Every once in a while, someone with a real platform says what millions of us have been thinking and saying among ourselves for quite a while.
This time, it was Van Jones.
On July 18, Jones warned his own party that calling for “no police, no prisons, no borders,” supporting Hamas, and celebrating the murder of Israeli civilians are not progressive ideas.
As he put it, “These ideas are REGRESSIVE.”
Finally, someone not named John Fetterman said it out loud.
It seems ordinary Democrats are now expected to accept the entire far-left package or risk being ostracized by their own party.
Enough already.
That is not a political coalition. It is a loyalty test.
I am a Democrat because I believe sick people should be able to see a doctor. I believe in civil rights, reproductive freedom, public education, sensible gun laws, environmental protection, common-sense regulations on business and industry that keep people safe, and a strong safety net. I believe working people deserve a fair shot and that wealthy Americans should contribute more to the country that helped make their success possible.
Those are progressive ideas.
Leaving neighborhoods without police is not progressive. Pretending borders serve no purpose is not progressive. Treating every wealthy person as a criminal is not progressive. And romanticizing a terrorist organization because it has been placed on the “oppressed” side of some college classroom diagram is not progressive.
It is crazy.
Jones asked the obvious question: What does universal healthcare have to do with Hamas, abolishing law enforcement, or erasing borders?
Nothing.
And it mattered that this came from Van Jones.
Republicans criticize the DSA every day, and Democrats dismiss it as partisan noise. Jones cannot be dismissed that easily. He is a progressive Democrat criticizing the craziness from inside his own party.
He even finished with a line no political consultant would ever have approved. He told the far left to stop “pooping in the punch bowl” and pretending the results were ice cubes.
I love the analogy.
I have been a Democrat my entire adult life.
I did not leave the Democratic Party. I still believe in the basic principles that made me a Democrat. But I no longer believe the party is automatically entitled to my vote simply because I have been giving it that vote for decades.
Like Bill Maher, my vote is now in play.
Maher recently said he could consider voting Republican in 2028 if Democrats nominate someone from the party’s socialist wing. He also said he had not changed his opinion of the right. He had simply refused to ignore the crazy things happening on the left.
That is pretty much where I am.
It does not make me a Republican. It means I am an American before I am a member of any political party.
The Democratic Party cannot take the loyalty of people like me for granted while standing silently as its most extreme faction tries to redefine what being a Democrat means.
People like me cannot tolerate what seems to be just crazy shit: abolish the police, abolish the prisons, erase the borders, burn it all down and hope for the best. And still the party assumes we will quietly show up in November and vote blue simply because the other side is worse.
That routine is getting old.
If this is where the party is headed, I will have no problem becoming a RINO and hashing things out with the Republicans. Right now, that seems like the better option.
That is why Van Jones matters, and why he cannot be the only one.
We need Democratic governors, senators, members of Congress, commentators, donors, and party leaders to stop saying these things privately and start saying them publicly.
Grow a pair.
Show some fucking courage.
Say what you claim to believe when the cameras are on, not just behind closed doors when nobody can hold you accountable.
Because until you do, millions of lifelong Democrats like me will be asking a question the party never thought it would have to answer:
Why should we keep giving you our votes?
The Middle Is Still the Majority. Let’s Prove It.
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