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I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but it’s almost like the GOP is secretly promoting the Democratic Socialists of America, which is now producing a lot of the energy and excitement within the Democratic and Republican parties.
The DSA champions many views that exist wildly outside the mainstream of American politics, including the abolition of the police, prisons, the Pentagon and the U.S. Senate.
This is all, to borrow a term from social science, bat guano insane. Even if you think such proposals make sense on the merits — I don’t! — politically, this stuff is nuttier than a pool party at Mr. Peanut’s pad. For one, the Constitution effectively bans abolishing the Senate, even via amendment. So expending any political energy on eliminating it is like demanding 2+2 equal 5.
But, man, do some people eat this stuff up. Specifically, fringe left-wing political activists, young and mostly white progressives with useless college and graduate degrees, and the Republican Party. Now, the first two groups eat it up because they love it. The Republicans eat it up because they’re eager to run against it.
Republicans are increasingly insisting that the only way to stop a takeover by “godless communists” is to vote Republican.
“Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty,” President Trump said during a July 3 speech at Mt. Rushmore. “It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor or even 9/11.” (I agree! Barring some time machine shenanigans, Communism is a bigger threat than Pearl Harbor and many other past events.)
“We’re fighting right now in Congress over whether we’re going to maintain our status as a constitutional republic,” House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted. “Or we’re going to trade that in, dismantle the foundations and go down this dark road of death to communism. That is the question on the ballot this fall.”
There’s a “bootleggers and Baptists” dynamic here. The DSA benefits from the attention, and the GOP benefits from the perception that Democrats are either too radical or too cowardly to confront the radicals in their ranks.
“It’s going to be a hate election,” a Republican working for Trump’s political operation told Axios earlier this month. “Voters have to hate the Dems more than they hate us. And we have material to work with.”
That might be right, but I’m not too worried, even if the GOP fails to weaponize the Red Menace. If you tune out the noise and simply look at the more mainstream question of socialism’s alleged rise in popularity, fears of a socialist takeover of America are absurdly overblown.
Polls do show, particularly among young Democrats, increased support for socialism and a rising distaste for capitalism. But this isn’t a new story. For the last couple of decades, dissatisfaction with the economic status quo has increased support for socialism. That’s because people equate the status quo with “capitalism.” As slaves to binary thinking, poll respondents think, “What’s the opposite of capitalism?” Answer: socialism.
A 2014 survey by the Reason Foundation found that millennials favored capitalism to socialism by a meager 10 points (52%-42%). But when asked if they favored a “free-market economy” to a “government managed economy,” the free market won 2-1 (64%-32%).
Fast forward to 2026. A recent Echelon Insights survey found that among Democrats under 50, the favorability of “capitalism” is minus 31 points (it’s popular with every other group). When asked their view of a “free market economy,” support jumps 41 points to +22 (it jumps up with every other cohort as well).
In other words, “capitalism” means something very different than “free markets,” even to many socialists. And that’s fair enough. I wish our economy was more free market than it is. But the point is that a ton of people think “capitalism” is an adjective describing things they don’t like about the economy, not a synonym for “free markets” or “free enterprise.”
Oh, yeah: Net favorability for Communism is -40.
The same applies for socialism, which means many different things to different people.
Once you get beyond the labels and the quirks of polling, reality suggests that socialism is a much heavier lift. For example, according to Echelon, 74% of Medicare for All fans think it can be paid for solely by raising taxes on billionaires. This is a lie. Medicare for All would cost an estimated $32 trillion over 10 years. The total combined net worth of America’s billionaires is around $9 trillion. Forget taxes; you could confiscate everything the “billionaire class” owns and it wouldn’t cover a third of the cost.
In other words, even if the “socialists” win, they’ll lose at governing. And so will the popularity of socialism.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
The column contends that Republican leaders are amplifying the most radical positions associated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) — such as calls to abolish the Senate or dramatically restructure U.S. institutions — because those ideas are politically useful villains, allowing the GOP to warn of “godless communists” and frame 2026 as a stark choice between constitutional liberty and socialism.[6]
It argues that some of the structural proposals circulating in or around DSA, including abolishing the U.S. Senate, are not just extreme but practically impossible under the Constitution, making them more a form of performative politics than a realistic governing agenda and therefore a poor basis for serious fears about a socialist takeover.
