1967’s “Summer of Love” kicked off the American habit of defining a summer season with a phrase. Some phrases stick. Some do not.
1968’s “Summer of Rage” tagline stuck.
The “Summer of Watergate” could be 1973 and the Senate Select Committee’s hearings would have stuck, but President Richard Nixon survived those and would have survived the summer of 1974 but for the release of the tapes.
MORNING GLORY: HASAN PIKER’S RADICAL RHETORIC IS BECOMING DEMOCRATS’ 2026 BRAND
The Bicentennial Summer was as memorable as this summer’s celebration of the 250th birthday of the United States — but those months are defined by a day, not months. 1977’s Summer of Sam, 1994’s Summer of O.J. and 2020’s Summer of George Floyd are not fixtures of the language, but do serve as reference points.
With a week left in this summer, the touchpoints seem likely to be the rise of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the meteoric rise in awareness among the general public of Hasan Piker, an online Twitch streamer whose toxic combination of radical politics, profanity, vulgarity, anti-Israel and hate-filled rhetoric merged with the DSA’s march through the Democratic primaries to make it appear to “normal” Americans from the center-left to the center-right as though the Democratic Party had become unhinged and taken over by a cult-like group of crazed anti-American extremists.
The “Summer of the DSA and Hasan Piker” is unwieldy, but accurate. Shorthand will probably reduce it to the “Summer of the DSA,” and even though Piker is closely ideologically aligned with DSA, appearing at DSA events and rallies, Piker does not appear to be a dues-paying DSAer.
Still, the “Summer of DSA” will catch him up even as it includes the primary election victories of Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania, Claire Valdez, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Brad Lander in New York (Lander is a former DSA member but left in 2023), and Democratic Senate nominees Angie Nixon in Florida and Troy Jackson in Maine who are DSA-endorsed candidates. Hard-left “progressive” Democrats running for Senate like Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota, Sherrod Brown in Ohio and James Talarico in Texas have not been formally endorsed by their state DSAs or the national group, but their ascendancy compliments rather than contradicts the enormous shift to the left of the Democrats in the wake of President Trump’s re-election in 2024.
DSA’S GROWING GRIP ON DEM PARTY HITS NEW TERRITORY AS ESTABLISHMENT FALLS IN LINE
Will the “Summer of DSA” define the actual midterms ahead? Many in legacy media want to define the fall’s voting, which culminates on November 3, as a referendum on President Trump but that’s not what is unfolding. The rise of the DSA and unhinged rantings like those of Piker as well as numerous “co-chairs” of the DSA has muddied what would typically be a “referendum” election, turning it in many if not most statewide or Congressional district races into a “choice election” of the sort Republicans are hoping for.
Because the DSA, Piker, candidates like Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and James Talarico in Texas are just so far outside of the mainstream of American politics as to shift the awareness of the American electorate away from the issues of 2026 to the much bigger issue of the future of the country. The vast majority of Americans love their country. They can and do disagree among themselves on the politics of the moment and the policies that would best serve the country’s future.
But, that they want a future similar to the past, but improved at the margins remains the central and abiding truth of the American experience. We don’t want the “DSA way” and we sure do not want people addicted to rage the way Hasan Piker is to dominate our politics. El-Sayed’s limp attempt to distance himself from Piker this past weekend as summer draws to a close only guaranteed another week or more of scrutiny on El-Sayed’s choice to bring Piker into the Wolverine State’s politics. El-Sayed put on the Piker bodysuit, and it turns out it is very difficult if not impossible to erase that choice from the electorate’s consciousness.
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El-Sayed’s political free-fall has spillover effects across the country, as does the fact that the “Squad” in the House of Representatives is probably going to at least double in the next Congress. The Squad is almost certainly going to control the choice of the next House Democratic Leader. The increase in “Squad” numbers may remove Hakeem Jeffries as Leader of House Democrats, but it may not. Republicans are well aware of what a small majority means: the empowerment of the party’s fringiest members. The DSA could well be running the next House majority.
DEMOCRATS NO LONGER HAVE THE NO. 1 WEAPON TO KEEP THEIR SOCIALIST WING IN LINE
The “Summer of the DSA” has made that possibility a crucial issue across every federal race. It is not a cause for celebration among Republicans, who realize that the country needs a healthy Democratic Party and not one run by extremists from the left.
Democrats need a way back to “between the ’30s” competition in American political debates or the Democrats could face a wipeout of their extremist candidates outside of deep blue Congressional districts. (A “between the ‘40s” field would be even better for them.) An electoral train wreck in 2026 would, however, prevent an even worse crack-up in 2028, a presidential election year that could become a replay of the 1972 crash-out of the Democrats under the banner of George McGovern.
The post-mortems of the 2026 cycle will be remarkable to read. The headlines of the ones faithful to the facts will include the abbreviation “DSA” and the name “Hasan Piker.”
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show” heard weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
