What Is “Far Left”?
Much of the establishment media has also joined the chorus, often describing DSA and the candidates it supports as “far left.” In truth, DSA candidates and DSA’s progressive allies are more reformers than revolutionaries. Their proposals are akin to what most people around the world call “social democracy,” which seeks to make capitalism more humane and democratic. These ideas are popular with the vast majority of Americans.
So, Republicans hope that their warnings of a socialist takeover of American politics will help their candidates this November and in 2028 by painting all Democrats with the same “far left” or “extreme left” brush.
Progressives are in Sync with Most Americans
Widening inequality, a growing concern with the cost of basics like housing, health, childcare and college, and the outsized political and economic influence of big business and billionaires has made more Americans skeptical of America’s version of capitalism. A Gallup Poll survey conducted last year found that 39% of all Americans over 18 – and 49% of those between 18 and 34 -- have a positive view of socialism. Among Democrats, 66% have a positive view of socialism (which is why DSA’s strongest turf is in deep-blue areas) compared with, 38% of independents and 14% of Republicans. Most Americans with positive views of socialism, however, have not joined DSA, whose due-paying membership has grown from 7,000 to 120,000 since Sanders mounted his first presidential campaign in 2016. (In contrast, the ACLU and Sierra Club each have over one million members, the NRA has about four million, and about 14.7 million Americans are members of a union).
In fact, most voters who vote for DSA or DSA-adjacent candidates like Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani don’t think of themselves as socialists, and perhaps not even as progressives. But a growing number are receptive to ideas that most Europeans (especially those in Scandinavian countries), and even many Canadians, take for granted. They know that these societies embrace universal health insurance and childcare, paid family leave and paid vacations, more equality for women, and more progressive taxes. They have less poverty, a higher standard of living for working families, better schools, universities that are affordable to working class students, a cleaner environment, higher voter turnout, stronger unions, and a much wider safety net.
Sounds anti-business? U.S. News ranked Denmark as the second-best country for business, while Sweden ranked third, the Netherlands ranked fifth, Norway ranked sixth, Finland eighth, and Norway fifteenth. The United States — the world’s most hyper-capitalist nation — ranked eighteenth.
What most DSA members and DSA-endorsed candidates want is an updated version of the New Deal. They don’t want the federal government to take over Walmart, General Motors, Microsoft, or Wells Fargo. They do want to reduce the political influence of the super-rich and big corporations through public financing of elections and increase taxes on the wealthy to help pay for expanded public services like childcare, public transit, schools, and higher education. They want to make it easier for workers to unionize; reduce barriers to voting; limit the sale of military-style assault weapons; and strengthen regulations of business to require them to be more socially responsible. That means a higher minimum wage, paid sick days and paid vacations, and safer workplaces. They believe that banks shouldn’t engage in reckless predatory lending. Energy corporations shouldn’t endanger the planet and public health by emitting too much pollution. Companies should be required to guarantee that consumer products (like cars and toys) are safe and that companies pay decent wages and face penalties for union-busting. They want local police departments to hold abusive officers accountable and an end to racial profiling. They want an end to the war with Iran, a halt to U.S. military aid to Israel until it ends its war in Gaza and the occupation of Palestinian areas, and a foreign policy based on human rights.
Sanders has said, “I don’t believe it is a terribly radical idea to say that someone who works 40 hours a week should not be living in poverty.” Most Americans agree with him.
If anything, it is right-wing Republicans who are the extremists and whose views are out of sync with most Americans. In contrast, progressives and democratic socialists are in accord with the vast majority of Americans, regardless of how they define themselves. For example, according to recent polls:
80% of Americans consider wealth inequality a serious national issue.
82% view the influence of money in politics as a threat to American democracy.
80% believe that the rich have too much political power.
65% think the American economy is rigged to advantage the rich.
77% support increasing taxes on billionaires and 63% (including 43% of Republicans) support higher taxes on large corporations.
80% (and 70% of Republicans) support a tax on corporations whose CEOs make 50 times more than their median employees
73% think that members of Congress and their family members should be prohibited from owning or trading individual stocks.
