PBS NEWSHOUR: David Brooks of The Atlantic and Jonathan Capehart of MS NOW join Amna Nawaz to discuss the week in politics, including major Supreme Court decisions and more primary upsets. <\/p>\n
AMNA NAWAZ, PBS NEWSHOUR: Well, let’s talk a little bit about what could happen in the legislative branch, some of those primary upsets we talked about earlier, because, in the past few weeks, we have seen anti-establishment wins for Democratic candidates in particular. First to New York. We saw the Democratic socialist candidate there, Darializa Avila Chevalier, unseat the five-term congressman Adriano Espaillat. We also saw a former New York Comptroller Brad Lander unseat representative Dan Goldman. Then, in Colorado, we saw Democratic socialist Melat Kiros oust a 30-year incumbent in Diana DeGette. And we saw the state A.G., Phil Weiser, there, who ran to the left of Senator Michael Bennet, beat him in the gubernatorial primary there. So, David, you see New York and Colorado. Does two make a trend? DAVID BROOKS, THE ATLANTIC: I think so. I think this is a big — the Colorado story is a bigger story than the New York story. New York’s my hometown. I love it, but Brooklyn hipsters and Columbia University are not exactly normal America. But Colorado is Colorado. It’s a semi-purplish state. Michael Bennet was elected three times to the U.S. Senate statewide, and he lost. And then you had the Democratic Socialist candidate win. And what you see, it’s been — it’s been compared, I think, accurately, to when Dave Brat beat Eric Cantor in the Republican primary, and you saw a bunch of people said, these — my party, screw them. We’re going to tear it all down. And in that case, and I think, in this case, Democrats are — they’re just looking around through the most furious candidate because they’re furious at what’s happened. And so they’re doing that. And I understand the fury. My problem is, the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, should not be where you go. The Democratic Socialist Party was started in the 1980s by Michael Harrington, a very wonderful guy, a serious intellectual, and he wanted the DSA to move us toward Denmark, a perfectly good political position. Over the last five years, that party has been hijacked and taken over by an authoritarian wing, which supported Hamas in October 7, who supports Cuba, who supports China, who supports Maduro’s Venezuela, who supports pretty much every left-wing authoritarian regime in the country. So I understand wanting to register a protest against Washington. But are the Democrats really going to take a position that we’re going to become left-wing authoritarians, just as the Republicans become right-wing authoritarians? And the final thing to be said is, the Democratic Party became great not by fighting the right, but by fighting the left. It was Hubert Humphrey in 1946 who pushed the communists out of the Democratic Farmer — the DFL, the Democratic Farmer Labor Party. It was George Meany who pushed the communists out of the labor movement, basically. And they defined who they were by pushing against the right, but also by pushing against the left. And we’re going to see if the Democratic mainstream has the guts, the conviction, or even the clarity of thought to push against what’s happening. And we will see. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n