Democratic socialists have been winning elections in primaries in New York, Colorado and Washington, in some cases knocking longtime Democratic members of Congress out of office. The next big test is in Wisconsin, where a democratic socialist is running for governor.
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“She’s getting clicks like no one else in the field of five primary candidates,” reports The Washington Post’s Patrick Marley of candidate Francesca Hong.
Centrist Democrats fear that in key elections in swing states, including Wisconsin and Michigan, Democrats may nominate someone too liberal to win statewide.
Democratic socialists counter they are pushing for policies that are politically popular as more Americans say they are struggling to get ahead.
“We should have a government that protects our basic needs,” Melat Kiros, a democratic socialist who unseated a 30-year incumbent congresswoman in Denver last month, said in an interview. “Like housing, health care, nutritional food, public education.”
Here’s what democratic socialists stand for and why they seem to be surging right now.
The definition differs slightly depending on whom you talk to, but the basic agenda includes universal health care, universal college, universal child care, publicly held housing and a significant increase in the minimum wage.
“What democratic socialism says is our core needs, like food and shelter, has to be the most basic needs for every single human being, but most especially working people,” Kiros said.
To pay for it, democratic socialists generally propose taxing billionaires. They also argue that investments in health care or housing will actually save taxpayers in the long run.
“It’s a misconception these programs are expensive,” Kiros said. “These programs pay for themselves. When you look at health care, it’s more expensive for us to leave people without access to health care than it is to just treat people when they are sick.”
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani won a competitive election last year and is the most prominent elected democratic socialist in the country. Seven months into his term, he has set up free child care for anyone who needs it but has been unsuccessful in his attempt to get the state to pay for free buses.
Overall, those policies reach farther than the positions espoused by more mainstream Democrats (some Senate candidates support a public option for health care, such as universal Medicaid, but not eliminating all private insurance). But they are not the same thing as communism, which calls for the public takeover of property, business and the entire economy with the aim of even distribution.
More Americans say basic goods and housing are too expensive, and a recent Wall Street Journal-NORC survey found that just under half of Americans say capitalism is working very well or even somewhat well. At the same time, Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire, billionaire wealth has reached a record high, and there is more money in politics than ever.
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“The trend lines are all moving in one direction, and they’re not good for middle-class and working-class Americans,” said Julian Mulvey, a Democratic strategist with Fight Agency and a senior adviser to the 2016 Democratic presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont).
Mulvey said that when Sanders started talking about these issues 10 years ago in his breakout presidential run, people in Washington thought he was crazy. “They thought if you were poor, it was your fault. Now we see that’s not true,” Mulvey said. “If the next 40 years are like the last 40 years, American and working middle class will be completely ground to dust without big ideas.”
Democratic primary voters, at least in some liberal cities, seem willing to try these ideas. And they’re willing to throw out longtime leaders in Congress for it. In New York, democratic socialists swept key primacy races, with Darializa Avila Chevalier unseating a powerful 15-term incumbent.
It hasn’t always worked out for democratic socialists, however: One challenger lost a primary in Arizona this week.
Republicans are thrilled about all this. Many of these democratic socialist candidates support abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (more and more of a talking point in the Democratic Party), and Avila Chevalier is facing Republican attacks over a controversial pro-Palestinian rally she attended shortly after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.
“It’s like they’re having their tea-party moment,” said Sarah Chamberlain, president of the Republican Main Street Partnership, which supports Republican lawmakers in competitive congressional districts. The populist-fueled tea party movement became a force in the Republican Party nearly two decades ago.
Mainstream Democrats worry that they’ll have to spend a lot of money defending against Republican attacks that paint the entire party as too liberal.
The next big tests are Democratic primaries for Senate in Michigan and for governor in Wisconsin, both states that President Donald Trump has won twice.
Trump, who has sought to brand democratic socialists as “communists,” might be going too far, said Jim Manley, a senior Democratic strategist. “That’s from the ’50s,” he said. “That’s what my parents were worried about; that’s not what I’m worried about.”
“I don’t think nominating a handful of democratic socialists in the bluest districts in the country makes it harder for swing-state Democrats to win Senate races,” said Texas-based Democratic pollster Nancy Zdunkewicz, who is working to get a Democrat from her state elected to the Senate in the midterms.
Amber Phillips writes The 5-Minute Fix newsletter, a quick analysis of the day’s biggest political news. Send her an email here, or ask a question that could be featured in an upcoming newsletter.
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