The piece suggests there is a “bootleggers and Baptists” dynamic: fringe left activists and some younger progressive Democrats embrace radical socialist rhetoric because they find it inspiring, while Republicans embrace the same rhetoric because it helps paint the broader Democratic Party as either too radical or too weak to confront extremism in its ranks.[1][6]
The column maintains that public anxiety about socialism is inflated by polling that treats “capitalism” and “free markets” as interchangeable, when in fact many respondents use “capitalism” as a catch‑all for whatever they dislike about the current economy; when asked about a “free‑market economy” rather than “capitalism,” support rises sharply, especially among younger voters.[3]
It cites survey data to argue that socialism and communism remain deeply unpopular in the United States overall, and that even self‑described socialists often support core elements of a free‑market system once labels are stripped away, underscoring the claim that socialism’s apparent rise is more about branding than a genuine rejection of market economics.[3][6]
The piece stresses that many popular left‑wing economic demands, such as Medicare for All, rest on unrealistic assumptions about financing — for example, that taxing billionaires alone could cover tens of trillions in new spending, even though the total net worth of U.S. billionaires falls far short of that — and uses this to argue that socialist economic programs would falter at the point of actual governance.
Building on that point, the column suggests that if self‑described socialists ever did win significant power, the difficulty of paying for expansive programs and managing the economy would quickly erode both their effectiveness and the public’s enthusiasm, turning socialism back into a political fad rather than a durable threat to America’s free‑market foundations.[3][7]
Overall, the article argues that while DSA and democratic socialism generate outsized media attention and rhetorical heat, their radical institutional proposals, limited public support, and governing impracticalities mean they pose no serious, long‑term threat to the basic free‑market character of the American economy.[6][9]
Different views on the topic
In contrast, some conservative and centrist critics argue that DSA’s explicit opposition to capitalism and support for extensive public ownership, rent controls, higher wealth taxes, and a sharply reduced military budget represent a profound ideological challenge to America’s free‑market system, not just a fringe fad, and therefore warrant serious concern rather than dismissal.[1][6]
These critics emphasize that DSA’s formal program calls for “ending capitalist oligarchy,” drafting a new constitution, and creating a “democratic socialist republic,” including proposals to abolish the Electoral College, expand public ownership of major industries, and eliminate the Senate — changes they see as fundamentally incompatible with the current market‑based order.[6]
Some commentators point to the rapid growth of DSA — now claiming more than 100,000 members and dozens of electoral victories at the local and state level — as evidence that democratic socialism has moved beyond the margins and could meaningfully reshape policy on housing, labor, healthcare, and climate, especially in urban centers where DSA‑aligned officials already influence budgets and regulations.[5][6][9]
On the left, DSA leaders and allied writers argue that democratic socialism is not about abolishing markets altogether but about extending democracy into the economy by curbing corporate power, expanding public goods such as healthcare and education, and ensuring working‑class control over key industries; they present this as a corrective to what they see as the failures and inequality of contemporary capitalism.[9]
Far from viewing socialism as a mere branding exercise, DSA organizers describe a deliberate effort to build a mass movement that combines electoral campaigns with workplace and community organizing, using tools like rent‑control campaigns, union drives, and Medicare for All advocacy to move policy in a more egalitarian direction even before any sweeping constitutional overhaul.[9][4]
Some scholars and journalists note that surveys showing rising skepticism of “capitalism” among younger Americans often correlate with concrete experiences of stagnant wages, student debt, housing costs, and climate anxiety; they argue that this reflects a substantive critique of current economic arrangements, not simply confusion over labels, and that dismissing it as semantics underestimates the depth of discontent.[3][8]
A recent letter published in The Times explicitly challenges the columnist’s framing of socialism as a passing fad, contending that many Americans are calling for tax and spending priorities that favor individuals over corporations and are reacting against Supreme Court decisions that expanded corporate political power; the letter argues this shift is a meaningful ideological development, not just poll‑driven fashion.[8]
Within the broader socialist left, some writers criticize DSA not for being too radical but for compromising too much with the Democratic Party and the existing economic order, warning that without a clearer break from pro‑market orthodoxy, the organization will fail to deliver the transformative change its members seek — an assessment that implicitly treats democratic socialism as capable of challenging free‑market norms if it adopts a more unified strategy.[4][2][9]
Supporters of democratic socialism also point out that policies often labeled “socialist,” such as universal healthcare, stronger labor protections, and expanded public housing, are common in other advanced democracies with robust market economies; they argue that adopting similar measures in the United States would constrain corporate excess but would not abolish markets, and therefore should be debated on their merits rather than framed as an existential threat.[1][6][9]
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