74% support requiring oil and gas companies to pay a share of climate-related costs.
69% (including 58% of Republicans) think that the government should do more to regulate grocery chains that raise prices to maximize profits.
82% say that the profits made by pharmaceutical companies are a “major factor” in the high price of prescription drugs. Perhaps surprisingly, 89% of Republicans share this view, compared with 78% of independents and 84% of Democrats.
88% want Congress to allow Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to lower prescription drug prices
62% think it is the responsibility of the federal government to make sure all Americans have health care coverage.
90% think Congress should add dental, vision, and hearing benefits to Medicare coverage
59% support a single-payer or Medicare for All system (27% oppose the idea and 14% had no opinion).
57% want Congress to pass legislation to codify nationwide rights to abortion, contraception, and in vitro fertilization
68% support labor unions, a significant increase since the 1960s.
67% (including 53% of Republicans) support federal legislation to make it easier for Americans to form unions and negotiate for higher pay and better benefits
77% (including 75% of Republicans) support raising the federal minimum wage from the current $7.25 to $15, while 70% think it should be increased to $17.
75% (including 64% of Republicans) think Congress should guarantee 12 weeks of annual paid family and medical leave to all employees.
73% support government-funded universal childcare.
81% (and 74% of Republicans) support a guarantee of at least 10 days of paid vacation for full-time workers.
70% (including 62% of Republicans) embrace the idea of making two years of community college tuition-free nationwide.
72% (including 63% of Republicans and 61% of gun owners) think that a person should be required to obtain a license from local law enforcement before they can purchase a gun.
58% of Americans who have heard about the recent killings by ICE agents support abolishing the agency. Only 25% of Americans think that most or all of the people being deported are criminals.
57% believe that police treat people unequally based on their race and 58% don’t think that the courts treat everyone equally.
A majority support reforms such as banning chokeholds, curtailing no-knock warrants, expanding the use of body cameras, conducting independent investigations of officer-involved shootings, launching a national database for police misconduct, and appointing civilian oversight boards as watchdogs over police departments. Many Americans support shifting some funding toward community crime-prevention and using mental health workers to deal with non-violent incidents, but very few Americans, across all races, want to “defund” or dismantle local police departments.
69% support the creation of a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who are essential workers, are farmworkers, were brought to the U.S. as children, or are here legally due to war or natural disaster in their home countries
60% of Americans – including 82% of those between 18 and 34 -- disapprove of Israel’s military action in Gaza. The proportion of Americans who want to decrease or stop U.S. military aid to Israel (40%) is higher than those who support maintaining the same level (27%) or increasing it (11%).
Red-Baiting
Given these poll results, how can Trump and his allies win the hearts and minds of American voters? They think that branding Democrats as communists, Marxists, “radical lunatics,” and even “jihadists” is the best strategy for Republicans to keep control of the House and Senate and to deflect public attention from his many failures.
“Our warriors did not fight communism on battlefields across the world, only to have that menace rear its ugly head right back here in America,” Trump said in his July 4th address this year. “It’s like a cancer. You got to cut it out.”
In 2019, gearing up for his reelection battle, Trump asked his Council of Economic Advisers to write a report on the evils of socialism. They complied with a 72-page manifesto called “The Opportunity Costs of Socialism” that rambled from criticisms of tuition-free college to atrocities committed by the Soviet Union and Communist China. His acolytes followed his lead. In 2019, after Ocasio-Cortez announced that she was redistributing her office budget in order to raise the salaries of her lowest-level staffers to $52,000, Fox News host Pete Hegseth, now Trump’s Secretary of Defense, described her action as “communism and socialism.”
This year, Trump, Republican leaders, and GOP candidates are echoing the same talking points. Steven Cheung, Trump's communications director, recent called Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia), hardly a left-winger, a "radical, extremist Dumocrat.” Trump has called Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratics’ candidate for Michigan’s Senate Seat, a “communist.” Former Rep. Mike Rogers, El-Sayed’s Trump-loving Republican opponent, called him an “extremist.”
Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) warned that the Democratic Party is “controlled by dangerous, left-wing extremists.” Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wisconsin), who is seeking reelection in a toss-up district, told USA Today that American politics today is “literally capitalist versus communist." After DSA-backed state Rep. Manny Rutinel won the Democratic primary election for Colorado’s highly competitive 8th Congressional District, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee said that Rutinel was “racing to the far left.”
Even some moderate Democrats have jumped on the bandwagon. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) recently accused DSA of “hijacking” the Democratic Party and hurting its candidates’ chances to win in November. “The Democrats have a big tent,” Gottheimer wrote on X. “That’s our strength. We embrace a range of ideas — but there’s no room for anti-American bomb-throwers who oppose our ideas, values, & leaders.”
Pundit James Carville, a long-time Democratic operative, has threatened to leave the party if "this idea that we're going to seize the means of production” – which he associated with DSA-backed Democrats – gains traction.
Jonathan Cowan, the president of Third Way, a group of centrist Democratics, revealed to the New York Times a new $15 million campaign to discredit democratic socialism before the 2028 elections.
“It is deeply troubling to see radical, far-left candidates winning in places that are potentially presidential swing states,” Cowan told the Times. “We are preparing for the next war that is coming.”
The progressive surge has also exposed the establishment media’s centrist bias. They not only report the anti-left name-calling by politicians and pundits but also can’t resist describing this new wave or progressives and democratic socialists as “far left” and “extreme left” candidates.
POLITICO wrote that DSA member and state assemblyperson Francesca Hong’s loss in her campaign for Wisconsin governor “revealed limits to the far left’s power.” The Wall Street Journal observed that her defeat delivered “a significant blow to the party’s insurgent far-left flank.” The Washington Post described the DSA-backed candidates who have won Democratic primaries this year as part of the “far-left.” Even WBUR, the NPR station in Boston, called Hong a “far-left candidate.”
A Long Tradition
Red-baiting has been a consistent presence in American politics since the 1917 Russian Revolution. During the first Red Scare, after World War I, Woodrow Wilson’s attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer, rounded up, jailed, or deported thousands of suspected radicals, including members of the Socialist Party, stoking fear that they were trying to import Communism (or anarchism) to the United States.
During the Depression, right-wing groups, business leaders, Republicans, and much of the press branded President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal as ultra-radical. “The New Deal is now undisguised state socialism,” pronounced Senator Simeon Fess of Ohio in 1934. A year later his GOP colleague, Representative Robert Rich of Pennsylvania, claimed that “Roosevelt is a socialist, not a Democrat.” This is what Carville is saying today.
When big-business leaders and conservatives attacked him as a radical, FDR boasted: “They are unanimous in their hate for me. And I welcome their hatred.”
Beginning in the late 1940s, another wave of hysteria swept the country during the Cold War, when conservative politicians like Senators Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, and Pat McCarron engineered witch hunts to identify and blacklist progressives and radicals in government, schools and universities, Hollywood, labor unions, and the media, alleging that Communists were infiltrating key institutions in order to undermine the American way of life. (McCarthy’s top witch-hunting assistant was Roy Cohn, who would later become Trump’s attorney and political mentor.)
Anyone who questioned the nuclear-arms race, supported racial integration, or called for higher taxes on the rich could be branded an anti-American Communist. Pressure from the right forced some liberal Democrats to prove their loyalty by participating in the witch hunts.
Even President Harry Truman – a liberal but also an ardent Cold Warrior – excoriated his Republican opponents for branding as socialist his efforts to expand the New Deal by providing government-funded health insurance, more low-rent public housing, and other programs. In an October 1952 speech, Truman said: “Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.”
Not even Martin Luther King Jr. was immune from the right-wing witch hunt. In the 1960s, segregationists and right-wing groups erected billboards around the country vilifying him as a Communist. The Cold War red-baiters didn’t make distinctions between socialism and communism, even though leading American socialists like Norman Thomas and Michael Harrington opposed the totalitarian governments of the Soviet Union, China, and their satellites.
