Open Letter to Moderate Democrats
– Take Back Your Party from the Left
May 2026
We are writing to express our dismay at how the Democrat Party has become a party of the Left and to encourage you to organize with other moderate Democrats to take your Party back from the lunatic Left fringe.
Party of the Left
The Democrats used to be a center-left party standing for such policies as increased social spending. Now, it is controlled by radicals who believe there are 57 genders, want to defund the police despite the predictable consequences, and work to put pornography in the hands of school kids. Moderate Democrats believe no such things.
Embrace of Socialism
We got a taste of what was to come when Obama White House official Anita Dunn said Mao Zedong is one of her favorite philosophers.
But the wake-up call came with the election of the Squad in Congress in 2018. Two members – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) – belong to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) (see here and here). A third – Ilhan Omar (D-MN) – calls herself a “democratic socialist”.
The socialist wing of the Democrat Party has continued to make inroads with the 2026 mayoral elections in New York City and Seattle. Zohran Mamdani belongs to DSA and was endorsed by that organization. He is on record advocating the “abolition of private property” and “seizing the means of production”, ideas straight out of the Communist Manifesto. His policies such as free childcare and government-run grocery stores come from communist dictators Lenin and Castro. This avowed communist is now the face of the Democrat Party. Seattle’s new Mayor and self-described “democratic socialist” Katie Wilson advocates the same policies.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has called Mamdani’s communist agenda the true message of the Democrat Party. She’s not wrong. Most rank-and-file Democrats are right there with her. According to a recent Gallup poll, Democrats have become more favorable to socialism in recent years, with 50 percent favorability in 2010, increasing to 66 percent in 2025 (compared to just 14 percent of Republicans).
Dalliance with the CCP
Zohran Mamdani’s election bid received significant support from John Liu, a scandal-plagued state Senator with close ties to the Chinese Consulate in New York. In 2008, it was reported that Liu aided CCP agents in violent attacks on Falun Gong practitioners in the state.
In another story out of New York, Chinese-American Linda Sun – who served in the Democrat Cuomo and Hochul administrations – is pending retrial on federal charges for acting as an undisclosed foreign agent for Communist China.
In 2018, a long-time staff member in former Senator Diane Feinstein’s San Francisco office, who served as her personal driver, a community liaison, and gofer, was a suspected Chinese intelligence operative.
And who could forget Fang Fang, the suspected Chinese intelligence operative who cultivated relationships with now-disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and other California politicians.
Other Democrat politicians with ties to the CCP include:
Thus, it is apparent that numerous high-profile Democrat politicians have ties to the communist Chinese regime which puts political dissidents in prison camps, harvests human organs for profit (killing the ‘donors’ in the process), and subjects its minorities to forced labor and brutal repression.
Normalization of Political Violence
Another manifestation of the Democrat Party’s lurch to the Left is the normalization of political violence. The level of acceptance of political violence prevalent among today’s Democrats would have been unthinkable just a few short years ago.
President Trump survived two assassination attempts, but there are plenty of Democrats who wish he hadn’t. They wish him dead and some would be willing to pull the trigger themselves:
Then we have the ugly spectacle of Democrats cheering Charlie Kirk’s actual assassination:
A huge uproar erupted when it came to light that the newly elected Attorney General of Virginia, Jay Jones, sent heinous messages about then-Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert. Jones wrote, in August 2022, that if he had “[t]hree people. . .[and] two bullets,” with “Gilbert, [H]itler, and [P]ol [P]ot,” in a room, Gilbert would receive “both bullets every time.” Additionally, Jones wrote that Gilbert’s children should die in their mother’s arms. Virginia Democrat lawmakers rejected resolutions that would have condemned political violence in the state and, also, “politicians who wish death on children and families of elected officials." Equally disturbing, Virginia Democrats completely disregarded Jones’ violent messages and voted for him in overwhelming numbers, putting him in office.
As if further examples were needed:
Finally, fifty percent more Democrats than Republicans are OK with political violence, according to a 2025 Gallup poll.
Alignment with the Radical Left
Democrats are increasingly showing an affinity for Antifa and Black Lives Matter, despite the rioting those groups have caused. George Conway, now a congressional candidate running as a Democrat, was seen at a “No Kings” rally wearing a shirt emblazoned “I am Antifa”.
The self-professed Marxist and scandal-ridden group Black Lives Matter has a high net favorability rating among Democrats (+60). Favorability for the anarcho-communist group Antifa is rising among Democrats.
