Well. The first question here is whether Americans even know what communism is (or was) anymore. There are five countries in the world that still call themselves Communist, but one of those is China, which at least in economic terms barely counts (the others are Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos). More than that, it’s getting to be close to 40 years now since the Eastern bloc collapsed. A person would have to be at least 45 years old to have any memory of all that. Right now, 57.5 percent of Americans are under that age.

As you’d expect, young people who weren’t alive to see how cruel, corrupt, and lethargic the Soviet Union was either don’t know much about communism or don’t see it as such a bad thing. A poll released last week by the libertarian Cato Institute had some interesting numbers. Among all Americans, capitalism was viewed favorably by just 52 percent (that’s the number that would be worrying me if I were a Friedmanesque free marketeer; it’s insanely low!). Socialism was viewed favorably by 37 percent. And communism got a thumbs-up from 21 percent.

That’s overall. Among respondents under 30 years old, 38 percent said they had a favorable view of communism. But in the Queens of Donald Trump’s youth, calling someone a Commie packed a real wallop, so he clearly thinks it still can.

The word doesn’t actually apply to any of these people he’s trying to condemn, of course. As I noted last week, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Zohran Mamdani, and even Bernie Sanders himself aren’t really socialists, in the proper historical sense of the word. I don’t hear any of them calling for the state to seize the means of production, which is the basic historical position of socialism. They’re social democrats.

The only one among the crop who has apparently said a few nice things about actual communism is Darializa Avila Chevalier, the 32-year-old who won the Democratic primary in an upper Manhattan district. Her leftism appears to be much more of the campus-radical variety than Mamdani’s sewer socialism; we’ll see in two years whether the voters of her district are good with that, or whether she has indeed “grown considerably” since she wrote those social media posts.

Meanwhile, on the Fourth of July, a bunch of white supremacists from something called the Patriot Front felt at home enough in Trump’s Washington to march in front of the Capitol wearing masks, sunglasses, and ballcaps with the group’s logo boldly displayed and carrying an array of flags, including the Confederate flag. (These ghouls undoubtedly went unmasked during the pandemic to protest supposedly totalitarian public health policies, and now they’re dressing like totalitarians in an attempt to terrorize regular people.)  

And that night, of course, America, or that portion of it that was interested, listened to another windy address from a president who once invited avowed white supremacist Nick Fuentes to dine with him at his house and told the extremist Proud Boys to stand by.

That same president participated back in May in Rededicate 250, a Christian nationalist prayer gathering that, whatever its organizers said, was clearly intended to pound home the idea that the United States is supposed to be a Christian nation, which of course it is not. Democratic Representative Jared Huffman of California accurately told PBS that the event “would have the Founders rolling in their graves.” 

This doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of right-wing radicalism in this country, most of which Trump tacitly or sometimes explicitly endorses with rhetoric that’s clearly fascist. And beyond Trump himself, many rank-and-file Republicans are shocking extremists; remember Nazis mingling openly at the 2024 CPAC conference, or those leaked text messages by young Republicans last fall (“I love Hitler”)?

It’s crystal clear in a factual sense which party is more radical today. The Democrats could elect two dozen socialists and they still wouldn’t be anywhere near as far left as the GOP has gone far right. Oh, and by the way: For all the media attention socialist candidates get when they win, it’s still a fact that on balance, mainstream and even centrist Democrats are winning more primaries this year. The Cook Political Report revealed over the weekend that in the 22 GOP-controlled congressional districts where Democrats have held primaries so far, 14 have been won by candidates with mainstream and centrist backing. Only four have been won by candidates backed by the Progressive Caucus. So in swing districts, Democratic voters are still mainly choosing the nominees they calculate have a better shot at winning such a district.

But we’re going to be hearing all about Communists for the next four months. Trump is obviously trying to make the midterms a referendum on the Democratic Party and not on him. 

History tells us this rarely works. It didn’t work for him in 2018, when he was around 40 percent in the polls and tried to make the dreaded caravan headed toward the Rio Grande from Central America the central issue. And the economy was comparatively good then, unlike now, when a soaring stock market is benefiting the rich while most Americans continue to struggle with Trump-juiced inflation.

So Democrats, who tend to freak out about things, should not freak out about this. Sure, communism is a scary word, at least to people of a certain age and ideological bent. But I’d imagine very few people who aren’t dyed-in-the-wool MAGA believe the Democratic Party is a bunch of Communists. I hope that instead of lamely denying it and moving on to gas prices, they have the guts to fight fire with fire and point out to voters who the real extremists in this country are.