Donald Trump commemorated July Fourth by warning of a “communist” uprising, citing the primary victories by democratic socialist candidates. For Democrats, the attack brought back painful memories from 2018, when the party tried unsuccessfully to brush off Republican warnings of a socialist takeover—a narrative reinforced by the party’s leftward drift following the Blue Wave. Now, many Democrats fear that history is repeating itself. “We feel like we’re yelling into the wind,” Matt Bennett, the executive vice president for public affairs at the centrist think tank Third Way, told me. “Democrats are not doing a good job of pushing back. It’s been a huge failure on the part of everybody in the party.”