How Trump has sparked a rise in socialism among young Democrats
The Democratic Socialists of America movement is gaining steam. Are millennial socialists ignoring history and why this could spell loss for Democrats?
Millennials are far more likely to support the failed system that their parents and grandparents fought against and defeated.
Donald Trump is a divisive, unpopular president. Throughout 2018, his disapproval rating has remained above 50 percent, sometimes topping his approval rating by more than 16 points.
GOP voter enthusiasm is lagging, independents want to see a Democratic-run Congress by a margin of 20 points, and the D.C. press corps hammers the president relentlessly.
Given this unprecedented opportunity for the midterms, it seems like all the Democratic Party has to do is sit back, remain calm and not screw this up.
Well, about that.
President Trump is known to charge up his supporters at his pro-wrestling-style rallies, but the fact that he even exists charges up his critics even more. Whether it’s a bizarre tweet, an offensive comment or just an abrupt change in White House personnel, many Democrats have come unglued.
To be fair, it’s hard to blame them.
Two years ago, they held the most powerful bully pulpit in the world and seemed headed for an easy return to the White House.
For many, the shock of the November 2016 election is yet
to be processed; a strange bug in The Matrix that needs to be fixed so the country can get back to the presumed norm of Democratic ascendancy.
But in overreacting to this strange presidency, their prospects for the November 2018 elections could dim. Despite the predictions of a mammoth blue wave washing over Congress, there are troubling signs for Team Donkey.
A Gallup poll this week discovered that, for the first time, Democrats have a more positive image of socialism than they do of capitalism. Fifty-seven percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaners support the state-run economic system, while just 47 percent support free enterprise.
Did these people fall asleep in history class during the lectures about the Soviet Union and the Khmer Rouge? Miss the past few years of Venezuelans unable to find medicine, milk or toilet paper? Forget that just last month, Nicaraguan strongman Daniel Ortega shot up a bunch of university students in a church?
Socialism has never worked and never will, but the majority of Democrats want to give it another shot.
To show how far out of the mainstream this is, Americans as a whole support capitalism over socialism by nearly 20 points. The Democrats think the reverse by 10 points.
Perhaps the poll shouldn’t be a surprise. Bernie Sanders was embraced by nearly half the party in 2016 despite (or because of) his avowed socialism. More recently, Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ousted a long-time incumbent congressman in New York and became a media darling in the process.
While the leftward lurch might be popular in cable news studios, other socialist candidates haven’t fared so well. In last week’s primaries, the far left lost in a big way in campaigns across the heartland.
What sells in The Bronx doesn’t sell in Kansas City.
Delving into Gallup’s data, the strongest supporters of socialism are younger voters. Millennials are far more likely to support the failed system that their parents and grandparents fought against and defeated.
Ocasio-Cortez is a good representative of this trend. A member of the Democratic Socialists of America, the candidate is leading the move to drag Democrats further to the left.
While she presents the DSA’s aims as more in line with the Nordic model, her organization wants nothing like the nanny-state capitalism of Sweden or Denmark.
Joseph M. Schwartz, the DSA’s national vice-chair, calls for "a militant labor movement and a mass socialist presence strengthened by accumulated victories, looking to not merely tame but overcome capitalism."
For Democratic Socialists, abolishing capitalism is just the opening act.
“Socialism is about democratizing the family to get rid of patriarchal relations; democratizing the political sphere to get genuine participatory democracy; democratizing the schools by challenging the hierarchical relationship between the teachers of the school and the students of the school,” said Jared Abbott, a member of the DSA’s national steering committee.
Even Hugo Chavez wasn’t that ambitious.
Mainstream Democrats understand how loony this kind of talk sounds to most Americans. Yet by embracing DSA candidates like Ocasio-Cortez, they will tie their ailing party to theories that would be laughed off a university quad.
As Bernie Sanders proved, it isn’t just the young candidates donning the socialist label.
The GOP is hitting Maryland Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ben Jealous with his recent quote, “go ahead, call me a socialist.”
In New York’s race for governor, candidate Cynthia Nixon said, “Republicans are going to call us socialists no matter what we do, so we might as well give them the real thing.”
One last data point from that Gallup poll: Only 39 percent of respondents said they had a positive view of the federal government.
Perhaps voters should mull that over before handing those wizards in Washington even more power over our economy.