The Wall Street Journal:

Now that Donald Trump has criticized the “new calls to adopt socialism in this country,” Democrats and the media are already protesting that the socialist label doesn’t apply to them. But what are they afraid of—the label or their own ideas? The biggest political story of 2019 is that Democrats are embracing policies that include government control of ever-larger chunks of the private American economy.

Merriam-Webster defines socialism as “any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.”

The U.S. may not be Venezuela, but consider the Democratic agenda that is emerging from Congress and the party’s presidential contenders. You decide if the proposals meet the definition of socialism.

• Medicare for All. Bernie Sanders’ plan, which has been endorsed by 16 other Senators, would replace all private health insurance in the U.S. with a federally administered single-payer health-care program. Government would decide what care to deliver, which drugs to pay for, and how much to pay doctors and hospitals. Private insurance would be banned.

As Senator Kamala Harris put it recently on CNN, “the idea is that everyone gets access to medical care, and you don’t have to go through the process of going through an insurance company, having them give you approval, going through the paperwork, all of the delay that may require. Who of us has not had that situation, where you’ve got to wait for approval, and the doctor says, well, I don’t know if your insurance company is going to cover this? Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on.”

If replacing private insurance with government control isn’t socialism, what is?

• The Green New Deal. This idea, endorsed by 40 House Democrats and several Democratic presidential candidates, would require that the U.S. be carbon neutral within 10 years. Non-carbon sources provide only 11% of U.S. energy today, so this would mean a complete remake of American electric power, transportation and manufacturing.

Oh, and as imagined by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, all of this would be planned by a Select Committee For a Green New Deal. Soviet five-year plans were more modest.

• A guaranteed government job for all. To assist in this 10-year transformation of society, the Green New Deal’s authors would “provide all members of our society, across all regions and all communities, the opportunity, training and education to be a full and equal participant in the transition, including through a job guarantee program to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one.”

This is no longer a fringe idea. The Center for American Progress, Barack Obama’s think tank, supports a government job for everyone “to counter the effects of reduced bargaining power, technical change, globalization,” and presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand tweeted her support for it as an alternative to tax reform.

• A new system for corporate control. Senator Elizabeth Warren wants a new federal charter for businesses with more than $1 billion in annual revenue that would make companies answer to more than shareholders. Employees would elect 40% of directors, who would be obliged to consider “benefits” beyond returns to the owners. This radical redesign of corporate governance would give politicians and their interest groups new influence over private business decisions and assets.

• Vastly higher taxes. These ideas would require much more government revenue, and Democrats are eagerly proposing ways to raise it. Mr. Sanders wants to raise the top death tax rate to 77%. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez wants a new 70% tax rate on high incomes, which is supported by the Democratic intelligentsia. The House Ways and Means Committee is working on a plan to raise the payroll tax to 14.8% from 12.4% on incomes above $400,000.

Never to be outdone on the left, Ms. Warren wants a new 2% “wealth tax” on assets above $50 million and 3% above $1 billion, including assets held abroad. France recently junked its wealth tax because it was so counterproductive, and such a tax has never been levied in America. This is government confiscation merely because someone has earned or saved more money than someone else. Socialism?

These are merely the most prominent proposals. There are many others, such as Ms. Warren’s plan to set up a government-owned generic drug maker that would inevitably put private companies out of business because its cost of capital would be zero.

***
Some readers might think this is all so extreme it could never happen. But presidential candidates don’t propose ideas they think will hurt them politically. The leftward lurch of Democratic voters, especially the young, means the party could nominate the most left-wing presidential candidate in U.S. history. If other Democratic candidates oppose any or all of this, we’d like to hear them.

The American public deserves to have a debate about all this, lest it sleepwalk into a socialist future it doesn’t want. Credit to Mr. Trump for teeing it up.

The Associated Press has more to report on the soap opera that is Virginia state government:

The political crisis in Virginia exploded Wednesday when the state’s attorney general confessed to putting on blackface in the 1980s and a woman went public with detailed allegations of sexual assault against the lieutenant governor.

With Gov. Ralph Northam’s career already hanging by a thread over a racist photo in his 1984 medical school yearbook, the day’s developments threatened to take down all three of Virginia’s top elected officials, all of them Democrats.

