Democratic Socialists have never been as popular in the United States as they are right now. The mayor of the largest city in the entire country is a Democratic Socialist. The mayor of Seattle is a Democratic Socialist, too.
In November, a Democratic Socialist will become the next mayor of our nation’s capital, and there is a very good chance that a Democratic Socialist will become the next mayor of the second-largest city in the entire country. Of course, there are already two members of Congress who are card-carrying members of the Democratic Socialists of America. One of them, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is likely to run for president in 2028.
What most people don’t realize is that the Democratic Socialists of America was designed to be a political party within a political party. They have their own membership rolls, organizational structure and party platform. But their candidates all run as Democrats.
As DSA members win more local elections across the country, they will have increasing influence over the direction of the Democratic Party.
Given enough time, the DSA could eventually become the dominant force within the Democratic Party.
A survey that was conducted last year discovered that 62 percent of U.S. adults under the age of 30 have a positive view of socialism.
Just think about that for a moment.
Once upon a time, those who openly referred to themselves as “socialists” were political pariahs.
But now Democratic Socialists are on a remarkable winning streak.
In recent months, members of the Democratic Socialists of America have been elected as mayors in New York City, Seattle, and, last week, Washington D.C. This November, DSA member Nithya Raman will face incumbent Karen Bass in the Los Angeles mayoral election.
CNN data analyst Harry Enten notes that the DSA has a net favorability rating of +17 among Democrats, compared with just +4 for congressional Democrats. “They’re a better brand at this point than Democrats in Congress,” he marvels.
Of course even most of the people that are actually voting for Democratic Socialists cannot define what “Democratic Socialism” is.
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The DSA website defines it as “a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society.”
There isn’t one universal definition of democratic socialism. According to the website of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), democratic socialists view capitalism as “a system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own profit” and want to “replace it with democratic socialism, a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society.”
“What we want to do is extend democracy to our workplace and our housing and society at large, sort of deciding the ways our cities run, our jobs run, our housing runs, as opposed to right now, we think we’re in sort of a dictatorship of capital—the big corporations kind of make the decisions about everything, really,” says Megan Romer, the co-chair of the DSA.
Democratic socialism in the U.S., Farinella says, is not the socialism seen in the former Soviet Union, which was an autocratic system that eliminated capitalism by putting all major industries under centralized government control. Democratic socialists don’t want large corporations to be controlled by the government, and don’t want an autocracy; rather, they want to place the power of decision-making in the hands of the people through a democratic process.
That sounds so warm and fuzzy.
But when you start examining their actual party platform, you find all sorts of extremely radical proposals.
There’s ample evidence of the DSA’s radicalism. Earlier this month, its leadership issued an updated platform that calls for abolishing the U.S. Senate, defunding the Pentagon, offering universal amnesty to illegal immigrants, transferring the ownership of major corporations to the public, and replacing “the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.” It also includes a demand that police budgets be cut “annually to zero.” Sarah Milner, a member of the DSA’s Reform & Revolution caucus, justified the platform by pointing out that President Woodrow Wilson once called for drastically amending the Constitution. She said the DSA’s proposed changes would advance “a vision of transforming the functions of the American state to allow for the implementation of socialism.” Taken as a whole, the platform enthusiastically embraces illiberal values, which former New York Times columnist Pamela Paul has called “the most troubling characteristic of contemporary progressivism.”
That is a pretty alarming list.
Before I started doing research for this article, I didn’t even know that they wanted to do all of that.
So they actually want to get rid of the presidency, the U.S. Senate, the Supreme Court, the Pentagon and all police?
But they don’t campaign on any of that.
What they campaign on is giving lots of free stuff to everyone.
They want free health care, free child care, free tuition, free public transportation and free assistance to all homebuyers that need it.
Janeese Lewis George just kept making more promises to the “free stuff army”, and now that she has won the Democratic primary she is going to be elected the next mayor of Washington D.C. in November.
As Janeese Lewis George paves a path to the mayor’s office in Washington, D.C., she’s told voters they could have it all.
Her unapologetically expansive, left-wing agenda includes subsidized or even free childcare, increased down payment assistance for homebuyers and community resources to reduce crime, plus a promise to aggressively confront President Donald Trump’s attempts to reshape the nation’s capital.
“People are tired of hearing what government can’t do. They want to hear what government can do,” Lewis George said in an interview before the city’s primary, where she defeated her Democratic opponents and positioned herself to win the general election in November in a city dominated by Democrats.
Voters love to hear that they can have it all.
But somewhere along the line someone actually has to pay for all of the free stuff that the government is handing out.
There was a time when American voters were smart enough to figure this out.
Unfortunately, our system of education has produced vast numbers of young adults that were never trained to think critically, and it is our young adults that are now fueling the rise of the Democratic Socialists.
Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