Even after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later, red-baiting never went on hiatus. After Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, the National Review, a conservative magazine, put his picture on its cover over the headline, “Our Socialist Future.”
DSA’s Wins and Losses
The attacks on DSA are far out of proportion to its track record of electing candidates.
About 250 DSA members or DSA-backed candidates now serve in public office, most of them at the local level. To put this in context, there are 496,537 elected public offices across the United States, most at the local and school district levels.
In the past decade, DSA has transformed itself from a marginal left-wing debating society into an electoral force – at least in a growing number of deep-blue cities, states, and Congressional districts. Last year’s victories by New York mayor Zohran Mamdani and Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, both democratic socialists, lifted DSA’s reputation even more. Voters have spoken in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York by electing several DSAers to the city council in each city. Pennsylvania and New York have socialist caucuses in their state legislatures.
Progressives and DSA-backed candidates have had most of their success so far in safely Democratic cities, state legislative and Congressional districts, and states, This year, for example, DSAer and DC city councilmember Janeese Lewis George is likely to win her race to be the capital’s next mayor. She is one of 64 DSA-backed candidates who won primaries this year, compared to 57 in the loss column.
This year, despite the fact that the Democratic establishment and its big funders backed centrists in the primaries, progressives like Brad Lander, Darializa Chevalier, and Claire Valdez in New York, Melat Kiros in Denver, Analilia Mejia in New Jersey, Donavan McKinney in Michigan, and Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania prevailed in their primary battles in deep-blue House districts and are likely win their Congressional races in November. The House already has 100 Progressive Caucus members; the democratic socialist caucus could soon total nine or ten members of Congress, the largest number in American history.
It is also true that most DSA-backed candidates who ran for the House this year lost their primary races to more centrist candidates in both battleground and deep-blue districts in California, Florida, Illinois, Missouri, Virginia, and Texas. DSA’s best chance to win a purple district in November is Manny Rutinel, an environmental lawyer and state legislator who won the Democratic primary election in Colorado’s highly competitive 8th Congressional District and is facing Republican incumbent Gabe Evans, who voted to support Trump’s agenda 99% of the time.
Francesca Hong’s razor-thin loss for the Democratic nomination for Wisconsin governor, and Abdul El-Sayed’s narrow victory and Angie Nixon’s landslide win in the primaries for U.S. Senate seats in Michigan and Florida, respectively, reveal that a significant number of Democrats are willing to vote for progressive candidates in statewide races. All three were vastly outspent by the centrist Democratic opponents. All three ran robust grassroots campaigns that attracted a large number of volunteers and increased Democratic turnout.
Hong is a chef, former restaurant owner, state legislator from Madison, and a DSA member. During her campaign she outlined a progressive platform that included strong opposition to AI data centers. But she made a number of costly mistakes and seemed particularly unprepared to either defend or distance herself from her past social media comments about abolishing the police and canceling Thanksgiving. Republicans, moderate Dems, and the news media jumped on these controversies and Hong didn’t handle them adeptly. These errors persuaded just enough Democratic voters – aided by a well-funded campaign among the Democratic establishment led by retiring Gov. Tony Evers – that Hong would have a difficult time beating the Republican nominee, Rep. Tom Tiffany, an avid Trumper, in November.
El-Sayed, a physician and public health official, is not a DSA member and did not get DSA’s official endorsement but its members canvased for him in joint efforts for DSA-affiliated candidates in Michigan. Both he and Nixon, a state representative and small business owner who joined DSA in June, will each face right-wing Trump-aligned Republicans in November. El-Sayed has a better chance to win his contest in battleground Michigan (where Trump defeated Kamala Harris by a 49.6 to 48.7% margin) than Nixon, running in deeply-red Florida (where Trump beat Kamala Harris 56 to 43%), and where Republican state officials have adopted a voter suppression strategy. El-Sayed, a Muslim, and Nixon, a black woman, will also face an onslaught of racism – overt and subtle – from Republicans and the right-wing media echo chamber.