Antifa is increasingly viewed as the armed wing of the Democrat Party. Normal politics is no longer enough for the Democrats, apparently. Time to call out the goons.
Adoption of Extreme Positions
Democrats have in recent years espoused extreme views on a number of issues, views out of the mainstream and not supported by most Americans.
Takeover by Far-Left Politicians
It has been plausibly argued that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer kept the untenable government shutdown going in late 2025 because he was pandering to the far-Left wing of the party and was afraid of a primary challenge from the more Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
On the city level, radical big city Democrat mayors were in place before the November 2025 election added Zohran Mamdani and Katie Wilson to the fold. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was an organizer for the Venceremos Brigade which “trains revolutionary-prone Americans in terrorist tactics and guerrilla warfare….” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and other Democrat big city mayors have pledged no cooperation with ICE deportations. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu instituted free bus routes and showed her typical Leftist hostility to the automobile. Former Portland OR Mayor Ted Wheeler never met a rioter he didn’t like. He hamstrung local police and allowed violence, vandalism, arson, and destruction to continue unchecked. Seattle’s Democrat former Mayor Durkan made the decision to abandon the East Precinct and allow the anarchist CHOP/CHAZ zone to exist.
The Left wing of the Democrat Party has been organizing to produce a steady stream of radical politicians running as Democrats in the future. Several Left-wing groups are actively recruiting, endorsing, and supporting Progressive challengers in Democrat primaries against incumbent U.S. House Democrats or other races. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is influential among these groups. Such groups include:
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is also using primaries to push the Democrat Party to the Left. It is running candidates against Democrats in safe Democrat districts. These candidates are typically not registered Democrats initially, but join the party to subvert and transform it from within. This has been dubbed the ‘Mamdani Model’, but it produced earlier victories – AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, etc. (more here). Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is the latest Democrat to draw a DSA challenger.
Such efforts are the clearest indication the Democrat Party is being hijacked by the Left. The Left will continue to meet with electoral success, unless and until moderate Democrats organize against it.
If Not You, Who?
The embrace of socialism. The persistent CCP problem. The normalization of political violence. The alignment with radical Left groups. The leftward lurch to extreme positions. The takeover by far-Left politicians. The pipelines that will supply radical Democrat candidates for years to come.
Connect the dots and it’s not a pretty picture. The Democrat Party is no longer a mainstream political party. It is a party of the Left, already showing signs of left-wing coercion and authoritarianism that typify countries run by parties of the Left. The tax-cutting, anti-communist JFK would not recognize today’s Democrat Party, nor would he be welcome in it.
The Left’s efforts to capture the Democrat Party have cost the party dearly. The decline in party voter registration has been called a “crisis”. It’s gotten to the point Republicans are now signing up more new voters than the Democrats are.
There is also a funding crisis. DNC cash on hand is about one-fifth of what Republicans have.
Also illustrating the point: a dozen prominent Democrat officials endorsed the Republican in the 2025 New Jersey governor’s race.
Democrat strategist James Carville wrote in the New York Times the current Democrat Party is “a cracked-out clown car” plagued by ideological fissures and confusion. On another occasion, he criticized the DNC land acknowledgement described above: “Please stop this in the name of a just, merciful God! Don’t you see what’s happening? Don’t you see where this has brought us to?” This is not the way to win elections, he said.
It’s time to do something different or the Democrat Party will keep moving further Left. It’s time for moderate Democrats to organize into an effective counterforce within the party. A force that would publicly reject socialism and advocate firmly for free markets. Senator John Fetterman leads the way on this, calling Democrats who embrace socialism “morons”. An organized moderate force would also disavow the CCP and Antifa, condemn political violence, return to mainstream policy proposals, and establish candidate pipelines that surpass what the Left has built.
A previous effort to stop the leftward drift of the Democrat Party was the Clinton-era Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). The DLC started in 1985 but closed its doors in 2011. Doubt has been expressed that what’s left of the Democrat Party establishment could succeed in reviving the DLC. If moderate Democrats want to save their party, substantial effort will have to come from the grassroots.
Don’t walk away. Build back the center.
The time is now. It will only get harder from here.
– Take Back Your Party from the Left
May 2026
We are writing to express our dismay at how the Democrat Party has become a party of the Left and to encourage you to organize with other moderate Democrats to take your Party back from the lunatic Left fringe.
