Democrats fear AOC and Mamdani more than they fear America’s workers

"The Democrats are more afraid of the Marxist in their base than they are of hard-working Americans. See, they've made an evaluation that they have to appease the Marxist base," the House speaker said this morning while giving his regular morning conference on the government shutdown. The Republican has put in a blunt phrase what is obvious to millions of Americans: the Democratic party is following the extreme ideas of the likes of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Speaker Johnson also referenced House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries' recent endorsement of New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, and asserted that this decision is proof that the party is finished. "Mamdani sympathized with HAMAS! He called to seize the means of production because he is Marxist. To abolish borders, to defund the police, legalize prostitution!" Johnson recalled in the middle of his speech and said that Democratic leaders will now be held accountable for what happens in New York under an eventual Mamdani Administration.

Polls show that most Americans believe Democrats should vote to reopen the government, other polls even reveal that Republicans' popularity has grown amid this shutdown. Some major unions such as AFGE, which represents more than 800,000 federal workers, and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association have pointedly called on Democrats to vote for the Republicans' clean continuing resolution. Still, Democratic leaders remain wedded to the radical ideas of AOC and Sanders.

During the Biden Administration, Democrats voted 13 times in favor of clean continuing resolutions, like the one now put forward by Republicans. Approximately 96% of Senate Democrats supported that vote all 13 times. Earlier this year, when the Trump Administration was just getting started, Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Senate Democrats, again voted in favor of a clean continuing resolution, assuring that he did not want to cause harm to Americans with an eventual government shutdown. Things now seem to have changed in the Democratic party.

It is hard to believe that the Democrats do not realize the negative effect this shutdown is having on their already rather diminished political capital. It seems that in the face of their low popularity and the rise of figures like Mamdani, who fill stadiums with thousands of people, the old guard of the party got scared, and decided to go along with the radicals' strategy. Schumer in particular may be pressured by a personal situation: he doesn't want to be challenged by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the 2028 elections.

A product of the shutdown, this weekend millions of Americans will no longer receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, there are already lines of federal workers at food banks receiving aid because they have been without pay for almost a month, millions of Americans have already been affected in various ways, but as Speaker Johnson says, Democratic leaders are more afraid of the extremes of their party, than they are of working Americans who are screaming at them in every way possible to open the government.