‘Tea party of the Left’ set to shake up US politics
Inside a 200-year-old church a few miles from the White House the seeds of the socialist revolution are being sown. At least that’s what an enthusiastic group of millennials, armed with plaster boards and marker pens, hope. They turn out signs that read “Blood Money” and “Capitalism in Crisis” on behalf of the Democratic Socialists of America. The signs will be used to target a “profiteer” at a forthcoming protest, they say, declining to tell The Telegraph who. Across the US similar scenes are playing out amid an unprecedented surge in DSA membership. This organisation had languished in obscurity for decades, and had only 5,000 members when Donald Trump was elected. Now, it has a record 40,000. It has 155 chapters, including many on college campuses, and has the potential to become a so-called “tea party of the Left”.
Alexandria Ocasio-cortez, a 28-yearold DSA member, set off a political earthquake within the Democratic Party last week when she won a congressional primary in New York.
She defeated Joe Crowley, a 10-term congressman, who was tipped as the next Democrat leader in the House of Representatives. One socialist chapter signed up 1,000 new members in the next 24 hours. The party leadership is now in damage limitation mode as it desperately tries to contain a lurch to the Left. “This is a big problem for the Democrats,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Centre for Politics at Virginia University. “The party is still a long way from Jeremy Corbyn and Labour, but they could be going that way. If the Democrats give themselves to Bernie Sanders, or someone representing him, in 2020 it’s possible you have a Corbyn-type situation.
“If they don’t, and still lose, you’ll have the Left go wild. They have to find a leader who can pull them together.”
Socialists are unfazed that they could be jeopardising the party’s chances, leaving a clear path for Mr Trump and the Republicans. They are determined to shift the Democratic Party to the Left. “We actually don’t really agree with the Democratic Party, they’re too conservative for us,” said Liz Golden, 25, who joined the DSA last year. “We do electoral work for them, and our candidates run as Democrats, but we ask candidates to be open about being socialist. We want to get more socialists into government.” She said victory in New York had made the “S-word” acceptable. “It’s OK to be socialist now. We’re not these scary red commies from across the sea that are trying to take everything away any more.”
For those on the left of the Democrat spectrum, bitterness about Mr Sanders’s treatment by the party’s national committee in 2016 still lingers. At the church they condemn the party for being “beholden to the donor class who live in New York and Connecticut,” and to Wall Street. “I’ve been at a protest every day this week,” said Austin Kendall, 27. He said socialism was a “label people wear with pride now”.
Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat leader in the House, has firmly denounced socialism, saying: “We’re capitalists and that’s just the way it is”. She also rebuked Maxine Waters, a Democrat congresswoman, for suggesting supporters publicly confront Trump administration officials.
Following controversy over Mr Trump’s separation of illegal immigrant families at the Mexico border, Ms Ocasio-cortez campaigned to abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
Another idea gaining momentum is a proposal that the federal government should guarantee everyone a job.
There are splits, too, over universal healthcare and free college tuition.
In addition to the “S-word”, the Democrat leadership is trying to avoid the “I-word” – impeachment – setting it at odds with its own activists who are eager to impeach Mr Trump.
The leadership believes such a campaign would be divisive.
It is all making Ms Pelosi, once a radical polarising figure herself, “look conservative,” said Mr Sabato. He added: “The Democrats need to find a leader who can pull them together.”