What’s driving local Democrats to the fringe Left?

Defunding the police. Confiscatory rent controls. Extremist racial equity policies. Back-door public housing. Decarceration. Brandon Poulter at the Daily Caller takes a look at the far-Left wing of the Democratic Party, and how it’s pressuring moderate Democrats in the Bay Area and around the country into extremist positions that are out of step with the party's mainstream.

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is gaining steam in recent years and has been pushing the Democratic Party to the left, particularly in deep blue cities, advocating for policies that even moderate Democrats disagree with.

Democratic Socialists make up the left flank of the Democratic Party, supporting abolishing prisons, aggressive climate policies, rent controls and radical racial equity policies, according to the Democratic Socialist website. They’ve been aggressively adding to their membership over the past few years, as well as gaining ground in key deep blue cities such as New York City, Los Angeles and Minneapolis, calling for radical policy changes and opposing mainstream Democrats. 

Big cities in blue states are havens for Democratic Socialists, with a large number of them on city councils in deep blue cities. Recent gains in these cities for Democratic Socialists have pushed the politics of blue cities to the left.

Los Angeles has at least three Democratic Socialists of the 15 members of the Los Angeles city council, where Democratic Socialists regularly depart from the orthodoxy, many of whom vote against budget increases for police departments, such as Democratic Los Angeles Councilman Hugo Soto-Martinez and Democratic Los Angeles Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez.

Hernandez has called for abolishing the police, shutting down prisons and the decriminalization of hard drugs, according to the Los Angeles Times. Meanwhile, police data showed robberies, burglaries, and thefts increasing in Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has lost nearly 1,000 officers since 2019, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Soto-Martinez and Martinez stood by the co-founder of Black Lives Matter, Patrisse Cullors, in a press conference where she called on LAPD to stop responding to minor traffic violations, according to Los Angeles Daily News. Soto-Martinez also called it a “terrible mistake” when one of his staffers called the police, asking them to patrol the area more than usual to protect his broken down Lexus, according to the Fox News.

“For all of the working class to achieve collective liberation, we must constrain, diminish, and abolish the carceral forces of the state — from prisons and police themselves,” the DSA’s website reads.

This article originally appeared in the Daily Caller. Read the whole thing here.

Read about what the Silicon Valley Dem Socialists are up to here.

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