The saying goes, be careful what you wish for, because you may get it. Those few Democrats who are not hard left progressives are living that reality right now.

Cast your memory back, if you will, to the creation of “the Squad.” The 2018 midterms were not great for Republicans, because, as is typical, the party in power in the White House usually has a harder time holding on to seats. While the GOP retained the majority in the Senate in 2018, they did not win the House back. And in that batch of new 2018 freshmen Representatives were the original four Squad members – Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, and AOC.

At first, Nancy Pelosi, who is a progressive leftist, enjoyed having the Squad around – even being photographed with AOC and Ilhan Omar on the cover of Rolling Stone. After all, Pelosi thought she was getting new little minions to do her bidding. That didn’t happen, and by early 2019, Pelosi was being forced to run interference for Ilhan Omar’s blatant anti-Semitism with a stupid generic resolution in March 2019 that was basically a “we don’t like bad things” vote. What was obvious at the time was that Nancy Pelosi had lost control of the Democrats by not reining in the Squad, but she didn’t seem to realize that. Instead, she kept trying to bring the Squad to heel behind closed doors, when what she needed to do was smack them down openly. As a result, Omar and Tlaib have had free reign for some very ugly anti-Semitism, and AOC continues to be a progressive parrot who plays at being a socialist little rich girl.

Pelosi should have taken heed after the 2020 elections, when she only had a razor-thin majority to work with, and the Democrats in swing districts were warning her that they could not keep winning elections if the party kept going hard left. Pelosi, whose sole goal in 2020 was to elect Biden and get rid of Trump, did not seem to care in the least. Well, now she is faced with the 2022 midterms, a cascade of retiring Democrats, and a senile president whose agenda she can’t get passed without the Squad blocking her. How bad is it for Democrats? Once a Republican joke testing the waters, more serious voices are actually proffering the idea that Hillary Clinton should run in 2024. Hillary. Clinton.

Again, the Democrats control the House, the Senate, and the White House, and they are such a wreck at the moment that serious Democrats are now looking at Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and saying, hmm, maybe we should bring Hillary back. Why? Because Hillary, at least, seems to realize that the Squad’s progressive philosophies have driven the Democrats to the edge of the Cliffs of Insanity.

None other than the party’s 2016 presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, has said liberals risk costing their party precious political power by pandering to voters in areas that are already Democratic, with little to no risk of swaying the control of Washington.”

“I think that it is a time for some careful thinking about what wins elections, and not just in deep-blue districts where a Democrat and a liberal Democrat, or so-called progressive Democrat, is going to win,” Clinton told NBC News in a recent interview, effectively throwing a grenade into the longest running intraparty debate in recent cycles.”

Of course, the Squad objects to this line of thinking. Cori Bush, one of the newer Squad members, showed her lightweight one-track thought process in response to Hillary’s concerns.

Progressives are pushing back, arguing the party would be better off aggressively pursuing liberal policies and telling everyone why they’re doing it. They say Democrats face more danger by watering down their verbiage because voters will have even less of a reason to turn out and that the stronger the message, the more it will resonate.”

“Winning elections is not about looking good. It’s about being good,” Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) told The Hill on Tuesday.”

“If Democrats brought home expansive climate action, a federal minimum wage of at least $15, paid leave, police reform, and ‘Medicare for All,’ we would win in a landslide,” she said. “The problem is that these are not getting done, year after year, even while basic necessities like housing and health care keep getting more and more expensive.”

“The path forward is to actually enact policies that address the pain people are feeling across the country, not pretend that pain doesn’t exist,” Bush said.”

Get the popcorn, everyone, because the Progressive Caucus/Squad versus Hillary Clinton? Ohhh boy. If the Squad thought they rolled over Nancy Pelosi easily, they have no idea what they could be in for with Hillary. Will the Squad emerge triumphant over the center left, or will the centrists manage to prevail? Let the games begin!

Featured image: original Victory Girls art by Darleen Click