Party of the Left
The Democrats used to be a center-left party standing for such policies as increased social spending. Now, it is controlled by radicals who believe there are 57 genders, want to defund the police despite the predictable consequences, and work to put pornography in the hands of school kids. Moderate Democrats believe no such things.
Embrace of Socialism
We got a taste of what was to come when Obama White House official Anita Dunn said Mao Zedong is one of her favorite philosophers.
But the wake-up call came with the election of the Squad in Congress in 2018. Two members – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) – belong to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) (see here and here). A third – Ilhan Omar (D-MN) – calls herself a “democratic socialist”.
The socialist wing of the Democrat Party has continued to make inroads with the 2026 mayoral elections in New York City and Seattle. Zohran Mamdani belongs to DSA and was endorsed by that organization. He is on record advocating the “abolition of private property” and “seizing the means of production”, ideas straight out of the Communist Manifesto. His policies such as free childcare and government-run grocery stores come from communist dictators Lenin and Castro. This avowed communist is now the face of the Democrat Party. Seattle’s new Mayor and self-described “democratic socialist” Katie Wilson advocates the same policies.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has called Mamdani’s communist agenda the true message of the Democrat Party. She’s not wrong. Most rank-and-file Democrats are right there with her. According to a recent Gallup poll, Democrats have become more favorable to socialism in recent years, with 50 percent favorability in 2010, increasing to 66 percent in 2025 (compared to just 14 percent of Republicans).
Dalliance with the CCP
Zohran Mamdani’s election bid received significant support from John Liu, a scandal-plagued state Senator with close ties to the Chinese Consulate in New York. In 2008, it was reported that Liu aided CCP agents in violent attacks on Falun Gong practitioners in the state.
In another story out of New York, Chinese-American Linda Sun – who served in the Democrat Cuomo and Hochul administrations – is pending retrial on federal charges for acting as an undisclosed foreign agent for Communist China.
In 2018, a long-time staff member in former Senator Diane Feinstein’s San Francisco office, who served as her personal driver, a community liaison, and gofer, was a suspected Chinese intelligence operative.
And who could forget Fang Fang, the suspected Chinese intelligence operative who cultivated relationships with now-disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and other California politicians.
Other Democrat politicians with ties to the CCP include:
- Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who has been to China 30 times and about whom DHS reportedly warns of his ties to activities of the communist Chinese government
- Biden’s U.N. ambassador gave a paid speech at a CCP-linked Confucius Institute
- Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) was linked to CCP-backed nonprofits
- Boston Mayor Michelle Wu's fundraiser had CCP connections
Thus, it is apparent that numerous high-profile Democrat politicians have ties to the communist Chinese regime which puts political dissidents in prison camps, harvests human organs for profit (killing the ‘donors’ in the process), and subjects its minorities to forced labor and brutal repression.
Normalization of Political Violence
Another manifestation of the Democrat Party’s lurch to the Left is the normalization of political violence. The level of acceptance of political violence prevalent among today’s Democrats would have been unthinkable just a few short years ago.
President Trump survived two assassination attempts, but there are plenty of Democrats who wish he hadn’t. They wish him dead and some would be willing to pull the trigger themselves:
- Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) said that President Trump must be “eliminated” to protect democracy
- Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-VI) said Trump “needs to be shot”
- Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) said “I will go and take out Trump tonight”
- State Sen. Maria Chapelle-Nadal (D-MO) posted on Facebook “I hope Trump is assassinated!”
- State Rep. Scott Hamann (D-ME) suggested he would assassinate the President if he came within ten feet of him
Then we have the ugly spectacle of Democrats cheering Charlie Kirk’s actual assassination:
- The finance director of a Democrat PAC in Virginia endorsed the view that killing Kirk was comparable to killing Hamas terrorists
- Democrat-supported Dot Heffron, formerly on the Chesterfield County VA school board, remarked, “Call me old fashioned, but I remember when we used to be ok with shooting Nazis”
- A local Democrat lawmaker in the Miami area called Kirk’s assassination a “fitting sacrifice” to gun manufacturers
- At the pro-Democrat “No Kings” protests, some demonstrators dressed up as Charlie Kirk’s assassin, imitated his murder, and called for the killing of ICE agents and the assassination of President Trump. The protests were sponsored by Democrat groups (e.g., College Democrats of America) and Democrat-aligned organizations (e.g., Planned Parenthood).
