OPINION:
Despite the fact that Republicans have won just one Senate race in Michigan since 1972 (Spencer Abraham in the wave year of 1994), there seems to be a lot of confidence about the party’s ability to dispense with Abdul El-Sayed.
The Republicans’ plan seems mostly to remind voters that Mr. El-Sayed is a communist and that, generally speaking, communism is bad.
While that message has the virtue of being true, it is probably not going to be enough to win a statewide race in a place (Michigan) that has swung pretty hard to the left over the past generation or so.
Nor is it likely to be enough in other Senate races this cycle that should not be close but are (Iowa, Texas, Alaska, Ohio). Nor will reminding people that communism is bad enough for Republicans to preserve their majority in the House of Representatives.
The simple and irreducible fact is that lots of voters, especially young ones, have concluded that the system as currently constructed does not really work for them and that a potential reshuffling of the deck is much less scary than the certainty of the status quo ante.
The bad news for establishment Democrats is that this particular vanguard of the proletariat is coming for them, and the vanguard doesn’t seem too worried about whose feelings it hurts.
This is pretty standard operating procedure for communists, who traditionally like to purge their own ranks of any real or perceived weaknesses or variations from orthodoxy before going on to address the failings of the larger society. Just ask the Mensheviks or Leon Trotsky.
The barbarians are already inside the gates. The second most prominent elected official in the United States is, of course, the mayor of New York City. His Honor Zohran Mamdani provides much of the direction and energy for the national socialists and is constantly probing the boundaries of what can safely be accomplished.
The pied-a-terre tax is, of course, a wealth tax under a different name. His Honor ran on freezing rents, free childcare and free mass transit.
He is testing the waters for the more aggressive preferences of the Democratic Socialists of America: abolishing prisons, the Senate and the Constitution; nationalizing industries; making college for all; opening our borders; imposing wealth taxes; giving voting rights to noncitizens; putting Secretary of State Marco Rubio behind bars; and, of course, ensuring that workers join a common struggle to construct socialism worldwide.
These young collectivists — who possess just about all of the energy on the political left in these United States — are going to make it impossible for the Democrats to move towards the center in 2028, even if they were inclined to do so (which they are not).
That leaves it up to the Republicans to save what is left of this great nation. Consequently, they are going to need some sort of positive and coherent response to the challenge posed by the young communists.
Reminding everyone that communism has been a murderous failure everywhere it has been imposed and that even Sweden has given up on socialism is educational and necessary — but will not be sufficient.
The correct approach is to pose a simple question to voters: Whom do you trust to make decisions about your life, the money you’ve earned and the things you want to do — you or the federal government?
No one in their right mind, not even avowed Marxists, would willingly give that authority to our broke and broken federal government. Framing the issue as a choice between personal freedom or control not by some imaginary competent government, but by the government we actually have, is the right way to think and talk.
The government is unable to balance its budgets, win wars, prevent the flow of drugs into the nation and make up its collective mind about something as simple as a vaccine schedule — and it seems to have a compulsive urge to make everything from healthcare to automobiles less accessible and more expensive.
That’s the government to which the young communists want to give more authority and control over our lives. That’s the federal government whose responsibilities they are fighting to expand. That government — venal, petty, sclerotic, indifferent to citizens, tangled in a maze of rules and laws and bureaucracy — is the foundation upon which they intend to build a workers’ paradise.
Such an approach is obviously ridiculous and indefensible. It is also the most reliably resonant argument for those who can’t access the much simpler truth that capitalism, for all its flaws, has created and delivered greater prosperity and freedom than any other political system mankind has yet devised.
Who should be in charge of your life: the federal government or you?
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.
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