Masks are slipping away on the progressive left, as the 2020 election comes into focus. Not only do we know that a “coup” was planned by foes of President Trump, we now can openly and unreservedly speak of another unpleasant but inescapable truth that was revealed during the past year. Prior to the surprise victory of Democrat Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) last June 26 in her primary race for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, it was largely frowned upon to describe the Democratic Party as “socialist.” Over the summer, the rag tag far left Occupy ICE movement gained support among elected local Democrat politicians in many cities around the country. By the fall, Democrat candidates for governor  in Florida and Georgia, and for the U.S. Senate in Texas, were echoing the abolish ICE/Open Borders theme of the Occupy radicals.

When the Democrats captured the House in the November Midterm elections, what was left of a moderate mask was finally torn off as Democrat leaders and newbie members of Congress alike jumped on the socialist bandwagon. In the three and a half months since the election, with full-blown socialist AOC having emerged as the most prominent and arguably the most influential Democrat politician in the country, the definition of Democrats as “socialists” can no longer be denied.

This is happening at the same time that socialism’s disastrous failure in Venezuela is utterly undeniable. Millions of starving Venezuelans have fled to neighboring countries like Colombia, and the Maduro dictatorship survives solely on the basis of support from senior military officials who have been bribed and fear retribution when the “socialist paradise” they have fashioned collapses.

Mass demonstration against socialist Maduro regime in Caracas, January 23, 2019

(Photo credit: Voice of America)

Yet virtually every Democrat to date who has declared his or her intention to run for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination has outright endorsed or made positive comments about AOC’s mind-boggling authoritarian socialist proposals for a Green New Deal and abolishing I.C.E., in addition to echoing party leaders’ calls for government-run socialized medicine, open borders, free college education, and so on. Any claims by the diminishing number of moderate Democrats, or by a chameleon presidential wannabe like Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) who is trying to thread the needle between her party’s far left base and more moderate Americans, that the party is not in fact “socialist” now seem increasingly ridiculous.

Peter Barry Chowka writes about politics, media, popular culture, and health care for American Thinker and other publications.  Follow him on Twitter at @pchowka.