The Democratic Party's Growing Socialist Divide

0:00 Speaker 1 Well, like every Sunday, Governor David Patterson is the common sense person and a common sense Democrat. And he is upset about what’s going on in the party that he grew up in and has been in it forever. And, well, Governor Patterson, are we making progress? Because I was a Democrat.

0:21 Speaker 2 Too, at one point.

0:23 Speaker 3 Well, I would hope we’re making progress because The Socialist Party is.

0:28 Speaker 2 Much more difficult.

0:30 Speaker 3 It’s not like the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, and some other party. The Socialist Party’s pure aim is to win. After they win, they never seem to have any good ideas about what they want to do.

0:44 Speaker 2 Look at Mayor Mamdani. He’s a socialist candidate. He ran on the Democratic line and won. And when he gets into office.

0:52 Speaker 3 Instead of working on issues of poor housing and crime and unemployment and underemployment in the city, he’s working on finding ways to upstage people and to criticize them, which is not really what you want the mayor of New York to do. So since that is the case, I really hope that my fellow Democrats... will not fall for

1:17 this and let the socialists start to outweigh them in the general election, which is only about nine weeks away. It’s going to be important to make sure that a foundation is laid as to what’s going to happen if some of these candidates win. Now, a lot of these are legislative and city council races, so one person won’t

1:37 be able to make that much of a difference, but 10 or 15 people can. And I don’t think there should be 10 or 15 people socialist Democrats beating the regular Democrats in November?

1:52 Speaker 1 I tend to believe that. And I think that the socialists have been trying to take, I guess, race by race. And they really have terrorized the common sense Democrats, which I thought was, I. Was outraged. Because I have a lot of friends in the Democratic Party.

2:12 And I hope that this November that the common sense Democrats dominate and the socialist Democrats, that the world realizes that they’re a temporary situation.

2:30 Speaker 2 That’s a good point, John.

2:32 Speaker 3 For a long time, the socialists have always been around. They always have little parties and they run against this one or that one.

2:40 Speaker 2 Rarely do they ever win.

2:42 Speaker 3 But just in the past, I’d say, 12 to 18 months, socialists were winning primaries away from Democratic candidates. The Democratic congressmen who replaced Charlie Rangel up in Harlem got beaten by the socialist, Mr. Chevalier, partly because I don’t think he worked hard enough. But the situation is dire because this is, I think, even people in the Republican Party,

3:10 are worried about this type of situation because we like in this country to have a dialogue. We like to go back and forth. We like to really challenge each other on issues. The Democrats have certain issues they like and the Republicans have their own. But you can’t even have this going on when the Democratic Party is fighting

3:29 this upheaval from within. And I don’t think this has been caused by mistakes that Democrats have made other than the fact that a lot of people who’ve been elected, they keep getting elected year after year after year.

3:41 Speaker 2 They never lose.

3:43 Speaker 3 But then once in a while, somebody mounts a challenge and it catches fire.

3:47 Speaker 2 And in this case, it’s a forest fire.

3:50 Speaker 1 Well, I think you’re right, and I think it’s seven or eight weeks, eight weeks to go, and we’ll let things play out.

4:00 Speaker 3 Well, one of the things that I think is kind of interesting is that there is a petition out to ban Mayor Mamdani from coming to September 11th events. Now, normally, I would think that’s not fair. He’s the mayor. He is, you know, the leader of the city.

4:21 Speaker 2 He should be there. But he himself boycotted a number of events that were a salute to Israel.

4:29 Speaker 3 You know, those types of days where there was, you know, a celebration.

4:37 Speaker 2 Or remembrance, and he didn’t bother with it.

4:39 Speaker 3 So I can see why people have put this petition together, and I think the only way he could get out of it right now, but I think it’s far beneath him, is to apologize for what went on in the past and say, let’s try to do something in the future, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

4:56 Speaker 1 I understand. Anything else you want to tell the people on Sunday morning?

4:59 Speaker 2 Well, here we are.

5:00 Speaker 3 It’s August 31st. It’s the last day of August. We’ll be tomorrow, and that’s one more day of August. But we’d better be ready because I think there’s going to be a lot going on in September and October.

5:14 Speaker 1 I agree. Governor David Patterson, thank you for your common sense, and thank you for being with us at WABC and helping have common sense prevailed.

5:24 Speaker 2 Thank you, John. And by the way, there’s no charge for my appearance.