I am a lifelong Democrat. I served President Bill Clinton on the National Security Council, worked for Madeleine Albright at the State Department, and served as deputy staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Joe Biden was chairman and Tony Blinken was staff director.
I am a Democrat because I believe the Democratic Party has traditionally stood, more than the Republican Party, for an America in which every person and every community is respected and in which we each and all have the greatest possible opportunities to realize our potential.
I remain a Democrat because I still believe in these principles, and I believe the great majority of Democrats do as well. Our party has many inspiring leaders, including Wes Moore, Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, and Andy Beshear. More importantly, it is home to millions of patriotic Americans who love our country, respect their fellow citizens, and want to help both realize their greatest promise. There are also many patriotic Republicans, including many close friends of mine, who also love our country, respect their fellow citizens, and want to help both realize their greatest promise, That’s what makes America so great.
It is precisely because I believe so deeply in this vision of the Democratic Party that I feel a moral obligation to unequivocally condemn the anti-American bigots operating within our ranks who promote hatred and division, incite hostility, foster intercommunal conflict, and denigrate our nation and its values.
These include Abdul El-Sayed, Zohran Mamdani, Darializa Avila Chevalier, and many of the members and leaders of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), an organization openly seeking to transform the Democratic Party into a vehicle for its radical political agenda. That agenda includes replacing capitalism with socialism, dismantling or radically restructuring our law enforcement and prison systems, and fundamentally transforming America’s relationships with its allies and friends.
I believe all Democrats, and frankly all Americans, should condemn and oppose the dangerous radicalism these figures and movements represent. We should be especially forceful when political leaders excuse terrorism, encourage hatred, or undermine the democratic institutions and constitutional principles that protect us all.
There are some Democratic leaders, however, who believe we should keep quiet. They argue that these radicals have meaningful support among Democratic voters and that regaining control of one or both houses of Congress is so critically important that we cannot afford to fight among ourselves. Whatever our disagreements, they suggest, we must close ranks and support anyone who wins a Democratic primary.
I completely understand this logic.
It should be obvious to everyone that President Donald Trump is running roughshod over our democracy and laying the groundwork for a potential soft coup in November. He has aggressively undermined confidence in our electoral system, pardoned the January 6 insurrectionists, and increasingly used federal law enforcement and immigration authorities as instruments of his personal political agenda. He has hardly concealed his hostility toward democratic constraints on his power.
Any attempt to thwart the will of the American people in November would be an extraordinarily dangerous assault on our republic. A soft coup in the United States might look very different from Idi Amin’s Uganda. The more relevant models are probably Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Hungary under Viktor Orbán, where elected leaders have systematically weakened the institutions and safeguards that make meaningful democratic competition possible.
All Americans should be deeply concerned about this danger and do everything possible to safeguard our democracy.
We should be equally concerned about the many other ways the Trump administration is undermining our institutions, betraying our national interests, and threatening our future.
Trump may well be the most corrupt president in American history. His administration has demonstrated a breathtaking willingness to blur the lines between public service, personal enrichment, and political loyalty. The sheer scale of the financial interests surrounding his presidency makes the corruption scandals of earlier administrations seem almost quaint.
Just this week, Trump announced a deeply cynical arrangement to bring Russian diesel into American and global markets, easing sanctions on Russian fuel in an apparent effort to lower energy prices before the November midterms. The practical effect is to provide an economic benefit to Vladimir Putin as Russia continues its brutal war against Ukraine and its campaign of aggression against Europe. It is difficult to imagine a more disgraceful betrayal of an American ally for short-term domestic political advantage.
The lawlessness of this administration is so pervasive that I fear Trump and his allies will do everything in their power, legal and illegal alike, to prevent Democrats from taking control of Congress. They have good reason to fear a Democratic majority with subpoena power, the ability to investigate executive misconduct, and the authority to hold public hearings that could dominate the national political conversation for the next two years. Congressional oversight could once again become a far more compelling destination for the Washington press corps than the White House briefing room.
Leading Democrats and all Americans who care about our constitutional democracy are absolutely right to fight back against these abuses with everything we have.
But as a Democrat and as an American, I reject the implicit claim that we must embrace anti-American bigots and dangerous radicals in order to defend our democracy, win elections, and build our best possible future.
