The WSJ set the table. “The triumph of three left-wing congressional candidates in Tuesday’s New York primaries,” the article reported, “has escalated the Democratic Party’s civil war over its identity.” When your very identity is in play, you are definitionally in crisis. “The clash,” it continued, “pits centrists who have said moderation is the only way to regain power in Washington against a resurgent left, which has sought to oust establishment Democrats.”

Not unreasonably, they are calling it a “civil war.” But it is a little confusing to compare what’s happening in 2026 to the U.S. Civil War, because the Democrats were one of the sides in the 1860s conflict, and they lost.

In 1880 —during Reconstruction— Robert G. Ingersoll gave a famous speech on Wall Street supporting James Garfield for president. You’ve never hear about it, schools don’t teach it, media never quotes it, and when you read this short excerpt, you’ll instantly understand why.

Ready? Here’s a small part of what Ingersoll said in 1880:

“Every man that tried to destroy the Government, every man that shot at the holy flag in heaven, every man that starved our soldiers, every keeper of Libby, Andersonville and Salisbury, every man that wanted to burn the negro, every one that wanted to scatter yellow fever in the North, every man that opposed human liberty, that regarded the auction-block as an altar and the howling of the bloodhound as the music of the Union, every man who wept over the corpse of slavery, that thought lashes on the naked back were a legal tender for labor performed, every one willing to rob a mother of her child — every solitary one was a Democrat.”

JEFF CHILDERS IS PAYWALLED ON SUNDAYS

I may get around to posting the whole thing later

teaser

The DSA published its newly amended political platform this month. The DSA’s platform seeks to tweak the structure of the U.S. government. Just slightly.

It would: abolish the U.S. Senate; subordinate the President and Supreme Court to Congress; defund the Pentagon; shutter all overseas military bases; nationalize major U.S. corporations; impose mandatory Medicare for all; freeze rents; end all economic sanctions, including on Russia, Iran, Cuba, and North Korea; grant blanket amnesty; abolish police and prisons; hand Jerusalem to Palestine; and last but not least, “draft a new constitution.”