They are walking themselves into a cul-de-sac. The more left they go, the more their base gets energized but the more unelectable they come, and the more people they drive out of blue states into red states, which will help Republicans down the line.
Marc Thiessen (Fox news)
The news is awash with every angle on the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and I don’t know why. Bernie Sanders couldn’t get past the South Carolina primary, AOC was incoherent at the Munich Security Conference, and its membership just surpassed 100,000 (source: In These Times). The movement taps into genuine anxieties – healthcare costs, housing affordability, wage stagnation, and widening inequality – but it must overcome three structural barriers to become a durable political movement, starting with the dismal record for socialist economies.
An Unambiguous Record of Failure
The track record of socialist economies is consistently poor. Since the Russian Revolution, more than two dozen countries have attempted state-directed socialist systems, always resulting in rising poverty and lower living standards. In time, most abandoned the experiment; like Venezuela, once one of the wealthiest oil-producing nations on earth. Socialism ushered in an era of hyperinflation (80,000% in 2018)) and nine in ten citizens in poverty. Of 178 nations, it now ranks it 176th, ahead of only Cuba and North Korea (source: Index of Economic Freedom).
The mechanism behind these failures is not ideological. It is structural, because central planning does not efficiently allocate capital, goods, and labor. To wit, after Venezuela replaced its free-market system – where supply and demand drove pricing – with a socialist system, its economy experienced more misallocation, shortages and stagnation. Between 2014 and 2021, its GDP contracted 75%; the largest non-war collapse in 45 years (source: IIF). And, invoking China or Sweden as “successful” socialist models is a thinking trap.
China achieved its dramatic reduction in poverty only after Deng Xiaoping introduced market reforms and moved away from Maoist central planning. Sweden got rich under capitalism and then redistributed that wealth. In 1950, Sweden’s taxes were just 19% of GDP, below the United States, and it’s still a free-market capitalist nation today (e.g. highly competitive markets, low corporate tax barriers, open trade, and robust private property protection).
The DSA is not needed to expand the US “welfare state” that already dwarfs anything in the world. No joke, because America’s $4.9 billion in total federal and state transfer payments in 2025 – everything from Medicare and Social Security to veterans’ benefits and tax refunds – exceeded the national GDPs of India, Japan, and the United Kingdom (source: USBEA). Further, that total means the average transfer payment per US household in 2025 was $36,842; a number that should give every voter pause.
Because $36,842 is higher than the average household incomes created by the Socialist Workers Party in Spain ($35,842), the Chinese Communist Party ($13,800), and the Workers Party in Brazil ($10,300). The world’s socialist nations, in fact, aspire to something that America has already built, at considerable and growing cost; a fact that should give every voter pause. The US national debt is already over $39 trillion, and adding more “socialist” programs risks fiscal crises like the world has never seen.
An “American Dream” Killer
In poll after poll, Americans remain broadly skeptical of socialism as a governing model. Gallup recently found 57% of Americans view socialism negatively. Pew Research found 71% of the electorate sits to the right of a democratic socialist label, with only a “cluster of Democrats” embracing the term enthusiastically. 2024 exit polls found 37% of Americans identify as conservative, 34% as moderate, and just 25% as liberal. For vast numbers of voters, the word “socialism” carries an electoral penalty that better messaging cannot fix.
85% of Americans support the “safety net” of Medicare and Social Security (source: Navigator Research). Fewer than 15% support direct state ownership of major economic sectors like housing, utilities, and transportation (source: Gallup and YouGov). Opposition to “socialism” runs strongest in immigrant communities (lived 20th-century socialist governance) and older Americans (lived the American Dream).
All 20 sovereign nations in Latin America have been governed by a socialist, Marxist, or “Pink Tide” administration at some point, and since 2020, these nations have provided 58% of all US immigrants (source: Center for Immigration Studies). Fact: these Latinos told human rights organizations and immigration officials they had come to the US to “escape” severe political instability and economic stagnation (source: UNHCR and IOM). Hmm…maybe the GOP needs to do a little “ballot harvesting” of its own come November.
Older voters (over age 45) care more about the solvency of Medicare and Social Security than expanding entitlements to working-age Americans. Big, because older Americans are half of the US population and cast two out of every three ballots cast (source: USA facts). Democrats had better hope this voting bloc is not turned off by the DSA movement’s deceit; only 4% of its members are working class (source: DSA 2021 national survey).
And only 4% is black. Turns out 85% of DSA members are white, and over 50% are what sociologist call the “downwardly mobile professional class” (source: Georgetown University). These are the young, college-educated folks holding white collar jobs in academia, government, and public-sector nonprofits; who, despite their advanced degrees earn below-median incomes. This demography explains the DSA’s appeal AND its limitations.
Their grievances are real but fleeting; American under age 45 earn below-median incomes and carry above median-debts (source: St. Louis Federal Reserve). This means their politics is “situational” in that their grievance is subject to change; e.g. moving to Tulsa to take a lucrative job in asset management. Hard to be a durable governing coalition with fleeting constituents; 50% of former DSA members say they left after a single year (source: Red Star Caucus).
The American Dream is typically the journey of accumulating assets, rising up the salary ladder, or starting a business. That journey almost always shifts personal policy preferences toward stability, property protection, and incentive-preserving tax structures. Which is to say most of today’s democratic socialists will change their views after buying a house and paying property taxes.
A Bigger Problem for Democrats
Shaping progressive debates in a deep-blue district is a far cry from winning statewide office, and even further still from being able to govern nationally. If the DSA wins 10 House seats, Democrats have a problem. To wit, after crying ad nauseam that Trump has “defied” the Constitution, Democrats now have New York Mayor Mamdani vowing not to enforce the Supreme Court’s recent TPS ruling; “not something we will ever accept” (source: New York Post). Yikes! Because the DSA’s anti-American and anti-centrist rhetoric is creating a “schism” within the Democrat Party.
James Carville (D-LA): “Everybody’s always said, ‘We’re a big tent,’ but there’s some sh*t that can’t be in the tent. Let’s negotiate terms of a schism here. I’m not in that f**king political party.”
Bill Maher (D-CA): “The Democratic socialist obsession with Jew-hating…they don’t believe in capitalism or prisons…if this is where they’re going, my vote is in play.”
In 1964, Republicans followed Barry Goldwater too far right – and lost 44 states and 61.1% of the popular vote. If, in 2028, Democrats follow Zohran Mamdani too far left, they will meet a similar fate.