Whether El-Sayed and Nixon can overcome those obstacles and make it more likely for Democrats to win a Senate majority, will depend in part on their ability to unite the Democratic party behind them, raise sufficient money to mount credible campaigns, enlist an army of volunteers, and appeal to independent voters, who represent about 16% of Michigan’s electorate and 29% of Florida’s. It will also depend on how well El-Sayed and Nixon connect to voters in terms of their personalities, senses of humor, personal stories, and ability to translate their ideas into common sense language that both attacks Trump and persuades voters that they have practical policies for making their lives easier.
Stepping Stones Toward A More Humane Society
DSA recently released its national platform. Most of it involves typical progressive ideas on health care, unions, transportation, and other matters. But most DSA-backed candidates have been careful to reject some parts of the platform, and some statements by DSA’s ultra-left factions – such as abolishing borders, prisons and the U.S. Senate, defunding the entire Defense Department, government ownership of the largest corporations, and ending U.S. aid to Ukraine. These views do not represent the beliefs of most rank-and-file DSA members, but they provide DSA’s opponents with convenient talking points and put its candidates on the defensive.
Megan Romer, one of two DSA co-chairs, did the group no favors in her recent interviews with Fox News and The New Yorker Radio Hour, where she was unable to explain DSA’s platform regarding Israel and Hamas, taxing the rich, and other matters.
"These people are insane," wrote Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in a July 27 post on X in response to Romer’s Fox News interview.
In fact, no serious Democratic candidates, including DSA members, have embraced the platform’s most controversial ideas. Ocasio-Cortez, a DSA member who is considering a run for president in 2028, recently distanced herself from parts of the platform, arguing it is time for socialists to move beyond what she called “Woke 1.0.”
She understands that major change doesn’t happen overnight. The success of progressive and socialist movements in American history has been to push radical ideas from the margins to the mainstream - by outlining a radical vision but supporting stepping-stone reforms that improve lives and whet people’s appetites for more.
In 1911, Rep. Victor Berger of Wisconsin, the first socialist elected to Congress, introduced an “old age insurance” bill that would provide pensions up to $4 a week for those aged whose income was less than $10 a week. It made no headway. Two decades later, FDR proposed Social Security. Despite the attacks by those who called it socialism and even un-American, Congress passed it in 1935. Today, Social Security is extremely popular among Democrats and Republicans alike. A poll last year found that 93% of Americans consider it a vital program. Many ideas once considered “far left” have a habit of becoming the next generation’s common sense.
In the 1960s, Republicans and the AMA (whose spokesperson was actor Ronald Reagan), called proposals for Medicare and Medicaid as a dangerous step toward communism. In 2010, many progressives viewed the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) as a sell-out to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. By now, thanks to Obamacare, millions more Americans have health insurance, but recognize that it is still insufficient in terms of both reach and cost. Even so, it helped raise expectations and made it easy for progressives to push for Medicare for All.
Likewise, 25 years ago, no big city in America had a “living wage” law. In 1994, a labor-community coalition in Baltimore won the first municipal living wage ordinance. Now, hundreds of cities have done so, as have 30 states. According to public opinion polls, most Americans think that Congress should raise the federal minimum wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 since 2009 in the face of Republican opposition. (The Washington State wage is $17.13; Seattle’s is $21.30. California’s is $16.90; Los Angeles’ is $18.42). If Democrats win the White House and both houses of Congress in 2028, a much higher minimum wage will certainly be on the agenda. Even most centrist Democrats will have a hard time opposing such a measure. The battle will not be over whether to raise it, but how much should it be raised - to $12, $15, $17, or even $20 an hour?
In each era, socialists have been effective when they pushed for what DSA founder Michael Harrington called the “left wing of the possible.” DSA’s future success – but, more importantly, the future of our democracy -- depends on learning that lesson.
[Peter Dreier is professor of politics and urban policy at Occidental College. His books include "Baseball Rebels: The Players, People, and Social Movements That Shook Up the Game and Changed America," "We Own the Future: Democratic Socialism, American Style," "The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame," "Place Matters: Metropolitics for the 21st Century," and "The Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Livable City." From 1984-1992 he served as a deputy to Boston Mayor Ray Flynn.]