July Fourth Exposed Democrats’ Big Problem with America’s Silent Majority

 

July Fourth was a bad day for Democrats.

Americans turned out in force to celebrate the birthday of the country they love, applauding the virtues and values that have made the United States an exceptional nation for 250 years. The silent majority, the folks who believe in the essential promise and goodness of this beautiful land, made their voices heard.

A recent Cato poll confirmed that sentiment, showing that 86% of respondents are grateful and 79% are proud to be Americans. Moreover, “most also believe America is a land of opportunity (61%) and even more believe the American Dream (74%) is available to them personally.” Cato reports that three-quarters of Americans feel positive about the nation’s founding, and 70% believe its founding principles remain relevant today. “In particular, overwhelming majorities believe the U.S. Constitution is important for protecting our rights and freedoms (86%) and for enabling America’s prosperity (82%).”

That sure isn’t what we’ve been hearing from democratic socialist darling Zohran Mamdani, who has, incredibly, become the voice of the Democratic Party. In his Fourth of July speech, the New York City mayor lambasted our “nativist” country as one characterized by “monopolies that dominate every industry,” “oligarchs who buy elections” and a “health insurance industry that exploits the sick.”

Mamdani’s false and cliché-ridden diatribe doesn’t even make sense. In one breath, he excoriates the U.S. as dominated by an exclusive wealthy elite, but in the next, he exults in the “power each of us holds to bring America ever closer to the greatness so many have seen when they looked upon these shores.” How can both those things be true? In an “authoritarian” regime, what power?

The democratic socialist surge, newly led by Mamdani, is real and is terrifying the party establishment. Party leaders New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries are running scared as the DSA threatens their political lives. Fifteen House moderates — the kind being wiped out by insurgent leftist newcomers — penned an open letter declaring, “We are capitalist, not socialist,” and “We are mainstream, not extreme.” They also proclaimed, “We are proud, not ashamed of America.” Imagine elected politicians having to make that pronouncement.

It’s about time they did.

Democrats have only themselves to blame for the rise of the socialist left. They have offered the country nothing but hatred of Donald Trump for over a decade. They have opposed even the most popular policies proposed by the president, like deporting criminals and reducing taxes. They have absurdly blocked investigating and eliminating hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars lost to fraud every year — a problem that even Joe Biden’s administration said required urgent action. They have become the party that champions boys competing in girls’ sports and resists voter ID laws. They have fawned over European governments that have approval ratings below 30% and especially applauded those nations’ green energy policies that have stifled their economies and left them unable to compete for emerging industries like AI.

Democrats’ consistent and mindless opposition to President Trump created a policy vacuum, giving democratic socialists an opportunity to fill that hole with outlandish policies like abolishing prisons and eliminating private property rights. Those are policies the silent majority will not accept, no more than they accepted the woke excesses of the George Floyd and #MeToo protests.

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) first showed up as supporters of Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders when he ran for president in 2016. The DSA’s membership increased from 6,500 to 8,500 during his campaign; another 13,000 people signed up in the eight months following the election.

Democrats should have disavowed the socialist Sanders then, when the DSA movement was tiny, but instead they played to the so-called Bernie Bros, who some thought denied Hillary Clinton the Oval Office by sitting out the election. In 2020, the corrupt hierarchy in charge of the party, along with a compliant media, promoted the big lie that Joe Biden was fit to serve as president. They engineered the defeat of Sanders, who led the early primaries, and forced the nomination of Biden. In recompense, they gave Bernie a seat at the table, allowing him to co-write the party’s platform and thus legitimizing his influence.

Riding that newfound acceptance, Sanders’ signature issues, like Medicare for All and taxing the rich, took on new weight, attracting the likes of New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who became one of two democratic socialists elected to the House of Representatives in 2019.

After the bruising defeat in 2024, the party scurried to find a new message and adopted “affordability” as its issue. Democrats crusading to bring down the cost of living is laughable, given that the most expensive places to live in the U.S. are all run by Democrats. What drives costs higher? Burdensome regulations, pro-union labor policies and high taxes, all signature attributes of Democrat-run governments.

Massive government spending — pushing too many dollars into the economy — also drives up inflation. It is no coincidence that during Joe Biden’s presidency, when government spending hit the highest levels relative to the economy since World War II, inflation soared to above 9%.

DSA candidates are also running on affordability, but with socialist solutions like providing free buses as well as government-subsidized groceries and childcare. So far, they have succeeded mainly in deep-blue districts and with low voter turnout. Ultimately, Mamdani and his ilk will fail, as socialism always has, because it denies the driving human force of self-interest and the wisdom and adaptability of free markets.

But Democrats need to take a stand against the noisy radical leftists who will ultimately cost them voters. The movement is driven not only by socialist economic policies, but also by opposition to Israel and by antisemitism. Black Americans and Jews are important Democratic voting blocs; both are already speaking out against DSA candidates.

America’s silent majority has rallied to defend our nation in the past; if socialism gains ground, those quiet patriots will do so again. Count on it.

Read Liz Peek’s full column on Fox News here.