“I think he’s clinging to a rhetorical strategy that was very powerful when he was coming of age 50 years ago, but it’s just a little bit different right now,”

— South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, on CNN, dismissing President Trump’s efforts to portray Democratic policies as “socialist.”

“Democrats are flirting with socialism in ways they carefully and clearly ran away from in the past, handing President Trump a new way to unify Republicans — and to club his opponents,” Axios reports.

“It started with Democrats sitting silently as he railed against socialism in his State of the Union speech. It intensified with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s release of a Green New Deal, a vague policy manifesto loaded with big-government policies.”

“The surge is unlikely to abate: Young, Twitter- and social-savvy Democrats favor socialism over capitalism. And no Democrat in politics today plays the social media game with more savvy than AOC.”

Washington Post: “Sen. Kamala Harris is raising the possibility of eliminating private health insurance. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and other prominent Democrats are floating new and far-reaching plans to tax the wealthy. In Virginia, Gov. Ralph Northam voiced support for state legislation that would reduce restrictions on late-term abortions… Casting Democrats as a scary and radical force is giving a fractured Republican Party a common thrust at a time when Trump’s standing even within his own party has started to dip. And it is giving Democrats a bit of the heartburn that Republicans have been grappling with for more than two years.”

“Abortion, taxes and health care have long been among the most combustible political topics. But in the context of the energetic field of 2020 candidates and amid coarsening political rhetoric, they have taken on new gravity. The past few days offer a preview of the next two years, as Democrats argue that the country is yearning for policies previously believed to be too far left, and Republicans cast them as ‘radical zealots’ (Fox News host Laura Ingraham), ‘so radicalized’ (presidential son Eric Trump) and ‘the party of death’ (former House speaker Newt Gingrich).”

A new Gallup poll finds that for the first time since 1994, more than half of Democrats, 51%, identified their political views as “liberal.”

“Eric Bauman, the powerful chairman of the California Democratic Party, made crude sexual comments and engaged in unwanted touching or physical intimidation in professional settings,” 10 party staff members and political activists told the Los Angeles Times.

“When presented with the allegations, Bauman said in a statement Wednesday that he plans to seek treatment for health issues and alcohol use.”