The twin blows began with Attorney General Mark Herring issuing a statement saying he wore brown makeup and a wig in 1980 to look like a rapper during a party as a 19-year-old student at the University of Virginia.

Herring — who has been among those calling on Northam to resign — said he was “deeply, deeply sorry for the pain that I cause with this revelation.” He said that in the days ahead, “honest conversations and discussions will make it clear whether I can or should continue to serve as attorney general.”

Then, within hours, Vanessa Tyson, the woman whose sexual assault allegations against Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax governor surfaced earlier this week, issued a detailed statement saying Fairfax forced her to perform oral sex on him in a hotel room in 2004 during the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

Tyson, a 42-year-old political scientist who is on a fellowship at Stanford University and specializes in the political discourse of sexual assault, said she was not motivated by politics to come forward, writing: “I am a proud Democrat.”

The Associated Press typically does not identify those who say they were sexually assaulted, but Tyson issued the statement in her name.

Fairfax — who is line to become governor if Northam resigns — has repeatedly denied her allegations, saying that the encounter was consensual and that he is the victim of a strategically timed political smear.

“At no time did she express to me any discomfort or concern about our interactions, neither during that encounter, nor during the months following it, when she stayed in touch with me, nor the past 15 years,” he said in a statement.

Herring, 57, went public after rumors of a blackface photo of him had circulated at the Capitol for a day or more. But in his statement, he said nothing about the existence of a photo.

The disclosure further roils the top levels of Virginia government, which has been hit with one crisis after another since the yearbook picture came to light last Friday. Herring would be next in line to be governor after Fairfax. …

Herring made a name for himself nationally by playing a central role in getting Virginia’s ban on gay marriage lifted, and he had been planning to run for governor in 2021.

The chairman of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, Del. Lamont Bagby, said its members need time to process the news about the attorney general: “We’ve got a lot to digest.”

Democrats have expressed fear that the uproar over the governor could jeopardize their chances of taking control of the GOP-dominated Virginia legislature this year. The party made big gains in 2017, in part because of a backlash against President Donald Trump, and has moved to within striking distance of a majority in both houses.

In his statement, Herring said he and two friends dressed up to look like rappers they listened to, including Kurtis Blow, admitting: “It sounds ridiculous even now writing it.”

“That conduct clearly shows that, as a young man, I had a callous and inexcusable lack of awareness and insensitivity to the pain my behavior could inflict on others,” he said.

But he also said: “This conduct is in no way reflective of the man I have become in the nearly 40 years since.”

Northam has come under pressure from nearly the entire state and national Democratic establishment to resign after the discovery of a photo on his profile page in the Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook of someone in blackface standing next to a person in a Ku Klux Klan hood and robe.

Northam admitted at first that he was in the photo without saying which costume he was wearing. A day later, he denied he was in the picture. But he acknowledged he once used shoe polish to blacken his face and look like Michael Jackson at a dance contest in Texas in 1984, when he was in the Army.

Herring came down hard on Northam when the yearbook photo surfaced, condemning it as “indefensible,” ″profoundly offensive,” and “shocking and deeply disappointing.” He said that it was no longer possible for Northam to lead the state.

Herring earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Virginia and his law degree from the University of Richmond, and served as a county supervisor and a state senator before getting elected attorney general in 2013 by just 165 votes out of more than 2.2 million cast. He won re-election by a more comfortable margin in 2017.

Shortly after taking office for his first term, Herring announced he would no longer defend the state’s ban on gay marriage, saying it was time for Virginia “to be on the right side of history and the right side of the law.”

A federal judge overturned the ban, citing Herring’s opposition, and Virginia began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2014, nearly a full year before the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationwide.

By Democrats’ own standards all three should resign. The reason none will comes in the paragraph I deleted to emphasize it here:

After Herring comes the speaker of the state House, Kirk Cox, a conservative Republican.

The Washington Post has suddenly taken a big interest in Virginia state politics, because …

RICHMOND — The state Capitol hit a new level of chaos Monday as Gov. Ralph Northam (D) asked staffers to stand by as he decided his fate, while the man who would succeed him, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D), denied a sexual assault allegation that appeared on a conservative website.

