The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: The New Democratic Socialist Party Is a ‘Graveyard of Bad Ideas’

Episode Date: February 21, 2026

Are Democrats really ready for a comeback—or are we about to revisit the graveyard of their own failed experiments? The so-called “new paradigms” of the Obama-Biden years—open borders, DEI mandates, deficit socialism, disarmament, and radical gender ideology—didn’t just falter… they collapsed under their own weight, argues Victor Davis Hanson on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words:” 👉 The Daily Signal cannot continue to tell stories, like this one, without the support of our viewers: http://dailysignal.com/donate 👉Don’t miss out on Victor’s latest short videos by subscribing to The Daily Signal today. You’ll be notified every time a new piece of content drops: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1⁠  Also on Spotify: https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL9753340027  👉Want more VDH? Watch Victor’s weekly, hour-long podcast, “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” now! Subscribe to his YouTube channel, and enable notifications:  https://www.youtube.com/@victordavishanson7273?sub_confirmation=1👉More exclusive content is available on Victor’s website: https://victorhanson.com 00:00 Midterms Preview: Trump Counterrevolution vs. a Democratic Comeback 02:15 ‘Graveyard of Bad Ideas’ #1: The Trans Politics Pushback 04:17 Bad Idea #2: Open Borders and the Immigration Backlash 05:37 Bad Ideas #3–4: Disarmament Illusions & Deficit Socialism Debt Bomb 08:00 Bad Idea #5 + Wrap-Up: DEI Fatigue and the Final Verdict Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're heading in this year in November to the midterms. There's a lot of opposition to the Trump counter-revolution. There's talk of a democratic resurgence. Do we really want the alternative? Because especially in the Obama administration and in the post-George Floyd period, we were told that there were new paradigms, new protocols, agendas that were going to be lasting and permanent and change America for the better. And there's four or five things that went full blast under the Obama and Obama. Biden administrations, and I think Trump in this counter-revolution was able to show the American

people that the trans fixation, the open borders, the idea of being pretty much disarmed. I call it deficit socialism in DEI. Didn't work out. I don't think anybody is going to make the argument that we need more socialist entitlement programs funded by borrowed money. I think the way to characterize the new Democratic Socialist Party is it's sort of a graveyard of bad idea. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hansen for the Daily Signal. We're heading in this year in November to the midterms. There's a lot of opposition to the Trump counter-revolution.

There's talk of a democratic resurgence. But before we write off the Republicans, and I'm very confident, I think they're going to do well in the midterms for reasons I've outlined before, do we really want the alternative? I think the way to characterize the new Democratic Socialist Party is it's sort of a graveyard of bad ideas. That is that especially in the Obama administration and in the post-George Floyd period, we were told that there were new paradigms, new exegesis, new protocols, agendas that were going to be lasting and permanent and change America for the better. and they have been tried under Joe Biden, and they've been found wanting.

And I think they're mostly now relegated, as I said, to the Boneyard, maybe of bad ideas. One of them was this idea that a previously small minority of people that suffered from gender dysphoria, maybe 0.001% of the population, was actually a huge group of oppressed peoples in the manner of the civil rights plight of African Americans or Latinos, and therefore we had to recognize separate restrooms for trans people, boys, biological men, I should say, competing in female sports. And we just went whole hog. People, I think all of us at work, all of a sudden one day we woke up and people were listing their pronouns. I haven't seen that recently. Anyway, we were told there was this large, stealthy constituency of oppressed trans people and that they had innate grievances against the majority,

and they were quite big. I don't think people bought into the idea there are more than two biological genders. The rest, I think, as a recent Czech diplomat lectured Hillary Clinton and Munich, the rest are socially constructed. Nor did we really look at the effect of biological males competing in sports, especially contact sports that can be volleyball or things like boxing, the effect of a biological male on female sports and the fairness, or I should say unfairness of it. And of course, the transitional surgery, the effect on hormones, the left had been so careful to warn us about big pharma and the medical industry and unnecessary procedures. And yet they were very undiscriminating and just kind of

approved whole hog the idea that you can make these radical surgeries on young teenagers and give them very dangerous drugs, steroids, and hormones, and idipressants. And I think now we've seen the result of it, and it's not going to recur. Open borders were another bad idea, and we had 10,000 people coming across the border. I think the iconic turning point was when Alejandro Mayork is the former Biden Secretary Homeland Secretary, was standing on a podium and saying at the border, the border is secure, and you could see thousands of people coming in. 10,000 a day, 10 to 12 million over four years.

