From the Desk of RI House Minority Leader Michael Chippendale:

The Democratic Party Is Being Taken Over by Communists

Two great American presidents, one Democrat and one Republican, understood the danger of communist infiltration. John F. Kennedy warned that communist power advanced through infiltration and subversion, not always open invasion. Ronald Reagan later reminded the nation that “nothing is less free than pure communism.”

Both men understood that dangerous ideologies rarely seize institutions all at once. They move gradually. They adopt softer language. They exploit legitimate grievances. Then they transform organizations from within.

That is what is happening inside the Democratic Party right now.

For years, Republicans were accused of exaggeration whenever we warned that the Democratic Party was moving toward socialism. We were told the radicals were merely a loud fringe, that “democratic socialism” meant little more than generous social programs, and that no serious political movement wanted to dismantle capitalism or fundamentally reorder America.

That argument is no longer credible. The socialist movement is not standing outside the Democratic Party with protest signs. It is operating inside the party, contesting Democratic primaries, defeating established Democrats, capturing offices, and using Democratic ballot lines as a vehicle for power.

The Democratic Socialists of America has built a national political operation that recruits candidates, organizes activists, and pushes the party left from within. Its strategy is obvious: organize intensely in low-turnout Democratic primaries, overwhelm complacent incumbents, and then rely on the overwhelmingly Democratic nature of the district to make September and November mere formalities. That is how a small but disciplined ideological movement captures a much larger political party.

And let’s not pretend this is some harmless campus debating society. The DSA agenda goes far beyond the traditional American safety net. Its platform calls for government-run health care, tuition-free public college, student-debt cancellation, universal rent control, social housing, paid leave, universal childcare, demilitarized police departments, and the abolition of cash bail and mandatory minimums.

The language is carefully softened: justice, equity, affordability, democracy. They have hijacked the modern political lexicon and repackaged radical government control as compassion. But the pattern is unmistakable. Declare nearly every human need an enforceable government right. Insist private enterprise is structurally incapable of meeting that need. Then transfer more property, capital, authority, and individual decision-making to the state.

Call it communism, Marxism, democratic socialism, or progressivism. The label matters less than the direction. These people are pushing Rhode Island and America away from liberty, private property, limited government, and the free enterprise system that made this nation the greatest on earth.

Rhode Island Democrats spent decades congratulating themselves for being a “big tent” party. That phrase once meant there was room for union families, working-class voters, small-business owners, social liberals, social conservatives, and traditional Democrats who disagreed on individual issues but still shared a basic commitment to American institutions.

Today, that tent is becoming a one-way trap. Traditional Democrats are expected to accommodate the radicals, excuse their rhetoric, advance their legislation, and support their nominees. If they refuse, they are branded DINOs, marginalized, and attacked from inside their own party. The radicals, meanwhile, openly organize to defeat traditional Democrats and replace them with candidates who satisfy an increasingly rigid ideological test.

That is not a big tent. It is a hostile takeover. Or, to use their preferred language, a revolution.

Rhode Island Democratic leaders seem either too complacent or too frightened to confront the Progressive and DSA wing that has invaded their party. They keep treating it as another constituency to manage, even as it works to capture more seats, control more committees, and drag the entire party further left.

The establishment believes it can absorb the radicals, borrow their energy, and remain in control. That is the delusion. The ideological faction does not need to represent most Democratic voters. It only needs to be more disciplined, more aggressive, and more willing to challenge incumbents than the comfortable establishment it intends to replace. The DSA is violating the very “code” that the RI Democratic Kingdom was built on. They don’t ask for, want, or need the support of the party in order to win. That dynamic, which once imbued the Democratic Party leaders with the ability to hand pick their successors has been disregarded by the Progressives. In-fact, it’s been weaponized by them to defeat stunned Democrats who are still too shocked the realize that their “code” has been discarded.

