JONATHAN TURLEY: Dem socialist rips ‘institutionalists’ as far left turns up heat on defenders of Constitution

Chris Rabb calling out fellow Democrats as "institutionalists" is one of those moments where the mask slips and you get to see what's actually being argued for underneath all the usual talking points. This isn't a state legislator quibbling over policy details. It's a sitting official treating basic constitutional guardrails as the enemy, and treating the people who defend them as the problem to be solved.

What's striking is how casually the word gets used as an insult now. For most of American history, wanting to preserve the constitutional order was just called being a citizen. Now, in certain corners of the left, it's a slur you throw at colleagues who won't go along with tearing things down. Rabb defending someone like Hasan Piker in the same breath tells you where the sympathies actually lie.

Turley has been sounding alarms about this drift for a while, and stories like this are exactly why. It's not paranoia to notice when people on the left start describing checks and balances as obstacles rather than protections. That's a real shift in how a faction of the Democratic Party talks about its own system of government, out loud, without much shame about it.

The bigger worry is what happens when this stops being fringe noise and starts shaping actual legislation or judicial appointments. Rabb isn't some anonymous poster. He holds office. When the people writing laws start treating the Constitution itself as the obstacle rather than the framework, that's worth more attention than it's getting.