Liberal icon, former Rep. Barney Frank, who is dying of congestive heart failure, spoke out from hospice to deliver a stark warning to Democrats for swinging too far to the left on social issues — and said it will cost them with voters.
The 86-year-old former congressman, who is famous for fighting to legalize same-sex marriage and pushing to regulate Wall Street after the 2008 financial meltdown, hopes his lefty bona fides will help his message resonate with the far left.
“It’s precisely because I have been on the left that I have undertaken this,” Frank told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “Many of us fought to get inequality on the Democratic agenda.”
“But the problem was, as we succeeded in bringing the mainstream of the left into a concern with inequality, we also enabled people who wanted to use that as a platform for a wide range of social and cultural changes, some of which the public isn’t ready for.”
Frank is set to release a scathing book rebuking the left flank of the Democratic Party later this year. His main message to lefties is to be more strategic about how far to push on social issues.
“We didn’t get to marriage until after these other things had been resolved,” Frank argued.
“And that’s what I’m suggesting that we do today. The analogy is males and female transsexuals playing sports that are for women.”
“I understand there’s a lot of anger about that,” he continued. “And I think, in the interest of the transgender community, as well as others, it would be better to go at that in a more granular way, and not simply announce that, if you don’t support it, you’re a homophobe.”
During a recent interview with Politico, the architect of the Dodd-Frank banking regulations also cited the defund the police and open borders push as examples of lefties going too far.