A huge uproar erupted when it came to light that the newly elected Attorney General of Virginia, Jay Jones, sent heinous messages about then-Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert. Jones wrote, in August 2022, that if he had “[t]hree people. . .[and] two bullets,” with “Gilbert, [H]itler, and [P]ol [P]ot,” in a room, Gilbert would receive “both bullets every time.” Additionally, Jones wrote that Gilbert’s children should die in their mother’s arms. Virginia Democrat lawmakers rejected resolutions that would have condemned political violence in the state and, also, “politicians who wish death on children and families of elected officials." Equally disturbing, Virginia Democrats completely disregarded Jones’ violent messages and voted for him in overwhelming numbers, putting him in office.
As if further examples were needed:
- “After months of Democrat politicians comparing ICE to Nazis, the gestapo, slave patrols, and even encouraging illegal aliens to resist arrest, our brave ICE law enforcement have been assaulted 238 times,” the Department of Homeland Security said. This is an increase of 1,150 percent.
- Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) visited pro-Palestinian protests, lending legitimacy to the protesters despite arrests for violence and incidents of physical assault, shoving, pushing, and rock-throwing and arrests
- A House Democrat told Axios: “Our own base is telling us … [that] there needs to be blood to grab the attention of the press and the public”
Finally, fifty percent more Democrats than Republicans are OK with political violence, according to a 2025 Gallup poll.
Alignment with the Radical Left
Democrats are increasingly showing an affinity for Antifa and Black Lives Matter, despite the rioting those groups have caused. George Conway, now a congressional candidate running as a Democrat, was seen at a “No Kings” rally wearing a shirt emblazoned “I am Antifa”.
The self-professed Marxist and scandal-ridden group Black Lives Matter has a high net favorability rating among Democrats (+60). Favorability for the anarcho-communist group Antifa is rising among Democrats.
Antifa is increasingly viewed as the armed wing of the Democrat Party. Normal politics is no longer enough for the Democrats, apparently. Time to call out the goons.
Adoption of Extreme Positions
Democrats have in recent years espoused extreme views on a number of issues, views out of the mainstream and not supported by most Americans.
- Transgenderism - In 2025, 130 congressional Democrats signed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to keep men in women’s sports, despite consistent polling data showing strong opposition. Democrat appointees on the Ninth Circuit temporarily blocked a lower court decision allowing California schools and teachers to notify parents when their children identify as transgender. Two-thirds of those surveyed in a 2024 poll opposed hiding gender transitioning from parents.
- Defund the Police - A number of Democrat-controlled cities defunded the police after the George Floyd riots, only to reverse course in 2021 and restore funding after getting slapped in the face by the predictable results, i.e., rising crime rates.
- Pornography for School Kids – Democrats continue to fight to keep sexually explicit material in public school libraries. Democrats may have chosen this as their hill to die on, but polling shows 69 percent of voters opposed. The percentage is higher for lower grades. Pornography for school kids - pretty bizarre.
- CRT / DEI - Critical Race Theory (CRT) is derived from Marxism. Despite this fact, the Democrat Biden administration revoked a Trump executive banning federal diversity training that employs CRT concepts. Moreover, many House Democrats supported CRT material in military training, and Democrat-aligned teachers’ unions fought Republican opposition to CRT. DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) has been roundly criticized for employing such objectionable Marxist concepts as ‘struggle sessions’ (humiliating public confessions) and for prioritizing identity politics over job qualifications (predictably leading to unqualified ‘DEI hires’ as airline pilots, medical students, etc.). A 2024 poll showed declining support for and rising opposition to DEI, but the Democratic National Committee (DNC) affirmed its support for DEI last year.
- Woke Rhetoric – “Birthing person” instead of ‘mother’ – really? The use of bizarre politically correct terms has gotten so bad, that Democrat strategists are urging Democrats to avoid using terms that alienate average Americans like patriarchy, triggering, safe spaces, body-shaming, Latinx, and cisgender. The list goes on.
- Trashing America - Last, but by no means least, Democrats have taken to trashing the country and belittling patriotism. The DNC opened its summer meeting last year with a ‘land acknowledgement’ claiming that Minneapolis sits on stolen land. This was the ultimate in virtue signaling, since no one shedding crocodile tears over ‘stolen land’ ever offers or works to give the land back. Gimmicks like these are a transparent effort to get Americans to hate their own country and themselves. It’s working, at least among Democrats. A Gallup poll in 2025 found only 36 percent of Democrats are extremely or very proud of their country, compared to 92 percent of Republicans. This is a sharp drop from 2015 when 80 percent of Democrats were extremely or very proud, and from 2024 when 62 percent of Democrats felt that way. Many of today’s Democrats no longer adhere to the nation’s founding principles, and some are downright anti-American.
