The far left inside the Democrat Party has a new slur for anyone who still believes in the American constitutional order.
The DSA is openly bragging about its hatred of the founding document, and establishment Democrats are too scared to push back.
And now a Pennsylvania Democratic Socialist just put a name to the target on every Constitution defender’s back — and what he said will make your blood boil.
What Chris Rabb Actually Said
Pennsylvania state Representative Chris Rabb, a Democratic Socialist from Northwest Philadelphia, recently reaffirmed his alliance with virulent antisemite Hasan Piker — and used the moment to take a shot at fellow Democrats who dared to distance themselves from the streamer.
“This is what the institutionalists are focusing their efforts on now: Disavowing Hasan Piker,” Rabb tweeted. He continued: “Not White Christian nationalists? Not the broligarchs? Not the AI overlords? Nope, the guy encouraging young people to use their collective political power for good. F– that noise.”
Piker is not some harmless podcaster. He once claimed America deserved the September 11 attacks. He has made statements suggesting that pro-Israel American Jews are inviting violence against themselves. His rhetoric has drawn condemnation from members of both parties. And Chris Rabb’s response to all of that was to defend him and attack the Democrats who wouldn’t.
But the more important word in Rabb’s tweet isn’t Piker’s name. It’s “institutionalists.”
That word is doing real work now on the far left. As legal scholar Jonathan Turley noted in a recent Fox News column, “institutionalist” has become a pejorative term — roughly equivalent to “oligarch” in the new revolutionary vocabulary. To support the constitutional system the American Founders built is, in their telling, to be a relic. A cultist. Trapped in “nostalgia.”
And the people pushing that line are not fringe figures hiding in comment sections. They are running for Congress.
The DSA Says the Quiet Part Out Loud
The Democratic Socialists of America have drawn support from many who want a literal revolution. DSA Steering Committee member Cliff Connolly declared on a podcast that they are famous for their “hatred of the United States Constitution.”
Not a slip. Not a misquote. A boast.
The DSA platform — released on Bastille Day, which was apparently not subtle enough — calls for abolishing the US Senate, replacing the Presidency and Supreme Court with bodies subordinate to Congress, seizing the largest corporations through public ownership, and building what they call a classless society. These are not fringe policy proposals dressed up in academic language. These are textbook Marxist objectives that would dismantle the constitutional republic and private property rights that generations of Americans built and bled for.
And the establishment is either too cowardly or too calculating to call it what it is.
George Washington law professor Mary Anne Franks condemned what she called the “cult of the Constitution” that has been defended to advance “White male supremacy.” Now the people who believe in Madisonian democracy are the problem. Now defending the Bill of Rights is a sign of backward thinking. The revolutionary left has decided that the Constitution itself is the obstacle — and they are saying so publicly.
Turley pointed out that this pattern is a familiar one. Yuri Bezmenov, a KGB agent who defected in 1970, revealed the four stages by which the Soviets hoped to bring about revolutionary change in the United States. It began with undermining institutions and values, with the help of journalists and academics. Whether today’s radicals have read Bezmenov or not, they are running the same play.
When the Mob Turns on Its Own
Here is what makes this moment genuinely dangerous for the Democrat Party — and for the country.
The success of this counter-constitutional movement is reflected in the growing list of establishment figures like former Vice President Kamala Harris and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg throwing the Supreme Court to the mob. Both have positioned themselves as champions of court packing. That is not a reform proposal. It is a scheme to turn the Supreme Court into a Democrat rubber stamp, stripping it of any independence and locking in one-party control of the judiciary for a generation.
Even establishment candidates like Harris and California Governor Gavin Newsom are trying to pander to the mob by calling fealty to American traditions and institutions mere “nostalgia.” Newsom, a man who dined at the French Laundry while California burned under his own lockdown orders, now pitches himself as a man of the people by promising to trash the institutions that protect ordinary Americans from concentrated power.
But the problem with leading a mob is that you have to stay in front of it or be devoured by it. Packing the court is unlikely to be enough for the radicals now driving the Democrat base. After they come for the institutionalists, they will come for the incrementalists.
Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, who brought Piker from California to campaign with him, declared in his campaign that moderates like US Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) should have their heads cut off and put on pikes like ogres. That is not political hyperbole that got a little heated. That is a candidate for the United States Senate describing what he wants done to members of his own party who are insufficiently radical.
And Sarada Peri, the former senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama, wrote at *The Atlantic* that institutionalists are “peculiar creatures” inhabiting Washington. She added: “Many institutionalists simply have a reflexive distaste for change, preferring the enduring, if ossified, conventions that offer them inherited credibility. But perhaps in part because they are mostly old, white men, institutionalists are afforded significant deference by the media and the general public.”
So defending the Constitution is now a white-male-privilege move. Got it.
Rabb joined that chorus. He is not an outlier. He is the direction.
What This Means Going Forward
The Democrat Party is not having an internal debate. It is having a purge. The radicals are setting the terms, and the establishment is either capitulating or being run over.
Attacks are growing across the country on Democrats and independents who are viewed as insufficiently radical. Those who continue to celebrate Madisonian democracy as creating the most successful and stable republic in history are now “cultists” and “institutionalists” who are trapped in “nostalgia.” The label is designed to make defending the Constitution sound like defending something shameful.
But here is what that label actually tells the American people. When the DSA openly brags about hating the Constitution. When a Pennsylvania state representative defends a streamer who claimed America deserved 9/11 and attacks his own colleagues for objecting. When court packing gets treated as a mainstream Democrat position rather than an election-rigging scheme dressed up as reform. When a Senate candidate talks about putting moderates’ heads on pikes. These are not the growing pains of a party finding its footing. This is a movement that has decided the constitutional order is the enemy.
And the people who want to tear it down are not hiding anymore.
The word “institutionalist” is meant to sting. But for the millions of Americans who believe that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are genuine expressions of enduring principles — not artifacts to be discarded when they become inconvenient — the label is something else entirely. It is a description worth keeping.
The message from the far left is clear enough: lose your constitutional convictions or lose your political head.
The question is whether enough Americans are paying attention to what is being said out loud.
Sources: Fox News Opinion, Jonathan Turley, “Dem socialist rips ‘institutionalists’ as far left turns up heat on defenders of Constitution,” August 29, 2026; Fox News Politics, “Dem candidate erupts in profane defense of Hasan Piker as party figures distance themselves”; jonathanturley.org, “The Counter-Constitutional Movement: ‘Institutionalist’ Becomes the New ‘Oligarch’ Label for the Far Left,” August 29, 2026; jonathanturley.org, “Abdul El-Sayed and the Piker Problem,” August 28, 2026.