History offers plenty of warnings about the dangers of making political alliances with extremists in the hope of using them for some supposedly greater purpose. The more moderate Mensheviks learned this lesson during the Russian Revolution, when the radical Bolsheviks ultimately crushed their fellow socialists. Across the democratic world, established political movements have repeatedly underestimated the determination of radical factions to seize control of their institutions and redirect them toward fundamentally different ends.
We can see disturbing elements of this dynamic today in the Green Party of England and Wales, where radical Islamists have taken over the party and transformed its agenda from saving the environment to murdering Jews.
The Democratic Party is today making the case to the American people that we deserve their trust. We face a fundamental choice about the party we want to be and the country we hope to lead.
We can be a party that articulates and stands by a positive vision of a better future for all Americans, grounded in our shared humanity, democratic principles, constitutional freedoms, and respect for one another. Or we can become a craven, desperate party that embraces virtually anyone, regardless of their values, simply because they manage to win a Democratic primary.
The rise of Mamdani, El-Sayed, Chevalier, and their compatriots also reflects a particularly troubling political phenomenon. I think of them as the October 7 Democrats, who leveraged the terrorist attacks as the vehicle for their political rise. These people have cynically exploited the suffering of others for their own political advancement. Their rise should force every Democrat to ask how our party can remain true to its founding democratic principles when some of our most vocal members seem increasingly hostile to those very principles.
If we become the party that stands by radicals who excuse or glorify the September 11 or October 7 terrorists, what moral authority will we have to challenge the extremism of others? If we remain quiet when political activists call for the destruction of Western democratic institutions, reject fundamental constitutional protections, or encourage hatred and violence against their fellow Americans, how can we possibly ask the American people to trust us?
And if we tell Americans that defeating Trump is so important that we must ignore bigotry and extremism within our own ranks, what happens to our credibility when we ask Republicans to place their principles above their partisan loyalties?
We cannot credibly demand moral courage from others while refusing to demonstrate it ourselves.
This is why I believe the best path forward for the Democratic Party and for America is clear. We must unequivocally condemn and oppose the dangerous radicals who seek to divide our society, undermine our institutions, and turn Americans against one another, regardless of which political party they call home.
Just as we Democrats have rightly demanded that Republicans stand against the worst abuses of the Trump administration, we must stand against the worst abuses of the dangerous radicals operating in our own party. Our principles must mean more to us than our immediate political interests, particularly when those interests seem to conflict with our long-term national well-being.
I believe the vast majority of Americans are decent people who love our country and want all Americans to live together in peace. I believe most of us want to live in a society where people of different races, religions, backgrounds, and political perspectives can disagree passionately while respecting one another’s fundamental humanity and constitutional rights.
I believe the vast majority of Americans want our country to stand by its friends and allies, aggressively oppose terrorist organizations seeking to murder innocent people, and defend the democratic institutions that have helped make our nation a beacon of freedom and opportunity for generations.
I also believe Americans are increasingly exhausted by the politics of hatred, division, and permanent outrage. Most of us want leaders who will bring people together, solve problems, protect our freedoms, and help us build a better future for ourselves and our children.
The time has come for these common-sense Americans to reject the radical extremes on both sides of the political spectrum and unite around a positive vision of our shared future.
For Democrats, this will require the courage to confront extremism within our own ranks, even when doing so is politically uncomfortable. For Republicans, it will require the courage to stand against the unprecedented abuses of the Trump administration. For all Americans, it will require a renewed commitment to the principles of our constitutional democracy and to one another.
Our country is facing extraordinary challenges, but we also have extraordinary opportunities ahead. The technologies, scientific advances, and new possibilities now emerging could help us build a healthier, more prosperous, more secure, and more inclusive America than anything we have previously imagined. Realizing that future will require us to rediscover our shared purpose and recognize that our common interests are far greater than the differences dividing us.
I remain a proud Democrat because I believe our party can help lead this national renewal. But that pride carries responsibilities, including the responsibility to speak out when people claiming to represent our party betray the values that brought so many of us to it in the first place. If the Democratic party stops standing for democratic values, it will no longer deserve my or most anyone else’s support (other, perhaps, than the DSA radicals if they are successful in their takeover of the party).
We Democrats cannot save American democracy by abandoning our principles. We must defend those principles with the same courage and conviction that we demand of our political opponents.
Our country deserves that kind of leadership, and our party should aspire to provide it with a positive vision of a better future for all Americans.
Here is my suggestion for what a positive vision of American renewal might look like:
American Renewal: Taking Our Country Back from the Extremists