A sitting U.S. senator went on Fox News this week and said, with total sincerity, that a 'hammer-and-sickle wave' is washing over the Democratic Party. The senator in question is Eric Schmitt of Missouri, a man whose party spent the last six months dismantling federal agencies, pardoning January 6th rioters, and threatening NATO allies. But sure. The communists are the problem.
What Schmitt Actually Said
Fox News Digital published the interview Friday, and Schmitt did not hold back. 'You get this hammer-and-sickle wave we saw in New York, that is not going to be an isolated incident,' he told the outlet. 'That is a flashing red light. It is a red flag.' He also described the energy driving Democratic primaries as belonging to 'radical leftist communists,' and predicted that the 2028 presidential primary would be defined by this ideology.
He is referring, in the real world, to candidates like Brad Lander and Darializa Avila Chevalier, who unseated incumbent Democratic congressmen Dan Goldman and Adriano Espaillat in New York primaries in June with the backing of Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Schmitt also flagged Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, who is in a primary fight against Rep. Haley Stevens for a Senate seat. These are the faces of the so-called communist takeover.
For the record: Lander is a former New York City comptroller who wants universal pre-K and more affordable housing. El-Sayed is a physician and former public health official who supports Medicare for All. These are the people being compared, without irony, to Soviet revolutionaries. On a news channel that airs between MyPillow ads.
The 2028 Prediction Nobody Asked For
Schmitt's bigger argument, the one Fox News wanted to lead with, is that the progressive surge in 2026 primaries is a preview of the 2028 Democratic presidential contest. 'Their primaries now are going to be dominated by these people who want to go to war with Western civilization,' he said, again apparently without laughing.
He also took a shot at Chuck Schumer, predicting the Senate Minority Leader would face a primary challenge from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or someone like her. 'I think he's probably going to chair the AOC for president campaign so she doesn't run against him,' Schmitt said. Which is actually a coherent political observation buried inside a pile of red-scare hysteria, but we'll get to that.
The broader claim, that the Democratic Party is being pulled left by insurgent progressives, is not wrong as a factual matter. The claim that this represents a 'hammer-and-sickle' communist uprising is the kind of thing that sounds tough on a Friday afternoon segment and embarrassing approximately everywhere else.
The Harry Reid Detour
Schmitt also made a point about immigration, arguing that Democrats have abandoned even the centrist positions once held by figures like Bill Clinton and Harry Reid. He specifically pointed to Reid's 1990s push to change birthright citizenship, noting that today's Senate Democrats oppose the very policy Reid once championed, and that Schmitt's own party is now pursuing after the Supreme Court's recent birthright citizenship ruling.
This is one of those moments where Schmitt accidentally makes a real point. The Democratic Party has shifted on immigration, and the primary victories of candidates who run explicitly to the left of the Obama-era consensus are real data points. That shift is worth covering and debating seriously. It's just very hard to have that debate when the guy raising it is also saying 'hammer and sickle' without apparent metaphorical distance.
For what it's worth, Schmitt is a member of a party that just spent considerable energy trying to end birthright citizenship via executive order before the Supreme Court weighed in. The ideological consistency here is not airtight.
What Is Actually Happening in Democratic Primaries
Here is the less theatrical version of the story Schmitt is gesturing at. Progressive candidates, many aligned with the Mamdani coalition in New York and the broader democratic socialist wing nationally, have been winning primaries against more moderate incumbents. This is a real shift. Whether it represents a winning general election strategy or a gift to Republicans is a genuinely interesting question that serious people disagree about.
El-Sayed in Michigan is the biggest test. Michigan is a swing state with a complicated electorate, and a far-left candidate winning a Senate primary there would tell us something meaningful about where Democratic base voters are right now. As Fox News noted, that race is still a messy fight, not a coronation.
The Democratic Socialists of America have also publicly said, per other reporting this week, that many members would be 'thrilled' to see AOC run in 2028. Which is a thing a political organization said, not evidence of a Soviet takeover, but details have never been Schmitt's strong suit.
The Dingo Take
Look, there is a legitimate political story here about the leftward drift of Democratic primaries and what it means for the party's electoral viability going into 2028. That story is worth telling. Several serious journalists are telling it right now, carefully and with actual evidence. Eric Schmitt is not telling that story. Eric Schmitt is doing a bit, and the bit is 'what if I said communism a bunch of times on Fox News and nobody pushed back.'
The 'hammer and sickle' framing is not analysis. It is the political equivalent of screaming 'fire' in a crowded movie theater because you smelled someone's popcorn. Zohran Mamdani ran New York City on a platform of freezing rents and expanding public transit. Brad Lander wants paid sick leave. These are the Bolsheviks. The same Bolsheviks who, by the way, appear to be winning elections in a country where the incumbent party just cut Medicaid and handed billionaires a multi-trillion dollar tax break. Maybe ask why voters are responding to that.
Schmitt's warning that Schumer might end up running AOC's presidential campaign to avoid a primary challenge is actually the sharpest thing he said, and it was clearly meant as a joke. Jokes sometimes land because they're true. The Democratic establishment is terrified of its own base right now, and that tension is going to define the next two years of American politics whether Eric Schmitt calls it communism or not.