I don't think anybody realizes the enormity of the task to find those 10 to 12 million. They added to a pool of 20 million, giving us 30 million illegal aliens, and we had another 20 million of people not more than you. United States that were residents, some were citizens, some were legal residents, some were on student visa. But the point is, we have 53 million people, 16% of the population wasn't born here without any idea how to assimilate a culture rate or integrate them into the body politic. So I think the idea of open borders, as Marco Rubio pointed out in Europe, is a dead letter. Nobody's going to come back and say, we have to let in another 10 million or 5 million. It impacts the poor, it swamps our

social welfare network, as we've seen with 500,000 criminals, it spikes our crime. Another one is the idea that we're going to live in a United Nations utopia, and you really don't need a deterrent military. Europe went down that path after the end of the Cold War, 1991, all through the 90s and the new millennium. They disarmed. Germany went from having the biggest army in NATO to having one that wasn't really an army anymore. Europe, despite its $20 trillion GDP and despite its 500 million plus population is totally

disarmed, we ourselves let our defenses lax under Biden. I think everybody sees now after the Iranian nuclear threat what China's up to, what Russia is doing in Ukraine, that you have to deter your enemies, and that requires a strong defense budget. I think as well, we'll We're getting into the trillions of dollars, and we're anticipated to get to, in the next decade, I don't know, it could be $40 trillion in debt. It's not sustainable. The interest on the debt right now is larger than the defense budget. Europe is suffering the same malaise, but the idea of modern monetary theory the left told us

or that since we are loaning the money to ourselves and bondholders, it's turned out to be bogus. The fact is we ran up all of this debt because the Fed during the Obama and First Trump administration and First Biden kept interest rates low, so we borrowed billions, trillions of more dollars at rates as low as two or three percent, and now the rates came up, and we saw what a catastrophic idea that was when we have to service it. I don't think anybody is going to make the argument that we need more socialist entitlement programs funded by borrowed money. If you borrow the money and it's unsustainable, you only have three choices.

You can default on it and ruin the nation's credit rating. You can confiscate money or you can inflate your way out of it. There's a fourth, but I don't see Europe yet learning that lesson. You can grow your economy and get greater revenues. That's what we're trying to do in the United States. Fifth, finally, very quickly, I think diversity, equity, inclusion has sort of been exhausted. It's showed not to be unworkable. That is, how do you determine who is a victim and part of the victim, victimizer, binary,

historical grievances. If you're Latino or black or Asian, do you prove that somebody was mean to you? Your great-grandfather was a slave? It's very hard. If you're one-quarter white, half-Asian, one-quarter Latino, what particular group are you? It was an emphasis on superficial appearance, contrary to content of our character. It was on your color of your skin. that didn't work out too well. It gave people exemptions, and it said that I, psychologically, if I make a mistake, or I don't work hard, or I want to apply to Harvard, but I don't have the SAT scores or the grades of other people, I should get that. Or if I'm in a pilot training program or I'm a surgeon, and I don't quite make the standards,

there's other criteria, kind of like the Russian comissar system, where if you were ideologically pure, then you were given exemptions from performance. And so I think we now see that DEI is disruptive, it's discriminatory. And I think after experimenting with this under the guise of affirmative action, but especially the last four or five years, people are sick of it. It's incoherent, and it's dangerous. It's dangerous. It puts people in key positions.

in the economy where life and death matters and they are promoted or assessed or retained on criteria other than merit. And so we can sum up by saying there's four or five things that went full bloom, full blast under the Obama and Biden administrations. And I think Trump in this counter-revolution was able to show the American people that the trans fixation, the open borders, the idea of being. pretty much disarmed deficits. I call it deficit socialism and DEI didn't work out. There was a laboratory in the United States that tried these things and it hasn't worked. And Europe, I think,

would agree that it has to follow the same pathway of reform or it's going to end up a third world country. Thank you very much. This is Victor Davis Hansen for the Daily Signal. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhansson.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.