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On Tuesday’s Bo Snerdley’s Rush Hour, I dug further into El-Sayed’s disappearing record, the Medicare-for-All sleight of hand, Hasan Piker’s communist “heroes” and the never-ending WNBA drama. We also had some fun with the crowded Florida Republican primary that has become so bizarre it might require its own circus tent.

There is an old rule in politics: When a candidate starts deleting old videos, somebody should start downloading them.

That rule certainly applies to Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate. Now that he has escaped the Democratic primary and attracted national attention, some of his previous pronouncements are reportedly disappearing from public view.

Among them: a video offering “Four Reasons Why Fireworks Suck,” another attacking football’s “toxically masculine culture,” and remarks arguing that the Second Amendment should be replaced with a right to health care.

It is quite a political résumé. Fireworks are bad. Football is toxic. Gun rights should be erased. And if you object, kindly learn how to pronounce his name before being scolded.

I will grant El-Sayed one thing about fireworks. Where I live, the Fourth of July can sound like the opening bombardment of a small war. The neighbors apparently conduct equipment tests the night before, then unleash the entire arsenal on Independence Day.

But I do not want to ban their fun. I duck for cover, wait for the smoke to clear and let Americans celebrate America. By midnight, the war is over, everybody goes to bed and civilization resumes.

That is the difference between being irritated by something and believing government should eliminate it. Progressives have trouble recognizing that distinction. Every personal complaint eventually becomes a public policy proposal.

El-Sayed’s deleted material matters because it provides a clearer picture of the worldview behind his polished campaign language. The same pattern appeared when he was questioned about Medicare for All.

Asked whether Americans earning less than $1 million would pay higher taxes, El-Sayed first reached for the standard line about taxing billionaires. When pressed, however, the answer finally emerged: Workers would pay “a little bit more” through FICA.

There it is. Whenever a socialist says somebody else will pay for the program, keep listening. Eventually, “the billionaires” become you.

El-Sayed’s sales pitch is attractive on the surface. Instead of paying insurance premiums, he argues, Americans could pay more in taxes and receive health care they would not lose after changing jobs, turning 26, getting married or getting divorced.

Of course, security and portability are appealing. People do worry about losing coverage. A candidate who identifies that anxiety is addressing a real problem.

But describing the benefit is not the same as explaining the system.

Medicare does not operate hospitals or employ an army of government physicians waiting to treat everybody. It finances and administers care delivered through doctors, hospitals and private organizations. Those supposedly villainous companies and highly paid executives do not magically vanish because Washington collects more of your paycheck.

The sales pitch makes it sound as though Americans will replace one payment with another and receive unlimited care without complications. The reality would involve higher taxes, an enormous federal bureaucracy and government exercising greater control over prices, reimbursements and access.

And here is a particularly rich detail: El-Sayed’s wife is reportedly a physician who does not accept Medicare. Apparently, Medicare for All is good enough for all—just not necessarily for the doctor in the candidate’s own house.

This is how modern socialism is marketed. It no longer arrives waving a red flag and demanding that the government seize the factories. It arrives promising that everything will become easier if you surrender a little more money and a little more control.

Then there is Hasan Piker, the radical streamer who has campaigned with El-Sayed and enjoys access to prominent Democrats such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ro Khanna.

We have already heard Piker dismiss what black voters care about. We have heard the ugly remarks involving lynchings and Auschwitz. Now another clip has surfaced in which he declares:

“I love Lenin. I love Fidel Castro and I love Che Guevara. They are genuinely heroes.”

Heroes!

Fidel Castro condemned generations of Cubans to dictatorship, political persecution and economic misery. Che Guevara helped administer revolutionary terror and executions. Lenin established the machinery of communist repression that would produce misery on a scale difficult to comprehend.

But slap Che’s face on a fashionable T-shirt and suddenly college Marxists think they have discovered a freedom fighter. I admit those shirts can look good. The historical record underneath them—not so much.

The important question is not whether Hasan Piker is allowed to admire communists. This is America, where citizens remain free to say foolish things into expensive microphones. The question is why so many Democratic politicians keep courting him.

They know what he has said. They know whom he admires. They know his audience is being taught that communist dictators were heroes. Yet they refuse to make a clean break because he brings young progressive followers with him.

El-Sayed has been especially evasive. He wants the enthusiasm Piker generates without accepting responsibility for the ideology Piker celebrates.

That is the Democratic Party’s larger predicament. Its candidates want to run as practical reformers while their activist coalition cheers socialism, attacks American traditions and treats radicalism as fashionable entertainment.

Even the cultural complaints fit the pattern. Football becomes “toxically masculine.” Fireworks “suck.” The Second Amendment is an inconvenience to be stricken. Private health coverage is to be displaced by a national system financed through higher taxes.

Piece by piece, familiar parts of American life are placed on trial—and the candidate doing it still presents himself as the reasonable fellow in the room.

Meanwhile, the WNBA appears determined to demonstrate that politics can consume almost anything, including a basketball game.

I attended the New York Liberty’s very first game because I wanted to support women’s sports. Today, I need a flowchart to understand the WNBA. There are hard fouls, ejections, accusations of white privilege, demands that coaches be fired, politicians joining the argument and social-media rumors falsely claiming somebody already was fired.

At some point, a basketball game has to break out.

Maybe the drama is good for attendance. We are certainly talking about the league. But when every foul becomes a political referendum and every disagreement becomes evidence of social injustice, the sport begins to resemble a daytime soap opera with sneakers.

And that brings us back to the same problem.

Whether it is health care, football, fireworks or basketball, the progressive left seems incapable of leaving anything alone. Everything must be politicized, reorganized or purified. Every institution must serve the movement. Every disagreement must reveal an oppressor and a victim.

The language may sound softer during an election campaign, but the underlying agenda has not softened. That is why those old videos matter—and why deleting them will not erase what they reveal.

If you missed the fastest hour in American media, listen to the full show on the Red Apple Podcast Network. The clips are worth hearing in their entirety—because sometimes the most revealing thing a politician says is the thing he later hopes you cannot find.