It’s been one of the Democrats’ greatest self-delusions of this election cycle that voters are somehow indifferent to the party’s wild leftward lurch. “Let me tell you what I’m hearing,” House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) said on CNN’s “The Situation Room.” “The American people don’t care about these [socialism] labels. They don’t care about a created inter-Democratic party fight. …They want people who are going to work for them.” Unfortunately for Clark, people aren’t just perplexed by the growing influence of the Democratic Socialists in U.S. politics — they’re sincerely disturbed. And that fear is driving them straight into the arms of an increasingly rational-sounding GOP.

Whether Clark and company actually buy into the fantasy that the DSA’s platform appeals to voters, the polling paints a very different picture. In a survey released by The Center Square Voters’ Voice, 55% of American voters admitted they were concerned about Democratic Socialist candidates running for and winning elected office. Of those, 35% were “very concerned.”

That’s a great sign for Republicans, who’ve been hammering the other side on the liability of their alliance with the DSA for months. Not only does it mean their constant messaging on the threats of socialism is paying off, it also shows that the American people are taking their warnings seriously. And while Democrats want everyone to believe that they have all the momentum heading into November 3, the reality is proving to be a lot more complicated. If anything, this suggests that Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s (D-N.Y.) party could have a legitimate problem closing the deal with voters. 

Of course, that’s the trouble with sticking your finger in the political winds to define yourselves. At some point, your positions become so elastic that voters no longer understand or trust what you stand for. And yet, DNC Chair Ken Martin is ignoring the country’s alarm, explaining away this socialist-communist alliance as a necessary evolution. “We have to keep growing, and we have to keep expanding this tent,” he told MS Now. But without a central pole, a unifying set of principles the electorate can rely on, the tent collapses. And that may be what we’re witnessing here.

Worse, it’s starting to reek of opportunism, not true ideological realignment. “They want to win at all costs,” Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) pointed out on “Washington Watch.” “I am never willing to sacrifice the great American Republic for a political win. So the reality is … [t]hey’ll put a radical leftist where they need to. They’ll put a so-called moderate where they need to,” he emphasized. At the end of the day, Fleischmann urged, voters can’t let them get away with that. The stakes are too high. 

Look, the Tennessean reiterated, “Everywhere that socialism has taken root across the world, it has failed. It has destroyed economic freedom. It has destroyed political freedom. It has destroyed republics. It has killed people. It has been tyranny on the Left. That’s why we must reject that. If you look at the agenda that they’re espousing through democratic socialism,” he warned, “they are fiercely un-American, anti-American, and [ready] to destroy the way of life that our great Founding Fathers have given us for the past 250 years.” 

They’ll destroy our Constitution, Fleischmann stressed. “They will try to pack the courts. They will try to take property rights away. They’re not shy about this. They want to take gun rights away. This would be a disaster for the American republic. … We have got to reject what the Democrats are standing for — not because we’re Republicans, but because we’re good Americans.”

If people really understood what this agenda meant for our country, the number of people concerned about socialists winning our elections would be a lot higher than 55%, the congressman argued. “One hundred percent of the American electorate should be concerned, because the two terms don’t go together. Socialism is antithetical to democracy, to our great republic — which values not only political but economic freedom. ... It surprises me and shocks me that more people are not concerned. … In order for freedom to ring from sea to shining sea, we have got to be rid of socialism. … This is a scare.”

One of President Trump’s most powerful weapons on the campaign trail has been using his own influence to drive home these points. And while he may not be on the ballot, he understands the importance of reminding low-propensity voters who don’t normally turn out at the midterms that his ability to do anything these next two years is contingent on a cooperative House and Senate — not one clamoring to abolish the institution altogether. He’s not exaggerating when he describes the socialist-communist movement as a bigger threat to America than the World Wars and 9/11 combined. “Because … when you go communist,” he underscored, “you never go back. You die in squalor, you die a horrible death. … And it gets very evil and very nasty.”

In places like Ohio, painting Democrats with this unflattering brush has been surprisingly easy, thanks to the party’s shocking embrace of the radical fringe. “Sherrod Brown is the candidate of the Marxists, the communists, the anti-American radicals, who want to tear down America’s heritage,” the president told a crowd in Youngstown, where he argued that Brown also wants the Midwest “turned into Mogadishu.” His closing argument was an effective one: “It’s one vote, but that one vote can steer Congress into a direction that you’re not going to be happy with. And it’s not Ohio values.”

Then there are experts, like author Larry Taunton, who are sounding the alarm that this isn’t just about the DSA. The entire socialist movement, he stresses, is a cover for the radical Islamists. It’s one reason we see so many Muslim candidates like Abdul El-Sayed aligning with the DSA. “I think it’s incredibly important for your audience to understand,” he said on “Washington Watch” Monday, “when we’re talking about individuals like [Rep.] Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), or we are talking about the mayor of New York, or we’re talking about the mayor of London, and many of the mayors throughout the U.K, these people are not socialists. You see, Muslims are watching the polls, too. And what they recognize is that Islam still doesn’t … sell very well in the West — and in the United States in particular. So what they’ve done is they have seen that socialism does. And so, they are using socialism as a Trojan horse for the penetration of American government and as a pathway to power,” he warned. “They don’t care anything about the fair and equal distribution of wealth. That doesn’t matter to them at all. … This is lying. This is presenting a false face in order to get what they want, which is power.”

Socialism is bad enough, but throw in Sharia law enthusiasts who want to subjugate Americans and annihilate Jews and Christians? That’s downright terrifying. 

It’s one reason that Speaker Mike Johnson believes Republicans are more motivated than the media is giving them credit for. “Look, they know the urgency,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “This Week on Capitol Hill.” He thinks this confluence of the Democrats’ extremism could upend the gloomy historic trends for the party in power. “That’s not going to happen this time, because the [one] motivating factor in the midterm is anger, but the other is fear. And we have a legitimate fear right now of the rise of Marxism, communism, socialism in the Democrat[ic] Party. The fact that they published their platform and they want to abolish the border and abolish prisons and defund police and the Department of War and abolish the U.S. Senate — all this crazy stuff. People do not think that is the way that we should go,” he emphasized. “They believe in common sense. In a common-sense contest, Republicans win hands down. And we are having a big divergence now between the parties that has never been there before. I think people are seeing that,” he insisted. “I think they’re going to respond accordingly.”