At this year’s Fourth of July celebration, marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Donald Trump devoted part of his speech to an attack on “communism.” Sounding a note from an earlier era of the nation’s history, he hissed about the “communist menace,” which he called “a mortal threat to American liberty,” a “cancer” that needs to be “cut out,” and “the greatest threat to our country.”

Trump never explicitly said which “communists” posed this threat in 2026, but the context was obvious enough. A week and a half earlier, three self-described democratic socialists won congressional primaries in New York City. Two were members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). In combination with several downballot victories the same night, and DSA victories in congressional primaries shortly before (in Philadelphia) and shortly afterward (in Denver), this created a palpable sense of socialist momentum.

Naturally, along with the denunciation from Trump, the socialist victories have led to a tsunami of anti-socialist opinion from conservative and centrist liberal pundits. At times this has been very strange and amusing. Writing in the Denver Gazette after the primary victory of DSA member Melat Kiros in Colorado’s 1st district, for example, Vince Bzdek bemoans that DSA’s recently adopted “Workers Deserve More” platform makes for “shocking reading” on “the 250th anniversary of our country,” because it “essentially calls for an end to the American experiment as we know it.” Bzdek then lists a number of anodyne and attractive provisions, such as lowering the workweek to thirty-two hours, abolishing the Electoral College so that presidential elections will be decided by popular vote, and guaranteeing health care as a right. Apparently, he takes it for granted that his readers will be as shocked as he is by the thought of expanding democracy and delivering material improvements for the working class.