The U.S. midterm elections definitely settled one political question: The Democratic Party has deep political divisions that clever rhetoric can no longer hide.

Moreover, these divisions are ripe for exploitation by foreign and domestic enemies, destructive actors who don't give a damn about the price of eggs, diesel fuel and housing in New York City or rural Iowa.

Why are we here?

For six decades, mainstream Democrats pretended they had "no enemies to the Left."

The delusion was convenient — just get through the next election, and then the mainstream will assuage then moderate the hard Lefties by giving them a few social programs and prestigious Senate and House committee assignments.

Nancy Pelosi tried to follow this script with the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-led Squad.

Alas, Squad members never moderated.

In the 2026 midterm elections, characters like Abdul El-Sayed (Democrat Senate nominee in Michigan) and noxious anti-Semitic pundit Hasan Piker ("America deserved 9/11") emerged as influential voices in national Democrat politics. Their uncurbed extremism makes it clear remaining pro-U.S. defense, pro-law enforcement and pro-free enterprise Democrats have a huge problem with their party's hard-left Islamo-Socialist wing.

The "no enemies" epigram has an instructive history. Russian revolutionary leader Alexander Kerensky (1881-1970) coined the phrase during the Russian revolutionary chaos of 1917 — after the Czar fell.

Kerensky was a moderate socialist and Russian patriot — a Menshevik. He advocated maintaining Russia's World War I alliance with France and Britain. He favored a popularly elected Russian constituent assembly. For a short time in 1917, Kerensky led Russia's new and brittle government. To demonstrate his revolutionary bona fides and appease Communist Vladimir Lenin, Kerensky adopted a philosophy of "no enemies to the (political) Left." He rejected the support of monarchists and democratic nationalists. Label them the conservatives of that precarious moment in time.

Alas. All Kerensky's quip wisdom did was empower Lenin and his violent Bolsheviks. Lenin took control of the military and police, then toppled Kerensky.

One last point: Kerensky died in New York City. Yes, in Free America. The once upon a time well-meaning Russian liberal had a safe place to hide from violent, authoritarian Marxist socialism.

Call it what it was and is: communist dictatorship.

How did the Democratic Party of FDR and JFK get Menshevik-Bolshevik in 2026?

Desperation declarations supported by street violence has been a recurrent hard Left tactic that to some degree has benefited Democrat moderates. The hard Left is very good at declaring (and sometimes creating) an economic or social crisis. A gasoline crisis. An affordability crisis. A racism and police brutality crisis. Oh, we had that. Black Lives Matter and anti-ICE riots in major cities.

But institutional support and control by the hard Left is the long-term strategic and midterm operational story.

Italian Communist professor Antonio Gramsci coined the term "war of position." Gramsci argued that in order to take and maintain power (in liberal Western societies), the Left had to wage a careful "war of position" to gain "decisive influence in society." The Left would conduct a "long march through the institutions" of power (academia, media, government). Eventually, the positioned Left would be strong enough to wage a "war of maneuver" — which included seeding internal disorder and taking violent action to remove its cornered liberal enemies.

Which takes us to the Cloward-Piven strategy. In 1966, Richard Cloward and Francis Fox Piven, two left-wing Columbia University profs, wrote a manifesto arguing social activist revolutionaries could use "militant anti-poverty groups" to "overload" welfare systems and create an economic crisis that would lead to a decisive "political crisis."

Academic socialists loved the manifesto.

Between 2021 and 2024, the Biden administration let 15 to 20 million illegal aliens into the U.S. and began providing them with welfare benefits — which stressed the U.S. social safety net and spurred inflation. The defund the police movement encouraged anarchy. Cloward-Piven inspired? Fair question.

El-Sayed, Piker and their red-green cohort thrive on harsh rhetoric, division and violent threat.

Red-green? It's the Watermelon Coalition, a vegetable as unstable as the 1917 Menshevik-Bolshevik combo. It's Islamist green on the outside, communist red on the inside.

This toxic fruit has money roots in Communist China and Al Qaeda. My bet: The Islamists will be the Bolsheviks of the Watermelon Coalition and the university-bred white left-wingers will just be dead.

To find out more about Austin Bay and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.