President Donald Trump and his Republican allies spent Tuesday calling Democrats communists. Not socialists. Not progressives. Communists. Because when you're losing ground to candidates who want healthcare, you reach for the red scare playbook from 1952.
Michigan voters heard the word "communist" more times on their way to the polls than a Cold War film festival. Progressive candidates had won some elections. Trump's response was to dust off McCarthy's thesaurus and start pointing fingers. Bold strategy. Nothing says "I have a coherent economic message" like screaming about hammer-and-sickle conspiracies while standing in a state that makes pickup trucks.
The attacks escalated after progressive primary wins. Republican strategists apparently workshopped "communist" and decided it tested better than "people who want you to afford insulin." They went all-in. Campaign ads. Rally speeches. Probably skywriting if the budget allowed.
Here's what's remarkable about calling your opponents communists in America. It means you've run out of actual policy criticisms. You can't attack their tax plan, so you imply they're secretly planning to collectivize the wheat harvest. You can't debate infrastructure, so you suggest they're taking orders from a Politburo that dissolved before half the electorate was born.
Michigan voters walked into voting booths after being told the other candidate wanted to seize the means of production. They probably looked at the ballot, saw a name next to "Democrat," and wondered if they missed the part where anyone proposed abolishing private property. They didn't miss it. It never happened. But Trump said the word anyway, over and over, like a man who discovered one power chord and decided to play it until the amplifier caught fire.
The best part? This is the same party that claims to hate cancel culture and political correctness. But call a Democrat a communist without evidence and suddenly everyone's fine with it. Words don't mean anything anymore. Communist just means "person I don't like." By that definition, half of Trump's former cabinet qualifies.
Photo by Joshua Woroniecki on Unsplash
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