing Democrats to achieve control with the DSA contingent as allies. 

Even The View has figured out how toxic Chevalier is to Democrat electoral hopes. Semafor casts this in the context of FCC pressure, but The View and ABC News would probably welcome a fight with Brendan Carr over content control. This is almost certainly an attempt to instill political hygiene in the Democrat Party:

Earlier this year, a representative for Mamdani pitched The View on hosting the mayor and democratic socialist candidates he supported for Congress, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, according to a person familiar with the conversations. The View said it was interested in having the mayor on, but indicated it couldn’t accommodate Avila Chevalier or Valdez, now Democratic congressional nominees, this person said. Among other reasons, the show’s staff noted that it was proceeding cautiously with political candidate bookings while the FCC’s equal time inquiry was progressing. ...

In the last several days, some of Mamdani’s allies have been frustrated with the show’s political coverage, particularly after recent remarks by right-leaning host Sara Haines on Avila Chevalier.

“I’m gonna full-blown call her an antisemite. She would proudly call herself that, trust me,” Haines said of Avila Chevalier.

Following the comments, one of Mamdani’s aides privately expressed fury to ABC executives, suggesting her words could impact whether the New York City mayor and other democratic socialist candidates for Congress would appear on the program in the future, according to one person familiar with the conversation.

When you're too radical for The View ... maybe that's a sign.