The best analogy is not a growing tent. It is a metastatic cancer attaching itself to a weak host. At first, the infection appears limited. The host convinces itself the problem is isolated. It adapts, compromises, and continues functioning. But the cancer does not compromise. It spreads. It consumes healthy tissue. Eventually, it takes control of the very systems that once restrained it.

That is what the Progressive and DSA movement is doing to the Democratic Party. And it is stunning to watch some of my Democratic colleagues once described as moderate or conservative not only allow it to happen but make excuses for people who openly despise the American way of life. People who – when the time is right, will metaphorically slit the throats of those very same “moderate Democrats” who made excuses for them.

When even Chuck Schumer is not considered progressive enough, the shift should be obvious. Schumer is no conservative Democrat. He has been one of the most powerful liberal politicians in America for decades. Yet progressive activists treat him as an obstacle to be removed. When Chuck Schumer becomes the establishment moderate, the political measuring stick has moved dramatically.

We are watching the same movement here in Rhode Island. Representative David Morales entered the Rhode Island House with support from the Democratic Socialists of America. First elected in 2020, he is now running for mayor of Providence.

For six years, I have watched Morales stand during the Pledge of Allegiance in the House chamber with his fist clenched while refusing to recite the pledge. That is his constitutional right, and I will defend that right. But voters also have every right to judge what that gesture communicates from a man seeking executive authority over Rhode Island’s capital city. They should understand the sick, twisted ideologies behind that clenched fist. They should realize that refusal to honor the flag is a view into who they really are and what they believe.

This is not just a disagreement over manners or symbolism. Most Americans understand the Pledge of Allegiance as a basic expression of fidelity to the country that protects our freedom to disagree. The socialist left increasingly treats traditional expressions of American patriotism as symbols of an unjust system that must be resisted, dismantled, or replaced. Then, when ordinary Americans still applaud patriotism, the radicals smear them as extremists or White Supremacists.

That is how they erode institutions. Corrupt the language. Weaponize the terms. Turn ordinary people against the country that gave them more freedom and opportunity than any nation in history.

Morales is not an obscure protest candidate. He is a sitting state representative, an experienced political organizer, and a serious contender for mayor. Providence voters could realistically place a DSA-aligned politician in charge of the city. And once again, the complaint from the radical left is that Mayor Brett Smiley is not progressive enough. That should stun everyone.

Rhode Island Democrats should stop pretending this is an isolated personality or a harmless faction within their coalition. Every time party leaders dismiss radical proposals as youthful enthusiasm, excuse contempt for American traditions as mere expression, reward socialist politicians with influence, or rally behind DSA-backed nominees in the name of party unity, they strengthen the movement working to replace them.

They tell themselves they are preserving the big tent. In reality, they are feeding the movement that is killing the host. Are they trying to fool themselves? Are they making excuses for their complacency? I don’t know – but the result will still be the same.

For decades, any Republican who warned about the radical transformation of one of America’s major political parties would have been dismissed as paranoid, accused of McCarthyism, compared to the John Birch Society, or branded with whatever label was useful that week. Those labels became a substitute for honest examination. And the communists have used that tactic well.

Slap whatever label you will onto me – I frankly don’t care. We are far beyond the point where intimidation and name-calling should end the discussion. This ideology is no longer hiding in obscure organizations or on the fringes of American politics. Its advocates are winning primaries, holding public office, controlling institutions, and advancing policies that would have been considered unthinkably radical only a generation ago.

It is time to call a spade a spade. Republicans should describe what is happening directly, accurately, and without apology. The objective is not merely to expand existing social programs. It is to fundamentally reorder the relationship between the citizen, private property, the economy, and the state.

Kennedy and Reagan understood that communist movements advance not only through open confrontation, but through infiltration, subversion, and the gradual capture of institutions.

The socialist left is telling us exactly what it intends to do with power… It is high time we believed them.

Respectfully,

House Minority Leader Mike Chippendale