Gov. Josh Shapiro sat down with Dana Bash on CNN's State of the Union this weekend and said the quiet part out loud: his party is being overrun by its socialist and far left flank.
Bash pressed Shapiro on Darializa Avila Chevalier, who won the Democratic congressional primary in New York’s 13th congressional district last month while running as an open socialist.
Chevalier's platform includes abolishing prisons, opening the borders, ending deportations, and granting mercy even to violent criminals.
Bash also noted that Chevalier attended a pro-Palestinian rally on October 8, 2023, one day after Hamas terrorists slaughtered, raped, and kidnapped their way across southern Israel.
According to Bash, that rally featured antisemitic rhetoric defending the attack. Bash asked Shapiro how he feels, as a Democrat, about someone with those views heading to Congress.
Shapiro tried to have it both ways.
"Well, her district voted for her," he said. But that statement also came with a convenient disclaimer. "But I have profound differences from that particular candidate, based on the citations that you read there. And she's not someone who, you know, seemingly, I would agree with on many things, or that we share similar values. She ran on the Democratic ticket, I guess as a socialist; her voters in that district determined that she was the one they wanted representing them."
Note the hedge. Shapiro was describing someone who wants to shield violent criminals from deportation and who reportedly stood in solidarity with people cheering a massacre of Jews. Yet, the strongest word he could summon was "seemingly."
Bash followed up by asking what Chevalier's win says about the Democratic Party. Here Shapiro dropped whatever remained of the diplomatic pretense. "I think that what our party has to go through, that will be very healthy, and something that we've not really done since the 1992 elections, is to have a battle over what we believe in," he said.
CNN: Abolishing prisons, opens borders, ending deportations of criminals…what does that say about the Democrat Party?
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 5, 2026
SHAPIRO: “What our party has to go through that will be very healthy...is to have a battle over what we believe in.” pic.twitter.com/lncogDmeXl
That's a rather pointed reference because 1992 is the year Bill Clinton dragged his party toward the center with promises of welfare reform and law and order, and Shapiro seems to be arguing that's the direction the battle needs to go again, which is clearly not the direction the party is going in.
Trump Derangement Syndrome has spent the better part of a decade radicalizing rank-and-file Democrats who once considered themselves moderates, and the party's growing communist and socialist wing has capitalized on that fever by dragging positions on wealth, taxes, crime, and immigration further left with every election cycle.
The party has also grown more hostile toward Israel, with some pundits arguing it has grown outright antisemitic. That climate may explain why Shapiro sidestepped Bash's question about whether his Jewish faith could complicate a 2028 presidential run. Meanwhile, fellow Pennsylvania Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman, has shown far more willingness to call out his party's antisemitic drift.
Shapiro, being Jewish and a supporter of Israel, places him on a collision course with a Democratic base growing comfortable nominating candidates who marched in solidarity with people, justifying an attack that included the massacre of more than a thousand Israelis.
On paper, Shapiro is the strongest hand the Democrats hold: a two-time statewide election winner in a key swing state.
But the Democratic Party isn’t the same party it was in 1992, and Shapiro’s remarks on CNN made one thing clear: the party’s civil war is already underway.
