The Left: Should Democrats embrace ‘democratic socialists’?

After notching a string of Democratic primary wins in New York City and Colorado, the far-left Democratic Socialists of America will face its “biggest test” soon, said Caroline Vakil in The Hill. If the polls are right, the likely winner of the Democratic gubernatorial primary in Wisconsin will be state Rep. Francesca Hong, 37, a tattooed former restaurant worker and “proud” DSA member who a few years ago called for the abolition of Thanksgiving. Hong has sought to distance herself from that statement and from the DSA’s radical platform, which includes such proposals as abolishing the police, prisons, borders, and the U.S. Senate, as well as ending U.S. support for Israel. Because of that baggage, mainstream Democrats like current Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers doubt Hong can beat the GOP’s presumptive nominee, Rep. Tom Tiffany, in November, and worry she’ll hurt downballot candidates. But Hong’s supporters see no need to stress. They note the rising antiestablishment mood among Democrats and voters in general, and say the narrow win by progressive Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s Senate Democratic primary shows there’s a possible path to victory in purple states.

The “Democratic machine is fighting back” as best it can, said Noah Rothman in National Review. The Democratic National Committee last week tweaked its presidential primary schedule to favor centrist-leaning states like Nevada and South Carolina, which should help ward off “the insurgent socialists in their ranks.” But with 1 in 3 Democratic voters now identifying as a democratic socialist it may be too little, too late. This is “a story of establishment collapse rather than left-wing ascension,” said Astead Herndon in Vox. Candidates like Hong are winning over normie Democrats not with the DSA’s extreme ideas but by pushing popular measures: new taxes on the superrich, Medicare for all, restraining the artificial intelligence industry. The “rudderless” Democratic establishment, by contrast, is offering nothing except ineffective opposition to President Trump.

We need better labeling, said Jonathan V. Last in The Bulwark. The truth is that a likely majority of DSA members, and the overwhelming majority of those who tell pollsters they’re “democratic socialists,” aren’t “socialists” at all. “They’re social democrats, in the European tradition.” Like the DSA-endorsed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), their main objectives are an expanded welfare state, including universal health-care coverage, funded by a more progressive tax code. Social democrats also want to win elections, meaning they could be a great asset within the Democratic coalition. Not so the DSA’s “Das Kapital–loving, Mao-admiring” genuine socialists who need to be rejected before they “do to the Democratic Party what MAGA did to Republicans.”

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Democrats should stop “whining,” said Paul Waldman in Public Notice. With the primaries largely over, it’s electoral self-harm to keep screaming “half our candidates are crazy!” The party’s centrists need to understand that, with control of Congress in the balance, “they have an interest in seeing all Democrats succeed—even those who are too progressive for their taste.” Whatever happens in November “will inform 2028,” said Nia-Malika Henderson in Bloomberg. If DSA-backed candidates can “pull off victories in purple states,” then a new template will emerge on how to win. But if those candidates lose, the Democratic Party will have less power than ever to “rein in Trump’s many excesses,” and will sail toward 2028 still “wrestling with itself” over what it actually believes.