Are the Democratic Socialists Democrats?

 

In a race for a Tennessee congressional seat, the state’s republican party barred two candidates from its primary for not being republican enough. That raises a question: why do democrats let non-democrats run in their races? Bernie Sanders, a longtime independent socialist, has run in democratic primaries for years, and today’s crop of democratic socialists has followed his lead. Given that James Carville has said he doesn’t want some of the newly elected members in the democratic caucus, why keep letting them run as democrats in the first place?

Do democrats actually agree with the agenda the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) just released? If so, they should welcome DSA members into the party openly. If not, they should tell them to leave and form their own party. Meanwhile, the supporters who believe socialism is just capitalism with a more generous safety net deserve to see exactly what the DSA has proposed. Anyone who values freedom should help make sure that agenda gets wide attention.

The democrats I know love America. Representative Tom Suozzi of New York’s third congressional district made that case in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. He argued that democrats need to reclaim patriotism instead of ceding it to republicans. Suozzi credited well-regulated capitalism with building the strongest middle class in history, while insisting that fair rules and accountability are what will make it work better. He urged his fellow democrats to reclaim patriotism as a tradition belonging to every American rather than one party.

Contrast that with the DSA. In June, the group’s leadership met to set its national agenda, and the resulting document calls for scrapping the U.S. Senate, sharply cutting the criminal justice system, defunding the Department of Defense, granting amnesty to all immigrants, and replacing the presidency and the Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by the Congress.

Highlights of the DSA’s agenda:

1. Calls for popular control of resources and production, central economic planning, and equitable distribution, framed around feminism, racial equality, and “non-oppressive relationships.”
2. Demands the total abolition of capitalism, to be replaced by a centrally planned economy with a government-guaranteed job for everyone who wants one, plus free water, energy, transportation, food, and other necessities.
3. Proposes using state action to acquire private property and convert it into publicly, democratically controlled housing.
4. Calls for agricultural collectivization, direct government regulation of food production and prices, nationalizing major industries (finance, health care, real estate, utilities, manufacturing, technology, media), and aggressive regulation of any business not suited to nationalization.
5. Supports free abortion on demand and opposes parental-consent requirements for minors seeking gender-affirming care.
6. Proposes government policies to discourage air travel and personal automobile use.
7. Demands decarbonizing the economy within ten years through solar, wind, and geothermal power.
8. Calls for government-paid, race-based reparations at the local, state, and federal levels.
9. Seeks to abolish the Senate and Electoral College, expand the Supreme Court, move toward a parliamentary electoral system, and extend voting rights to non-citizens and felons.
10. Advocates the total abolition of police and prisons.

This summary draws on the analysis in “The Left of the Left: A Radical Agenda,” available at Capital Research Center.

Traditional democrats primaried by DSA-backed challengers, and republicans who face them in general elections, should keep asking them directly whether they support these policies. This is not the mild, cuddly platform that some gullible, college-educated supporters imagine. The DSA has told us plainly what it stands for and its candidates should be made to defend that agenda in public. Right now many of them are getting away with soft-pedaling it — the question is how long will that last. As Abraham Lincoln is said to have put it: you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.