Rep. Chris Rabb (D-Philadelphia), the Democratic nominee for the 3rd Congressional District seat being vacated by retiring Rep. Dwight Evans, had strong words when talking about some fellow statewide Democrats during a recent podcast interview.

Talking on the PoliticsPA podcast “Voices of Reason,” Rabb called Sen. John Fetterman a “sellout” and said it was unfortunate that Pennsylvanians “had to learn who he was after he took office.”

Rabb, who has served in the state house since 2016 and has seen Gov. Josh Shapiro as a legislator, Attorney General and governor, also said that Shapiro would not be acceptable to Democratic Socialists as a presidential candidate.

“His politics do not align with Democratic Socialism,” said Rabb. “But there are very few viable candidates for president who do. So the question is not so much who would Democratic Socialists endorse or get behind, but who is the most viable Democratic candidate for president? Who can be held to the greatest account?”

A self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist, Rabb is one of the success stories from recent elections which also saw that faction rack up mayoral wins in three of the largest cities in the U.S.: Zohran Mamdani (New York), Katie Wilson (Seattle), and Janeese Lewis (Washington DC). Three establishment Democratic representatives also fell to Democratic Socialists in their New York and Colorado primaries.

“I think the Democratic Party has ideological diversity in it much like the Republican Party used to have,” said Rabb when asked about Democratic Socialism. “You have liberals who are Democrats. You have conservative or blue-dog Democrats. There are folks like me who believe that government needs to serve a greater and more substantial role in addressing things that we believe are human rights and not just things that can be won over legislatively. So whether it’s housing or education, it is an approach that separates us.

“I think the other thing we acknowledge is that in our current system, our electoral process has been hijacked by corporations,” he continued.

“For those of us who identify as Democratic Socialists, we take a more structural approach to governance where we believe that the things we need to do in elective office need to be systemic and not be incremental.”

A Gallup poll last year found that only 39 percent of U.S. adults had a positive image of socialism. This includes 66 percent of Democrats, 38 percent of independents and 14 percent of Republicans. And many Americans recoil when hearing the names of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) or Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

“I think there’s some words that we use quite a bit that we need to simply define. Let’s start with radical. People are afraid of radical this, radical that,” said Rabb. “Radical means at the root. What are the root causes of the things that sustain our misery as working people? The things that provide us with the safety net that we’re accustomed to – social security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, public housing, public education – those are all socialist programs. That’s not an opinion. Those are facts because in a pure capitalism system, they would not exist.

“So if you take a social security check, you embrace certain parts of socialism,” said Rabb. “You may not like that, you may not understand that, but it doesn’t make it untrue.”

The Democratic Party has come under fire recently – much of it from within its own ranks – for its support of Israel. On Wednesday, 103 Democrats voted for a amendment to cut off U.S. aid to Israel in a presumed doomed show vote, but it provided a test for Democrats who have been increasingly under pressure from the activist base over Israel.

Rabb has called Israel’s war in Gaza a “genocide,” and believes it is up to Israel and Palestine to figure out how to coexist.

“That’s entirely up to them,” he said. “That’s the point. They are not our playgrounds. I’m anti-militarism and anti-imperialist. I think the reason we have so many of these problems, global problems, is because the U.S. meddles everywhere and pretends to extend democracy when we don’t even embrace it in our own nation.

“We have an electoral college that keeps people from voting for president directly,” he continued. “We have a voting rights act that was just eviscerated. We don’t have a true participatory democracy in this nation and we really never have. When was the golden era of democracy in the U.S.? As an African-American whose people have been here fighting in every war going back to the Revolutionary War, as a descendant of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, we have never had a multi-racial democracy.

“It doesn’t mean that we are an evil society. It means that we have to atone for the original sins of its establishment. And we can do that. I’m proud to descend from folks who are on the right side of history centuries ago, abolitionists and civil rights activists and freedom fighters. That’s why I do this work. But we have to walk the talk.”

Before joining the state legislature, Rabb, 56, taught social entrepreneurship at Temple University’s Business School and prior to that worked as a legislative aide in the Clinton Administration focusing on small businesses. His paternal grandfather was a civil rights activist and a maternal great-great-grandfather was born enslaved, fought for the Union in the Civil War, and later founded an African American newspaper in Baltimore.

Rabb struck back at Sen. John Fetterman, who recently warned about the rise of a “dirt-bag left” within the Democratic Party. Fetterman said opposing Israel means being anti-American, anti-Western civilization, and anti-capitalist.

“He’s a sellout,” said Rabb. “He has betrayed the people of Pennsylvania. He’s betrayed all of those people who thought he was different and better. The reality was he was only marginally different and far worse. It’s very easy to troll people who you find villainous. It’s much harder to actually govern.”

He said that there would be no surprises on how he hopes to govern in Washington, unlike the senior Senator from the Commonwealth.

“Sadly, he was running as populist cosplay and he hurt a lot of people. It’s much harder to actually govern and govern with integrity from the moral center and I don’t think he could identify morality if it were shown on a lineup. It’s unfortunate that we had to learn who he was after he took office.”

Rabb told his primary night crowd in the bluest district in the nation that “they ain’t seen nothing yet” and laid out his priorities should he win election in November. No Republican has filed a challenge against Rabb, nearly guaranteeing his path to Washington.

“We need money out of politics,” he said. “We need to de-Trumpify government and return it to a civil society and governance that is based not on self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment, holding people to account and making sure that we restore the social safety net.”

He also called for the next Congress to try to invoke the 25th Amendment, saying President Donald Trump is unfit to serve and has been for some time. It should be noted that the Constitution entrusted the cabinet, not Congress, to start the process, though it allows Congress to change that by passing a law.

“We need to hold people to account who have been lawless in positions of power in the Trump administration and set a path for a bold vision for our nation, not for Democrats, but for all Americans in anticipation of a post-Trump America.

“We don’t need to make rural communities and southerners the butt of our jokes,” he elaborated. “It’s not kind and it’s not accurate. We need to make sure that we understand that there are people across the Commonwealth, be they rural, suburban, or urban communities, and maybe even some Republicans, who see a future that embraces some progressive values that they don’t need to understand is progressive. They just make sense.”