Northam gathered Cabinet members and staffers Monday to apologize for the pain caused by a racist photo on his 1984 medical school yearbook page and told them he was still weighing options, according to several people who attended.

The governor urged staffers not to quit and promised to decide his fate soon, but how soon was left unsaid, according to three people familiar with what transpired, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to decribe a private meeting. It could take days, according to one person familiar with his thinking.

Northam is trying to assemble evidence to prove that he was not in that racist photo and is exploring whether he has enough support in the government to continue to be effective, according to several people who have spoken with the governor. Feedback from constituents has begun to shift, becoming more positive, one person said.

Sen. Richard H. Stuart (R-King George), Northam’s closest friend in the legislature, who has been in contact with the governor throughout the crisis, said Monday night that Northam was not giving up.

“I know people are speculating that Ralph is going to resign and still considering it, but I can tell you he is not going anywhere,” he said. “He’s dug in, and he is going to fight this thing out.”

Elected officials from both parties stood by their calls that Northam must go, but the way forward became cloudier Monday with the incendiary charges against Fairfax. The lieutenant governor vehemently denied the claim that he sexually assaulted a woman in 2004, a report that was posted on the same website that revealed the photo from Northam’s yearbook Friday.

“She was very much into a consensual encounter,” Fairfax said about the 2004 incident. “Everything was 100 percent consensual. And now, years later, we have a totally fabricated story out of the blue to attack me once I was in politics.”

Fairfax, 39, called it an attempt to damage him.

“Does anybody think it’s any coincidence that on the eve of my potentially being elevated, this uncorroborated smear comes up?” he said. “You don’t have to be cynical, you don’t have to understand politics, to understand when someone’s trying to manipulate a process to harm someone’s character without any basis whatsoever.”

He would not say whether he believes that Northam should step down.

“I believe the governor has to make a decision in the best interest of the commonwealth of Virginia,” Fairfax said, adding that he had not spoken with Northam in “a couple of days.”

Swarms of journalists from national news outlets shouted questions at Fairfax in the Capitol rotunda as what had seemed like a death watch for Northam’s political career morphed into a political circus. Amid the clamor, delegates and senators hunkered down at either end of the building on what was already the busiest day of the legislative year, grinding through hundreds of bills before a Tuesday deadline to act.

“We have to stay focused,” said Del. Eileen Filler-Corn (D-Fairfax), the House minority leader. “We’ve got 350-something bills to move.” That included tuning out the furor over Fairfax. “Really, I haven’t had time to follow that right now, I’m just focused on the floor,” she said.

While Northam was quickly and intensely criticized for the photo, lawmakers were less certain how to react to the Fairfax allegations, which came with no hard evidence.

“I have no comment on the Justin thing. He denies it, so I don’t know what else to think at this moment,” said Sen. Barbara A. Favola (D-Arlington).

“There were only two people present” at the time of the encounter between Fairfax and his accuser, said Sen. Adam P. Ebbin (D-Alexandria). “The lieutenant governor has said that the version of events that has been described is not what occurred.”

Ebbin added that the allegations against Fairfax have not affected his belief that Northam should immediately resign, saying anxiety among Democrats is growing as Northam continues to hold out.

“The longer the governor is in place without the confidence of the legislature, then you can see a lack of stability occurring,” Ebbin said. “It’s important that we have a governor who’s focused on the business of the state and a citizenry that is supportive of our governor.”

Only a week ago, the Democrats had momentum during an election year when all 140 seats in the legislature are on the ballot in November and Republicans hold razor-thin majorities in both chambers.

Northam, Fairfax and state Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D) have been popular statewide — and Northam, in particular, has been respected by members of both parties. He worked with GOP leadership last year to expand Medicaid to 400,000 low-income residents; has achieved bipartisan agreement for criminal justice reform, permanent funding for Metro and coal-ash cleanup; and landed the biggest economic development coup in recent history: 25,000 jobs tied to Amazon’s HQ2 in Arlington.

On Monday, lawmakers were filling idle time between votes with speculation about various succession scenarios should Northam step down, and if Fairfax faced a similar fate.

