We’ve seen the results of a blasé attitude toward socialism before: 20 years ago, many Cubans who were exiled in Venezuela warned the locals about socialism, but Venezuelans thought it could not happen to them, because they believed that Venezuela was a stable democracy. But after many people then voted for a socialist regime, believing its leaders’ false promises of easy prosperity, the once-prosperous country has become a ruin, and the naysayers are now learning the hard way that, as Ronald Reagan first said in 1961, “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”

So I was glad Joe Biden “beat the socialist” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who has praised a number of socialists and communist regimes, in the primaries; however, that win does not appear to have stopped the increasing influence of Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and the other self-identified democratic socialists within the Democratic Party.

The willingness of the Democratic Party to not just accept self-identified democratic socialists but also to allow them power within the party harms both the Democrats and the U.S. bipartisan consensus against communism. Both communism and its intrinsic predecessor, socialism, cannot be seen as acceptable parts of any coalition for otherwise good policies, or else that coalition is inherently tainted.