Zach Kessel of National Review Online reports on the reaction to a Democratic congressman’s recent political flub.
Representative Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) fired off a post on X Friday in which he characterized socialist Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro as “right-wing” a day after the United States recognized opposition candidate Edmundo González as the rightful winner of Venezuela’s presidential election.
“The democratic world must stand up for the rule of law in Venezuela and oppose Maduro’s assault on the electoral process and free speech,” Raskin wrote. “The right-wing attack on democratic institutions anywhere is a threat to freedom everywhere.”
Maduro has indeed subverted the electoral process and cracked down on dissent. But it was Raskin’s claim that the avowed Marxist is “right-wing” that made him the butt of countless jokes on the social-media platform.
National Review‘s Dan McLaughlin, after seeing Raskin’s post, wrote, “Oh, those right-wing [checks notes] socialists,” later arguing that Raskin understands Maduro’s political leanings but “thinks his followers are gullible fools.”
Jonah Goldberg of the Dispatch agreed, saying he does not “think Raskin is this dumb or ignorant” but that “his Takoma Park constituency probably cannot abide him telling the plain truth,” calling the post “MTG level pandering.”
The Maryland congressman’s father, Marcus Raskin, co-founded the far-left Institute for Policy Studies, a think tank that counts among its scholars Cambodian Genocide denier Noam Chomsky and includes on its board Noura Erakat, an assistant professor at Rutgers University who celebrated Hamas’s October 7 attack against Israel and claimed “any shock in response to this multi scalar attack reflects an expectation that those Palestinians die quietly and a complicity in their strangulation.”
Marcus Raskin was also indicted — though later acquitted — on charges of conspiracy to aid resistance to the draft over his encouragement of draft-dodging during the Vietnam War.
Commentary editor John Podhoretz contended that Raskin’s claim that Maduro is on the political right, “given that [he is] the actual son of a Communist-adjacent intellectual disgrace” amounts to “genuine demagoguery.”
