Francesca Hong’s loss in the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary obscures a larger shift: Socialism has gone mainstream among Democratic voters.
What exactly is Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA?
Democratic Socialists of America is a political organization that is becoming an increasingly influential player on the left.
Democratic socialist Francesca Hong lost the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial primary Aug. 11 to establishment-backed Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, defying months of polling showing her comfortably ahead.
The loss complicates the narrative of an ascendant socialist faction in the Democratic Party. But Hong’s loss obscures a larger shift: Socialism has gone mainstream among Democratic voters.
Gallup has tracked Democrats’ views of socialism since 2010, when half saw it favorably. That number hit 57% by 2018, 65% by 2021 and sat at 66% in September. Capitalism’s favorability among Democrats has trended in the opposite direction over the same stretch, falling from 51% to 42%. Since 2018, Democrats have rated socialism more positively than capitalism.
Other polls tell a similar story:
Whatever happens to individual candidates this election cycle, the socialists have already won the argument that matters most: Inside the Democratic Party, socialism is now mainstream.
The socialist left is ascendant in the Democratic Party
Despite the recent setback, democratic socialists are winning across the country.
The same night Hong fell to Crowley, Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, a progressive backed by Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, beat centrist Rep. Angie Craig by nearly 20 points in that state’s Senate primary. Flanagan is not formally a democratic socialist but is running on many of the same policies, including “Medicare for All” and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
DSA-endorsed candidates had won at least 35 primaries in local elections as of late June in states from New York and Pennsylvania to Georgia, Oregon and Utah. The count has only grown since, with additional wins in Colorado and Michigan.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani runs America’s largest city. A DSA city councilmember in Washington, DC, Janeese Lewis George, won the Democratic primary for mayor of the nation’s capital. Another self-described democratic socialist, Katie Wilson, won Seattle’s mayoralty in November.
Meanwhile, DSA’s membership has grown to more than 120,000 from 8,500 a decade ago. More than 250 members and allies now hold elected office in 40 states.
No, seriously, democratic socialists want to abolish the Senate
The platform behind all this isn’t very subtle. The DSA recently unveiled “Workers Deserve More,” which calls for public ownership of large corporations, eliminating our prison and police systems, and sharply cutting the Pentagon’s budget.
It goes further than most voters likely realize: The plan calls for abolishing the Senate and Electoral College outright, replacing the presidency and Supreme Court with what it calls “an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.”
DSA cochair Megan Romer defended the idea on Fox News, calling the Senate an “anachronistic institution” that “comes from the British House of Lords” and exists to “protect power.”
Even some of the movement’s own standard-bearers aren’t on board with all of this: Sanders rejected the plan to abolish the Senate, and Warren said she didn’t understand what DSA was proposing. If Bernie Sanders thinks your platform goes too far, you’ve truly found a new frontier.
The problem for Democrats is that outside the party, socialism remains deeply unpopular. Just 30% view socialism favorably, according to a Fox News poll.
Marquette’s DSA numbers, so strong among Democrats, are deeply underwater overall: 25% favorable to 43% unfavorable.
And Post-Ipsos found that registered voters dislike democratic socialist leaders by a 42%-17% margin, with independents negative by 30%-12%.
These numbers should worry Democratic strategists. But perhaps not as much as you might think, because the alternative isn’t popular, either.
A CNBC All-America Economic Survey found that 32% of registered voters would be more likely to support a candidate who called themselves a democratic socialist, compared with just 27% for a candidate who identified with MAGA. And while 50% said a democratic socialist label would make them less likely to vote for someone, 57% said the same of a MAGA label.
Democrats may be nominating candidates most of the country doesn’t want. But with the alternative a Republican Party still wearing MAGA like a straitjacket, they are calculating that unpopular beats radioactive.
Daniel Allott, USA TODAY’s conservative opinion editor, is author of the book “On the Road in Trump’s America: A Journey Into the Heart of a Divided Nation.”