Something is brewing inside the Democrat Party, and this time, Donald Trump has nothing to do with it. Behind closed doors, the establishment wing of the party is squaring off against a coup led by self-declared socialists, and the fight over who controls the party's future is only getting started.
Fox News host Jesse Watters laid out exactly how this ends on The Five, and it should terrify anyone still clinging to the idea that the Democrat Party can hold itself together heading into the next presidential race.
Asked by co-host Emily Compagno whether the country is actually being taken over, Watters didn't offer easy reassurance. "Maybe. We'll see how it goes," he said.
Watters then walked through the calculation that the Democrat leadership is making right now. He said the party is going to "accommodate the commies and see how they do in the midterms." If the socialist wing performs poorly, establishment Democrats will blame them for it, and a Democrat civil war will erupt. If they perform well, Watters said, "it's going to be Kumbaya," a rambunctious Congress that simply pushes the internal reckoning down the road.
That's where Kamala Harris comes in.
As my PJ Media colleague Robert Spencer previously noted, Kamala is already courting the party's socialist flank because she needs organizers on her side ahead of the next presidential primary, which lands barely a year after the midterms wrap up. "So it's her or Newsom," he said. And that’s really the key, here, isn’t it? Anyone who wants to have a shot at the Democrat Party presidential nomination will have to have the support of the socialist wing of the party, which, in turn, needs to have an alliance with the establishment. Watters called that combination "a powerful movement."
That's the trade Democrats are willing to make.
But Watters saved his sharpest criticism for the people making up that socialist wing itself. They’re candidates who have never worked a real job, whose parents bankroll them, and who rack up debt while producing nothing. "They're professional students," he said. "They're all in debt. They don't earn anything. A lot of them don't even own anything." Their answer to that self-inflicted mess is to declare the entire American system rigged.
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Watters wasn't buying it. "It's actually not rigged if you work," he said. He described grinding through cramped apartments and lean years before earning success the old-fashioned way, contrasting that with a class of Democrat candidates barely into their careers who insist the American dream is already dead. "They haven't even tried," he said. "What are they talking about?"
He rattled off examples, from Texas state Rep. James Talarico (D-Texas) to Democrat Senate candidate Graham Platner (D-Maine) to the socialist candidates in Colorado and New York, calling the current slate "all pathetic people." Watters argued that their appeal comes precisely from that shared lack of accomplishment. "If no one else has worked hard, you can point to someone and say, oh, he gets me," he said.
His fix for the affordability complaints fueling these candidates' popularity was blunt. "You get a job, you get married, you start earning a living, and then you have skin in the game," he said.
Make no mistake about it, this is not a fringe squabble. This is a fight over who runs the Democrat Party, and Watters just laid out the roadmap in plain terms.
The establishment wing needs the socialist wing's energy to win elections. The socialist wing needs the establishment's money and infrastructure to matter. Watters is warning that if Democrats pull off that marriage of convenience, the country won't face a fractured opposition party. It will face a unified coalition, one where people who have never run a business, never met a payroll, and never had skin in the game hold real power, while establishment leaders hand them the keys just to win.
If they don’t succeed, the Democrat Party is in trouble. If they do succeed, the country is in trouble. That should worry anyone paying attention.
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