Former Obama adviser Rahm Emanuel said that he doesn’t view socialists as part of the Democratic Party, a rare pushback against attempts to establish a big-tent party that includes its left flank. In an appearance on Fox News Sunday…
Page A5From§Eachthe midnight edition — 31 August 2026
Fox guest demands a Democratic litmus test; Rahm Emanuel is already administering one.
As it ran on the front
Every few months somebody with a university letterhead gets on television and asks, very reasonably, whether the Democratic Party should have a litmus test. And every time, I want to grab the guy by the lapels and say: buddy, look behind you. Because while Professor Turley was on Fox asking whether Democratic candidates should have to pass an ideological checkpoint, the actual chair of the actual party — Rahm Emanuel, a man who has never in his life let a photo opportunity go unused — was already administering one. Socialists, he said. Run as a separate party. That's not a suggestion. That's a checkpoint with a name tag.
Here's the euphemism autopsy, free of charge: nobody in power calls it a purity test when they're the ones giving it. They call it a big tent right up until somebody inside the tent asks for health care they can afford, and then suddenly the tent has a bouncer, and the bouncer's name is Rahm, and the bouncer is very clear that you're welcome to start your own club across the street, on your own dime, with your own security detail.…
…(cont) The professor wants a litmus test administered to Democrats from the outside, on Fox News, as a service to Republican voters trying to figure out who's electable. Fine, that's a guy doing a bit for an audience that already agrees with him. What's more interesting is that nobody had to ask the Democratic establishment to build one. It built its own, in-house, no professor required, and handed the socialist wing a one-way ticket and a suggestion to found a party of its own.
The stakes here aren't abstract. A party that spends its energy drawing lines around who's allowed inside the tent is a party that isn't spending that energy on the guy at the end of the bar wondering why his rent went up twice this year and his union local got smaller. The litmus test isn't coming. It's already been administered, the results are in, and the losing side is being told to go find their own bar.
And notice who never gets asked to leave: the members who compromise, who trade votes, who keep the seat warm. The test isn't loyalty to a platform. It's loyalty to the arrangement. That's a different thing, and it's the thing actually being enforced.
“Every few months somebody with a university letterhead goes on Fox and asks whether Democrats need a purity test, like it's a hypothetical. Meanwhile the actual party chair already handed the left wing a one-way ticket and told them to start their own club — the test isn't coming, it already happened.”
“Insisting candidates commit to core party values isn't a purity test, it's just — okay, it is a purity test, but it's our purity test, which is different, which is fine, and frankly overdue given how the socialist wing has been behaving.”
The receipts
Michael Mann demands a court packing litmus test for all Democratic candidates, joining Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg in the push to reshape the court.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.