They’re socialists, not communists
Danger! In case you hadn’t noticed yet, the Democratic Party’s in big trouble. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post report the party’s in danger of being overrun by “Democratic Socialists” who are pushing the Democratic Party so far to the left they’ll alienate core Democratic voters and destroy the party’s chances of taking back the House in November.
That warning’s been echoed by Democrats and Republicans. “We’ve got to abandon a politics of anxiety that is characterized by wild-eyed proposals and instead deliver ideas and practical solutions,” Delaware Sen. Chris Coons told a group of centrist Democrats. And no less a Republican than former FBI Director James Comey pleaded: “Democrats, please, please, don’t lose your minds and rush to the socialist left.”
It sounds scary, but it’s not. To borrow a phrase, it’s all “fake news” — ginned up by nervous Republicans with the too-gullible help of the media. There’s no Democratic Socialist revolution going on. The Democratic Socialists of America only count 45,000 members nationwide. But there is a progressive revolution — and it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to the Democratic Party.
It all started with the stunning defeat of powerful Queens Democrat Joe Crowley by political newcomer and Bernie Sanders supporter Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. No sooner had she scored her upset victory than stories started popping up everywhere that so-called “Democratic Socialists” were taking over the Democratic Party, advocating an extreme left rejection of capitalism and forcing their old-fashioned, Lenin-style socialist agenda on every state and congressional district. None of which is true.
True, Ocasio-Cortez calls herself a “Democratic Socialist.” But she ran as a Democrat — a progressive Democrat. And she ran on a progressive agenda: Medicare for all, $15 minimum wage, prison reform, creating new jobs, getting dark money out of politics and climate change. That’s hardly a “wildeyed” or “socialist left” agenda. She didn’t advocate nationalizing banks or oil companies. Basically, she campaigned on the same agenda Bernie Sanders ran on in 2016 and on which he won 21 primaries, over 13 million votes, 1,876 delegates and $232 million in small contributions. And the same issues contained in the 2016 Democratic Party platform, embraced by Hillary Clinton.
Nor do progressives like Sanders’ and Ocasio-Cortez’s demand that Democrats field only progressive candidates. In more moderate states or congressional districts, they welcome centrist candidates like Pennsylvania’s Conor Lamb and Arkansas’ Doug Jones. They also support redstate incumbent Dermocrats like Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill and Montana Sen. Jon Tester. They agree the most important rule is to field a Democratic candidate who fits the district and can win.
However, what progressives do argue is twofold: One, that progressives can win in many more states and congressional districts than establishment Democrats believe. Two, that the Democratic Party must either adopt a progressive agenda that appeals to working-class Americans or become virtually nonexistent. And they’re right about both.
In fact, to a large extent, progressives have already won that argument. Although she’s received the most media attention, Ocasio-Cortez is not the only progressive candidate to shake up the establishment. Among others, she joins Nebraska’s Kara Eastman and New York’s Dana Balter, both of whom knocked off the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s hand-picked candidates — and Maryland’s Ben Jealous, who won that state’s Democratic primary for governor with the endorsement of Bernie Sanders alone. Nationwide, since January 2017, progressive Democrats have flipped 43 state legislative seats from red to blue in states as red as Iowa, Florida and Oklahoma.
Republicans know that. They’re so worried that these early Democratic victories could result in a blue wave in November that they’ve resurrected a tried, but true rightwing political gimmick: the Red Scare. You can almost hear them chanting: “The communists are coming!”
No, America, it’s not communists who are coming. It’s young progressives, especially young women, who are coming — in the most powerful wave of political energy we’ve seen since the anti-war protests of 1968. And nobody fits that profile better than Ocasio-Cortez. She’s not the death of the Democratic Party. She’s its future.
Those worried about the progressive movement have it backward. To win in November, the risk is not that today’s Democratic candidates are too far left. It’s that too many Democratic candidates are not far left enough.