Florida is the only big state to remain under full Republican control, what Governor DeSantis called the “last main anchor standing.” Still, last week, the first socialist in history was elected to the Sunshine State legislature. The Sunshine State’s political immune system responded. Yesterday, the Huffington Post reported, “Florida Probing Democratic Socialists of America Over Foreign Contributions.”
CLIP: Newly re-elected Florida Attorney General announces DSA investigation (1:23).
The rapid rise of the so-called Democratic Socialists of America reminds us of the destiny of other insurgent movements like the ill-fated Tea Party. Fringe political movements often do best while they operate at the margins, below the radar. Lifting their heads up into the mainstream can get them lopped off. The DSA is about to be tested, and their years of sloppy rule-bending might be their undoing. At minimum, it is going to give them collective heartburn.
The test is here. Last week, the DSA expanded its House caucus from two members to eight, added a Senate ally in Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed, and bragged about “50 DSA victories” nationwide. Florida’s first socialist state legislator was elected in Hillsborough County.
Six days later (yesterday), Florida’s recently re-elected Attorney General James Uthmeier served the DSA with its own first— an investigative subpoena.
The Attorney General would like to know who paid for its comradely field trips to Havana and Beijing, including a 40-member delegation that met with Cuba’s deputy foreign minister last October. Florida law has banned nonprofits from taking money from Cuba, China, and other usual suspects since last year. The DSA’s collective response was “no comment at this time,” which is what socialists say when they discover private property, and is the noise an organization makes when it’s shredding its filing cabinets.
That’s the thing about the margins. Nobody audits fringe groups. When you’re 90,000 activists with tote bags and a newsletter printed on recycled paper, you can take a “solidarity” trip to meet Miguel Díaz-Canel and nobody cares who paid for the plane tickets. But once you have eight congressmen, people start asking hard-to-answer questions about obscure campaign-finance regulations.
Which brings us back to the Tea Party’s sad tale. In 2010, it delivered a historic wave for the GOP. Harvard and AEI economists later estimated it moved three to six million votes in House races. Then Obama’s IRS sat on its tax-exempt applications for two years, approving just four Tea Party groups while burying the rest in questions about their donors, their Facebook posts, and the content of their prayers. (Mostly they were praying their 501c status would be approved before 2050.)
And the Republican Party was not, let us say, enthusiastic in their defense. The Tea Partiers had too few allies, because they’d made too many enemies primarying rank-and-file Republicans. By 2014, Mitch McConnell was giving the New York Times quotes about Tea Party challengers, saying that “I think we are going to crush them everywhere.” It was the most bipartisan thing he ever did.
The DSA has made exactly the same kind of enemies. Its activists have spent years primarying Democrat incumbents and calling party moderates collaborators. Hakeem Jeffries hasn’t forgotten. So when Florida’s subpoena turns into Texas’s subpoena and then a congressional hearing, don’t expect a wall of establishment Democrats locking arms for the comrades. Expect them to encounter “traffic incidents.” Think any “moderate” Democrats will publicly defend the DSA? They don’t even have to attack it. They can just look the other way.
The contrary example proves the point. MAGA, also an insurgent newcomer, eventually captured the Republican Party. So you could argue that offers the DSA some hope. But MAGA had something the DSA lacks: President Trump. MAGA is a unicorn. The DSA’s biggest star, Zohran Mamdani, was born in Uganda and can’t run for president. AOC is already drifting toward the Democrat center, and in 2024 the national DSA un-endorsed her. Bernie was never a member and is 85 (though surprisingly spry for an octogenarian).
So the DSA looks a lot more like the Tea Party, except with government grocery stores and strange pronouns. They could soon learn the same lesson in bare-knuckle politics that the poor Tea Partiers did. It won’t be exactly the same, of course, since history never repeats itself. But it often memes.
I think it would be wonderful if AG Uthmeier’s investigation bears fruit and the DSA gets outlawed in Florida for taking money from foreign adversaries and terrorist groups. But that is almost beside the point. The brand-new investigation is a sign of an innate biological response starting up. The political antibodies of our two-party system are beginning to attack the invading virus.
A little transparency will do the DSA good. Collectively. Sunlight, as they say, is the best disinfectant. And Florida’s chief export is sunshine. It’s right in the name.
