The Escalating Erratic Behavior of the American Left

The incident on May 9 in Newark, New Jersey, where three members of Congress and the mayor of Newark showed up at a contracted ICE facility demanding to be let in could have ended very badly because of how they went about it. Congressional representatives Bob Menendez, Jr., LaMonica McIver, and Bonnie Watson Coleman, all New Jersey Democrats, claimed they went to the contracted ICE Detention Center to “conduct oversight” of ICE operations. Did they make an appointment before showing up at the center? I don’t know, but they and several other protesters ended up exercising incredibly bad judgment, in my opinion, when they attempted “to storm” the facility when the gate opened to allow a busload of detainees into the facility.

Most American adults understand that nobody is allowed to enter any type of detention or law enforcement facility without permission from the controlling agency. This goes for members of Congress as well as for the public. Only someone who believes he or she is “above the law” would attempt to force their way into a federally controlled facility.

Based on the many videos taken on May 9, including by ICE agents body cameras, it seems clear to me that these members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Mayor Baraka were actively elbowing and pushing ICE agents out of the way to gain entrance into the Delaney Hall detention center. Congresswoman McIver, who is 80 years old and should know better, was using totally disgusting and disrespectful language, which she apparently felt entitled to do, as she attempted to push her way through the main gate.

The bottom line is that Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested and charged with trespassing, and now the Left is complaining about how “unfair” that was. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy immediately issued a statement saying he was “outraged” by the arrest of Mayor Ras Baraka. Considering Governor Murphy’s own track record as head of a sanctuary state, he apparently sees ICE as the enemy, and therefore, ICE and their facilities are “fair game” for storming and denigrating.

For the record, I have never liked the word “unfair” because it is a completely subjective word. Is it truly unfair that Mayor Ras was arrested for entering a federal facility without permission? I don’t recall the Left saying it was unfair to Americans to allow millions of illegals to enter the United States without permission during the Biden Administration. The Left loves to remind us that “nobody is above the law,” but when the law is administered to one of their own, they think that is unfair or somehow discriminatory.

In the last four months, several Democrat members of Congress have drawn attention to themselves, and not in a good way, by their speech and their actions. I’m still trying to understand what Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) thought he was accomplishing by talking for 25 hours straight on the floor of the U.S. Senate. He babbled on and on but said absolutely nothing remarkable. If he actually had a purpose aside from breaking some type of Senate speechmaking record, I don’t know what it was.

And then there is Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, who appears to have no personal filters on anything she says. Just recently she publicly boasted that she is smarter than President Trump. I find that very telling, not to mention both sad and humorous, because the truly smart people I know do not go around announcing how smart they are. Instead, they demonstrate their intelligence by the quality of their speech, the actions they take, and their compassion for others.

However, Congresswoman Crockett may have figured out that as long as she continues to utter outrageous and stupid things, the media will give her all the coverage she wants. It’s hard to tell if she really believes she is helping the Democrat Party or if she is only trying to advance her own political career.

And that brings me to the recent Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio Cortez (AOC) multi-state Fighting Oligarchy Tour. There is nothing I find more amusing than to hear one old Socialist Democrat politician along with his not-so-smart, 35-year-old sidekick trying to convince me that our country is run by “oligarchs” who care nothing about me. Bernie and AOC are essentially Marxists, who claim to be for the little people, but they both have a far higher net worth than the average American. Bernie owns at least three homes, and AOC has two plushy condos. Both have a net worth of approximately 3 million.

Historian Victor David Hanson believes the Democrat Party is going through a major “metamorphosis” (i.e., big change), but instead of moving closer to the center of American politics, they keep moving even further to the Left. Unfortunately, the New Left is far more extreme than the Old Left (Pelosi, Shumer, Durbin), and the American voter is not buying into such an extreme change. Regardless of political affiliation, the average American does not believe it is okay to place “the rights” of illegal migrants above those of U.S. citizens, burn down or storm law enforcement facilities, destroy Telsa dealerships, or demonize Elon Musk or President Trump for simply trying to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in our federal government.

If the Democrat Party cannot find a leader who can clearly and articulately explain what the Party stands for, they will have a tough time in the 2026 midterm election and beyond. The Left’s current marketing plan of resistance to anything and everything that conservative Americans stand for is starting to wear thin, and the American public is either ignoring the outrage of the Left or recognizing it is time to change political affiliation. I thought Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) previously gave some great advice to the Democrat Party when he said, “Look, you just gotta’ try harder not to suck.” Personally, I don’t believe the Dems are going to be able to pull themselves together in a way that will appeal to middle-of-the-road Americans.