There were even rumors that Northam’s office was behind the leak of the Fairfax allegations to try and slow the rush for resignation.

The Collective PAC, which has supported Fairfax and other black candidates around the country, accused “Northam’s team and advisors” of spreading unspecified “lies” about the lieutenant governor. It offered no evidence when making that claim in a tweetSunday.

Northam spokeswoman Ofirah Yheskel dismissed that claim. “There was no involvement from the governor’s team in this allegation surfacing,” Yheskel said.

Fairfax also discounted the charge about Northam.

“I have no indication in that regard,” he said in a second media scrum Monday afternoon.

When someone mentioned another scenario — that Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney, who is said to aspire to statewide office, had links to someone who brought the woman’s charges to light — Fairfax said, “You’re great reporters, and you’ll get to digging, and you’ll get to make some connections.”

Asked whether Stoney facilitated or encouraged the leak of the sexual assault allegation, his spokesman Jim Nolan said: “This insinuation is 100 percent not true. Period.”

During a brief recess of the House of Delegates, some legislators stepped outside for a breather, trading barbs with staffers or Capitol police.

Del. Tim Hugo (R-Fairfax) called the sequence of events that began Friday “like a Hollywood movie.”

“You couldn’t write this,” he said, cheerfully.

Whether or not Northam will step down is still anybody’s guess, he said, adding, “Let’s see how the day ends.”

The crisis actually began last Wednesday when Northam, a pediatric neurologist, defended a Democratic delegate’s late-term-abortion bill. His words in a WTOP radio interview led critics on social media to brand him a “baby killer.” Then, Friday afternoon, the racist photo surfaced.

Despite initially taking responsibility for the photo, which shows one person in blackface and another in Ku Klux Klan robes, and appears on his personal page in the Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook, Northam now says the picture is not of him.

He is surrounded by a close circle of advisers and supporters — including the first lady, Pam Northam — who are encouraging him to clear his name and working to gather information to explain the picture.

Those close to him say Northam, who served as president of the Honor Court during his senior year at VMI, froze up when first confronted with the photo and was stunned by the swift condemnation from across the state and the nation. He felt compelled to apologize by the end of the day Friday, they said.

But that night, he said he didn’t remember dressing that way and became convinced that the image wasn’t of him, these people said. The prospect of resigning in shame over something he is certain he did not do was unpalatable to him — especially in an era when other political figures, such as President Trump, transgress so openly and with no apparent consequence. Even former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell (R) served out his term knowing he was under federal investigation for corruption charges. McDonnell was found guilty but later had his conviction overturned on appeal.

But in his nationally televised press conference on Saturday, Northam admitted darkening his face with shoe polish to imitate Michael Jackson at a dance contest in 1984 – an episode that many public officials have said disqualifies Northam from holding the governor’s chair.

“Regardless of the veracity of the photograph, the governor’s lost the confidence of the people and cannot effectively govern,” House Speaker Kirk Cox (R-Colonial Heights) said to reporters Monday. He renewed his call for Northam, 59, to step down, but expressed “hesitation” about the possibility that the legislature would try to force him out.

“I think there’s a rightful hesitation about removal from office,” Cox said. “Obviously you have to consider that to some degree you’re overturning an election. I think the constitutional provisions are very specific . . . it really does call for mental or physical incapacitation.… And obviously impeachment, that’s a very high standard.”

Since the photo became public Friday, nearly every political ally in state and national political circles has called on him to step down.

The drumbeat spread to the state’s public universities. The College of William & Mary on Monday announced that Northam would not attend Friday’s inauguration of new president Katherine Rowe, saying in a statement that “the Governor’s presence would fundamentally disrupt the sense of campus unity we aspire to and hope for with this event.”

University of Virginia President James Ryan issued a statement Sunday suggesting that Northam should resign, saying that if a leader’s “trust is lost, for whatever reason, it is exceedingly difficult to continue to lead. It seems we have reached that point.”

In contrast, Wisconsin now has a governor who appears to be totally lost (see Foxconn), and a lieutenant governor who has interesting woman issues too that would have gotten a Republican or white male legislator crucified.