Tim Donner

A one-time progressive warrior blows the whistle on how the party shunned indispensable voters. The story, in brief

So this is it. Michigan Democrats vote tonight (Aug. 4) for their Senate nominee, and the result could well send shockwaves through the party and the entire political class. It's a showdown for an open seat between establishment candidate Rep. Haley Stevens and uber-progressive Abdul El-Sayed, who would stand to become the first Muslim in the US Senate. But it's not his faith so much as his fringe beliefs and close association with the infamous socialist influencer and virulently anti-Israel Hasan Piker that has Democrats fretting over what a triumph by El-Sayed would do to their party's already tarnished brand. Among Piker's most explosive remarks was that “America deserved 9/11.”

First, they won in New York. Then they took Maine, Colorado, and Michigan. And now, the next battleground for the energized socialist movement infiltrating the Democratic Party is Wisconsin. Francesca Hong, a chef, state assemblywoman, and member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), is running for governor, and the specter of a socialist in charge of a major swing state like Wisconsin should serve as a wake-up call for Republicans hoping to succeed outgoing Democrat Tony Evers. Hong has predictably made her bed with some of the left's most prominent progressive figures, campaigning alongside Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and socialist streamer Hasan Piker among others. She is hoping to ride the progressive wave generated by Abdul El-Sayed, who just triumphed in the Michigan Democratic primary, sending party leaders scrambling to pretend that openly anti-establishment, antisemitic socialists such as El-Sayed are welcome in their party.

Imagine what it would be like if someone you hardly knew suddenly acted like your best friend the day after you inherited millions of dollars. Well, that's kind of what it's like in Michigan, where newly minted far-left Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed is welcoming a parade of 2028 Democratic presidential hopefuls to the Wolverine State. They are all lining up to kiss his ring and sing his praises after refusing to endorse him in his primary battle against establishment favorite Rep. Haley Stevens. But now he's apparently the cat's meow.

Giggling about the horrors of the pandemic and the George Floyd era marks a moment in time.

A war that began with a flourish but has since descended into a drawn-out game of cat and mouse has now entered a new, and hopefully final, stage. With voters experiencing spikes in the cost of energy and food, heavily impacted by a conflict thousands of miles away, and midterm elections approaching, President Donald Trump is hoping that Operation Economic Outcast (OEO), announced by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Aug. 24, will tighten the US vise grip on the regime in Iran. The goal is to force it to the breaking point by severing its every financial link to the outside world.

It's a major happening. Dozens of Republican politicians and celebrities will be speaking to a packed house over multiple nights at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas. Party leaders from across the land and Vice President JD Vance will address the audience, as will President Donald Trump. If you thought we were describing the 2024 GOP National Convention, think again. Same idea, different timing. Indeed, for the first time ever for either major party, Republicans will host a midterm convention on September 9 and 10.

What we have now witnessed in the Lindsay Clancy trial is something of a mirror image of that narrative, a single juror taking it to the limit in refusing to join his fellows.

Call it what you want: communism, socialism, democratic socialism, progressivism. Distinguishing among the various strains of far-left extremism is merely a matter of posturing and splitting hairs. These descriptors all fit neatly under the common umbrella of collectivism, meaning the superiority of the state over the individual. What matters is not how these extremists label themselves, but rather the genuinely radical agenda about which they all essentially agree. Put simply, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and those who embrace their ideas seek to deconstruct our constitutional republic brick by brick.

The attack on 9/11 caught America off guard. The prevailing weather conditions up and down an unsuspecting East Coast that day were symbolic of the nation at the time. It was crystal clear and calm, the skies blushing a wondrous shade of blue. We were fresh off two decades marked by peace and prosperity, the final victory in a decades-long cold war, and the demise of an evil empire. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama had famously written that, with the West's victory in the Cold War, we had reached “The End of History.” Fascism and communism had been vanquished once and for all, and Western liberal democracy had been affirmed as the final and most successful form of government. We had reached the conclusion of “mankind's ideological evolution.” Most of us saw nothing but good times ahead.