The Briefing, Vol. XIV, Issue 31
Aug. 10, 2026
This week:
- Will Americans have to re-learn the lessons of socialism?
- DSA candidate leads in Wisconsin
- El-Sayed nomination another clear indicator of Democrats’ direction
Outlook
Communism is on the march in America — and it may just save Republicans’ Senate majority.
With the extremely narrow primary victory of former Wayne County health official Abdul E-Sayed (D) in Michigan (more below), Democratic voters are rolling the dice. They are gambling that the high energy on their party’s far-left wing will carry the day. And they are betting the house on the idea that normie voters will overlook the rapid progression of their party toward socialism, antisemitism and classic Soviet-influenced anti-Americanism disguised as anti-imperialism.
Democrats, in short, are betting heavily that candidates associated with the Democratic Socialists of America organization — including its members, endorsees and people like El-Sayed who falsely deny their extensive involvement in the DSA, including raising money for it — can win in critical states that will determine Senate control in 2027, including also Maine.
False oath? It is important to understand something about all candidates associated with the DSA. The organization’s agenda involves an overthrow of the U.S. Constitution: a socialist revolution and the abolition of the Senate and the Electoral College. Given this, it is highly doubtful that any DSA-aligned candidate can truthfully take the oath of office to support and defend the U.S. Constitution while also espousing the DSA platform. The two are logically incompatible.
At the very least, Senate abolition is incompatible with the Constitution, which forbids the denial of any state’s equal representation in the U.S. Senate without its consent. Senate abolition would thus require all 50 states’ cooperation — or else a violent revolution.
The Democratic Socialists of America platform also involves impractical and obviously ridiculous measures that would, frankly, destroy ordinary Americans’ daily quality of life. For example, DSA demands a 32-hour maximum work-week (no pay cuts for the shorter hours, of course) and government ownership of major corporations. Shouldn’t we all be able to just stop working and depend on a new regime to make our economy more equal? What could go wrong?
Black Democrats vs. DSA: Importantly, DSA also calls for the abolition of police to arrest violent criminals and the abolition of prisons to confine them. It would abolish all border enforcement, at a moment when a truly secure border has finally been established for the first time in a century or more.
It says a lot that black Americans — a group critical to the Democratic coalition but also overwhelmingly overrepresented among victims of violent crime — tend to vote overwhelmingly against DSA candidates in Democratic primaries. In fact, they were leaned upon heavily in South Carolina to block socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) from the Democratic nomination during the 2020 primary process.
Communism failed decades ago. The average American understands that the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was a new birth of freedom. The East German state — run by the predecessors of today’s loosely affiliated “Anitfa” organizations across the U.S. — was a locus of evil that the world does not miss. The Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse was rightly celebrated as an unqualified good, despite the subsequent direction the Russian state has taken. Mainland China’s turn away from Maoism and toward open markets in the late 1970s is credited with the lifting of more than half a billion people out of poverty — China’s more recent backsliding toward authoritarianism has been received with deep regret and somber tones in the West.
In short, most American voters over age 30 understand about communism and its incompatibility with personal freedom and flourishing.
If one of the nation’s two major political parties embraces socialism, then something will suffer or crack as a result — perhaps that political party, or perhaps the nation itself.
Governor 2026
Florida: Rep. Byron Donalds (R) is the overwhelming favorite in next week’s primary to replace term-limited Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). Although he and Donalds are intra-party enemies, DeSantis will not be endorsing his own lieutenant governor, Jay Collins (R), the only other serious candidate in the race.
Wisconsin: This election may be a case of too clever by half. Democrats tried to reshuffle this race far too many times, far too late in the game. Having now forced three major candidates to drop out and one to re-enter the race at the last minute, the party’s luminaries may have already ruined their chances.
Democrats appear doomed to nominate Thanksgiving abolitionist Francesca Hong (D), the prison-abolitionist and DSA socialist. Of all the Democrats now eligible to win the nomination, Hong has the greatest chance of losing the November election to the certain Republican nominee, Rep. Tom Tiffany (R).
The re-entrant to the race, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley (D), is probably too late to overtake Hong. Voter confusion will play at least a minor role — it will be interesting to see how many voters back (or have already backed in early voting) one of the candidates who is no longer in the race.
Senate 2026
Michigan: El-Sayed’s extremely narrow primary victory came in spite of as much as $62 million from AIPAC and other establishment Democratic sources being spent to boost the candidacy of establishment favorite Rep. Haley Stevens (D). The disparity in resources was vast — the money spent on Stevens’s behalf was roughly ten times what was spent to help El-Sayed.
This serves as a canary in the Democratic Party coal mine. Aside from its DSA problem, this race is an illustration that Democrats who support Israel are probably fooling themselves that they still have a place in the party.
El-Sayed’s surreptitiously recorded statement to staff about respecting the feelings of voters who are mourning the deceased Ayatollah Khamenei as a religious hero is quite revealing and certainly does not help advance the American ideal of religious pluralism.
Even in a year when the tide is running out from the Republican Party and Democrats are likely to win control in one or both houses of Congress, El-Sayed — a heavily DSA-involved candidate who denies being a socialist — must be considered an underdog against the Republican nominee, former House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers (R). Although the race will be a coin flip, and although no Republican has won a Senate race in Michigan since 1996, El-Sayed’s nomination definitely harms Democrats’ chances of winning this seat and thus the Senate.
Minnesota: Rep. Angie Craig (D), the moderate, and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (D), the progressive but non-DSA alternative candidate, are wrapped up in a very close race for the open-seat Senate nomination that will be decided in tomorrow’s primary. A late poll suggests that the race, once Flanagan’s to lose, has tightened to within the margin of error, and it is hard to say who will come out on top in that contest, but Republicans would prefer to have their likely nominee, Michele Tafoya (R), run against the more radical Flanagan.
South Carolina: With President Trump’s endorsement, appointed Sen. Darline Graham Nordone (R) is expected to finish first and make the runoff in tomorrow’s snap special election primary to replace her brother, the late Lindsey Graham. Reps. Ralph Norman and Russell Fry, and former Gov. Mark Sanford (R) are in a close contest for the second slot in the runoff, a new poll suggests.