Takeover by Far-Left Politicians
It has been plausibly argued that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer kept the untenable government shutdown going in late 2025 because he was pandering to the far-Left wing of the party and was afraid of a primary challenge from the more Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
On the city level, radical big city Democrat mayors were in place before the November 2025 election added Zohran Mamdani and Katie Wilson to the fold. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was an organizer for the Venceremos Brigade which “trains revolutionary-prone Americans in terrorist tactics and guerrilla warfare….” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and other Democrat big city mayors have pledged no cooperation with ICE deportations. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu instituted free bus routes and showed her typical Leftist hostility to the automobile. Former Portland OR Mayor Ted Wheeler never met a rioter he didn’t like. He hamstrung local police and allowed violence, vandalism, arson, and destruction to continue unchecked. Seattle’s Democrat former Mayor Durkan made the decision to abandon the East Precinct and allow the anarchist CHOP/CHAZ zone to exist.
The Left wing of the Democrat Party has been organizing to produce a steady stream of radical politicians running as Democrats in the future. Several Left-wing groups are actively recruiting, endorsing, and supporting Progressive challengers in Democrat primaries against incumbent U.S. House Democrats or other races. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is influential among these groups. Such groups include:
- Justice Democrats (ties to AOC)
- Working Families Party (ties to AOC
- Sunrise Movement (ties to AOC)
- Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) (ties to AOC)
- Leaders We Deserve (founded by David Hogg)
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is also using primaries to push the Democrat Party to the Left. It is running candidates against Democrats in safe Democrat districts. These candidates are typically not registered Democrats initially, but join the party to subvert and transform it from within. This has been dubbed the ‘Mamdani Model’, but it produced earlier victories – AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, etc. (more here). Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is the latest Democrat to draw a DSA challenger.
Such efforts are the clearest indication the Democrat Party is being hijacked by the Left. The Left will continue to meet with electoral success, unless and until moderate Democrats organize against it.
If Not You, Who?
The embrace of socialism. The persistent CCP problem. The normalization of political violence. The alignment with radical Left groups. The leftward lurch to extreme positions. The takeover by far-Left politicians. The pipelines that will supply radical Democrat candidates for years to come.
Connect the dots and it’s not a pretty picture. The Democrat Party is no longer a mainstream political party. It is a party of the Left, already showing signs of left-wing coercion and authoritarianism that typify countries run by parties of the Left. The tax-cutting, anti-communist JFK would not recognize today’s Democrat Party, nor would he be welcome in it.
The Left’s efforts to capture the Democrat Party have cost the party dearly. The decline in party voter registration has been called a “crisis”. It’s gotten to the point Republicans are now signing up more new voters than the Democrats are.
There is also a funding crisis. DNC cash on hand is about one-fifth of what Republicans have.
Also illustrating the point: a dozen prominent Democrat officials endorsed the Republican in the 2025 New Jersey governor’s race.
Democrat strategist James Carville wrote in the New York Times the current Democrat Party is “a cracked-out clown car” plagued by ideological fissures and confusion. On another occasion, he criticized the DNC land acknowledgement described above: “Please stop this in the name of a just, merciful God! Don’t you see what’s happening? Don’t you see where this has brought us to?” This is not the way to win elections, he said.
It’s time to do something different or the Democrat Party will keep moving further Left. It’s time for moderate Democrats to organize into an effective counterforce within the party. A force that would publicly reject socialism and advocate firmly for free markets. Senator John Fetterman leads the way on this, calling Democrats who embrace socialism “morons”. An organized moderate force would also disavow the CCP and Antifa, condemn political violence, return to mainstream policy proposals, and establish candidate pipelines that surpass what the Left has built.
A previous effort to stop the leftward drift of the Democrat Party was the Clinton-era Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). The DLC started in 1985 but closed its doors in 2011. Doubt has been expressed that what’s left of the Democrat Party establishment could succeed in reviving the DLC. If moderate Democrats want to save their party, substantial effort will have to come from the grassroots.
Don’t walk away. Build back the center.
The time is now. It will only get harder from here.