A progressive Democratic PAC embraced an attack from House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), playing his words verbatim in an ad to showcase its policies.
The video featured Johnson listing off their proposals, which he framed as radical, but interspersed with Pennsylvania 3rd District House candidate Chris Rabb, Colorado 1st District House candidate Melat Kiros, and New York 7th District House candidate Claire Valdez endorsing the policies.
“They put this on paper. They’re saying the quiet things out loud,” Johnson began, reading from their list, “Abolish the electoral college.”
The ad cut to Rabb, who said, “Damn straight!”
“Replace the two-party system with a multiparty democracy,” Johnson continued.
“Yep!” Kiros interjected.
“Expand the House of Representatives,” the House speaker said.
“That’s right,” Valdez responded with a thumbs up.
“Establish public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries to ensure Democratic control and accountability to the people,” Johnson continued, adding, “Y’all, it goes on and on.”
The ad concluded with the text, “Couldn’t have said it better ourselves. Thanks for the platform, Mike,” along with the link, HellYeahMike.com.
The link takes viewers to a donation page for ActBlue. The ad was made by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.
While taking a triumphalist tone, the highlighted representatives may find it more difficult to win over the public on some of the proposals, particularly expanding the size of the House of Representatives and nationalizing major industries. The most recent major poll on expanding the House, from Pew Research in 2023, found that less than one in three U.S. adults were in favor of increasing the size of the body. Only 35% of Democrats or adults leaning Democratic were in favor of expanding it.
DEMOCRATS BRACE FOR MORE ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT PRIMARIES AFTER COLORADO UPSETS
Polling on nationalizing the largest corporations is nonexistent, aside from some favorable results on healthcare nationalization, but adjacent results don’t fare well for the socialists. A poll from a liberal think tank in 2020 on nationalizing fossil fuel companies, one of the few polls testing the popularity of nationalizations outside of healthcare, found that only 39% of respondents supported the measure.
Whatever the popularity of their proposals, the Democratic Party’s left wing has scored major victories in primaries ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, signaling a further shift left for the party. Rabb, Kiros, and Valdez are just three socialists who beat establishment competitors to win the Democratic nomination.