Leftists Change Rules When They Can’t Change Minds
Victor Davis Hanson argues that modern leftists and socialists share a willingness to dismantle American institutions when democratic processes don't deliver desired outcomes.
According to Victor Davis Hanson writing in New York Post, the Democratic Party’s transformation in recent years has created natural allies with Democratic Socialists, united by a willingness to overturn longstanding institutions and constitutional norms when they prove obstacles to power.
The columnist argues that Democratic radicalism during the Trump era — including aggressive lawfare tactics, the Mar-a-Lago raid, and proposals to eliminate the Electoral College and expand the Supreme Court — laid the groundwork for even more extreme positions. What unites the various factions of the left, Hanson contends, is their refusal to accept unfavorable electoral results, instead choosing to blame and seek to transform the constitutional framework that has governed America for over two centuries.
Institutional Warfare and Rule Changes
When Democrats lost control of the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court, the response wasn’t introspection but institutional warfare. Proposals emerged to grant statehood to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico to secure additional Senate seats, while federal law enforcement agencies were weaponized for political purposes and social media platforms enlisted to suppress unfavorable news coverage.
The socialist wing simply escalated these tactics, calling for the abolition of core American institutions including the presidency, the Senate, border enforcement, police departments, and even the Pentagon.
Demographic Transformation as Strategy
By 2021, border security had been effectively dismantled, resulting in approximately 10 million illegal immigrants entering the country without background checks, English proficiency requirements, health screenings, or means of self-support. Had Kamala Harris won the 2024 election, another four years would have brought millions more, Hanson writes.
This represents a deliberate strategy to alter American demography, with the expectation that new immigrant populations will embrace the grievance-based politics exemplified by figures like Representative Ilhan Omar, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
These politicians represent a departure from traditional immigrant narratives, Hanson argues. Rather than gratitude for opportunities unavailable in their countries of origin, they focus exclusively on American failings while remaining dependent on the systems they criticize. They condemn both living Americans and the nation’s founders, even as they benefit from the freedom, security, and prosperity those institutions created.
Marxist Framework With New Variables
The neo-Marxist approach has simply substituted racial and gender identity for traditional class consciousness while maintaining the same goal: mandated equality of outcome through the destruction of established norms and institutions.
Key radical left priorities — defunding police, eliminating border security, granting mass amnesty to illegal immigrants, mandating renewable energy while attacking fossil fuels, and implementing racial preferences in hiring and university admissions — have never achieved more than 30 to 40 percent public support. Rather than reassessing unpopular positions, the strategy has been to change the system that denies them power.
Moving Goalposts
The left’s demands continually escalate, Hanson observes. Once equality of opportunity was largely achieved, the new demand became mandated equality of outcome. When class-based grievance politics proved insufficient as the middle class expanded, the focus shifted to racial victimization. When even that failed to create a majority coalition, the definition of “victim” expanded to include anyone not classified as a white heterosexual male, regardless of actual privilege or economic status.
When Americans rejected this social engineering, the left moved to transform how elections are conducted, how government functions, and ultimately the nation’s demographic composition itself.
Human Nature Rejects Coercion
The fundamental problem, according to the analysis, is that human nature instinctively rejects forced statism, coercive wealth redistribution, and government-mandated equality of results. People naturally desire liberty and freedom instead.
No amount of deception or indoctrination can sustain public support for socialism or communism over time. Throughout history, leftist movements have therefore resorted to changing electoral rules, imposing policies through bureaucratic fiat and sympathetic court decisions, and when those prove insufficient, outright violence.
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness.
With information from New York Post
