The insurgent left wing of the Democratic Party—sometimes self-identified as democratic socialists and exemplified by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, rising star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and groups like the Justice Democrats and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)—received a flurry of negative coverage by corporate media that focused on progressives’ supposed inability to defeat Democratic incumbents in primary elections.
US News (8/8/18): “A band of far-left candidates have suffered a string of defeats in Democratic primaries this year.”
Following the August 7 primary defeats of high-profile progressive candidates Abdul El-Sayed (running for Michigan governor), Brent Welder (Kansas’ 2nd district) and Cori Bush (Missouri’s 1st district), corporate media outlets like Politico (8/8/18, 8/8/18), the Washington Post (8/8/18), CNN (8/8/18) and the Wall Street Journal (8/8/18) were quick to declare the Democratic Party’s left wing dead in the water.
Despite these eager obituaries, there were plenty of wins for insurgent Democrats in the August 7 primaries, including James Thompson (Kansas’ 4th district), Sarah Smith (placed second in the top-two primary in Washington’s 9th district) and Rashida Tlaib (Michigan’s 13th district, which will likely make her the first Palestinian-American woman in Congress), along with other big wins in a number of state and local races and ballot measures.
Other major wins for left-leaning candidates came the following week, on August 14. These included victories by Randy Bryce (Wisconsin’s 1st district, soon to be vacated by House Speaker Paul Ryan), Ilhan Omar (a Somali refugee expected to join Rashida Tlaib to become the first Muslim women to be elected to Congress, after winning Minnesota’s 5th district), Christine Hallquist (winner of the gubernatorial primary in Vermont, and the first trans woman nominated for a major political office) and Jahana Hayes (Connecticut’s 5th district, expected to send the state’s first female African-American Democrat to Congress). On September 4, Ocasio-Cortez endorsee Ayanna Pressley also defeated a long-time Democratic incumbent in Massachusetts’ 7th district, likely making her the state’s first female African-American in Congress.
These wins made the premature obituaries of progressive candidates look like wishful reporting. But even if today’s insurgent left wing of the Democratic Party hasn’t won every underdog primary race against centrist opponents and their well-funded corporate and party backers, it is apparent that the left is winning the battle of ideas within the party. Policies often referred to as socialist, such as Medicare for All, free college, student loan forgiveness and jobs guarantees, are now expected to be litmus tests in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries.
New York Times‘ Bret Stephens (7/6/18): “‘Democratic socialism’ is awful as a slogan and catastrophic as a policy.”
Yet the increasing centrality of these policies to the Democratic Party platform has also received a big backlash from corporate media as well: Countless hit pieces on the perceived dangers of socialism have appeared in the New York Times (7/6/18, 7/6/17, 10/24/17), Washington Post (7/27/18), Chicago Tribune (7/26/18), USA Today (12/15/17, 8/22/18), Wall Street Journal (6/25/18), The Hill (8/12/18), The Atlantic (8/9/18) and Miami Herald (7/26/18) over the past year.
Despite such attacks, socialist policies are becoming quite popular with voters: A recent Reuters poll showed that Medicare for All has support from 70 percent of the US electorate, including 52 percent of Republicans, while 60 percent of the electorate supports free college tuition.
Support for democratic socialism in general is on the rise as well. A recent Gallup poll revealed that 57 percent of Democrats have a positive view of socialism, compared to 47 percent who view capitalism favorably. It’s not necessarily clear what “socialism” means to those who like it, with possibilities ranging from New Deal–style social programs to worker-controlled production. Still, it’s safe to say that a majority of Democratic voters want an anti-corporate party that represents the interests of the working class and minorities against the rich.
Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times (8/9/18) noted that while insurgent candidates might not have won every primary, the Democratic left has nonetheless won hard-fought victories on the increasing viability of their ideology. Whether left-leaning Democrats fall flat in the midterms or not, their ideas have persuaded Americans that socialism is a legitimate and popular political movement, and will likely have a substantial voting bloc in the next Congress.
