J.D. Tuccille: The Democrats embrace totalitarian socialism

With progressive candidates — not all of them formally affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) — poised to increase their presence in Congress and state legislatures in the looming midterm elections, the hard left is coming closer to a full takeover of the Democratic Party. True, even if they all win, progressives will represent a minority of party officeholders, among which traditional liberals and moderates still dominate in terms of numbers. But the energy and momentum clearly lies with the left’s hostility to capitalism, the U.S., Israel, and Jews.

Last month, after party primaries wound up and general election candidates were firmly in place, CNN’s Sarah Ferris reported that “[t]he left wing of the Democratic Party flourished this summer as fed-up liberals in key races across the country have eschewed traditional, more moderate candidates in favour of hard-charging progressives.” With regard to the meaning of “progressive,” the network’s Eric Bradner had already noted just a few weeks earlier “a growing list of victories by democratic socialists who are a prominent part of the Democratic Party’s left-wing insurgency.”

The modifier “democratic” is doing a lot of heavy lifting as applied to socialist candidates. Darializa Avila Chevalier, who won the Democratic primary in New York’s uncompetitive 13th congressional district (meaning she’s nearly guaranteed to win), has never been shy about her totalitarian sympathies. While she’s tried to scrub her online past, internet archives preserve old posts calling on workers to “seize the means of production” and lamenting that public libraries don’t stock enough Leninist literature.

Inevitably, as always seems to be the case with the new breed of leftists, Chevalier attended an Oct. 8, 2023 rally — the day after the bloody Hamas slaughter of Israelis — to celebrate the attack. Specifically asked to condemn the October 7 attack, Chevalier repeatedly refused. She objected that she would not “let a question be used to distract us from the documented reality that over hundreds of thousands of people, Palestinians specifically, have been killed.”

Chevalier is also on record calling to defund police and abolish borders, and boasting of wiping her hands on the U.S. flag.

Chevalier’s unabashed radicalism is perfectly compatible with her DSA affiliation. That organization, after all, has declared its solidarity with the brutal regimes in Cuba and Venezuela. Last December, it sent a delegation to Havana to learn “about the achievements and challenges of Cuban socialism.”

In 2025, the DSA passed a resolution making endorsement of the Palestinian cause a litmus test and support for the idea that “Israel has a right to defend itself” an expellable offense.

Writing for The Atlantic in January, James Kirchick pointed out that the DSA, which once sought to promote socialism with elections, has been subject to “’entryism’ — the wilful effort by a small, disciplined cadre of radicals to infiltrate a more moderate organization and subvert it from within.” The group dropped its long-established ban on totalitarians, “opening the door to Communists, who now form a majority on its governing body.”

Most progressive candidates, even among the many affiliated with the DSA, are coyer than Chevalier about their politics. Not everybody lives in a district that would elect an overt Leninist to Congress so long as the letter “D” appears on that candidate’s ballot line. Progressives tend to blur the boundaries of their ideology by comparing it to public libraries (in fact, libraries in the U.S. were originally privately organized and funded —  almost 1,700 were founded by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie). They also tout state-run health care as a panacea for everybody’s complaints about medicine.

But if progressive candidates are waiting for the public to catch up with their radical beliefs, they don’t have to pause for long. Last month, Gallup polling finds that “(f)orty-three per cent of Americans now have a positive view of socialism, marking the first time this figure has exceeded 39 per cent in Gallup’s trend since 2010.” Capitalism came in at 55 per cent support among the public, with free enterprise at 77 per cent — though that was down from 89 per cent in 2012. Among Democrats, support for socialism matched that for free enterprise at 65 per cent, leaving behind the 35 per cent advocacy for capitalism.

Even more ominous, a March 2025 Cato/YouGov survey found 34 per cent favourability for communism among those younger than 30 (it was 14 per cent for the general public). That survey also found 43 per cent overall support for socialism, identical to the Gallup poll.

Still, in much of the country, general elections are fought over the votes of lukewarm partisans and, especially, independents. These voters are still much more supportive of capitalism and free enterprise than they are of socialism, let alone communism.

That may be why Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who barely leads Republican Mike Rogers in polls, insists “I am not a socialist” despite headlining a 2019 DSA fundraiser and calling for more state control of the economy. At the DSA event, he was photographed with DSA members including Michigan’s Rep. Rashida Tlaib “in front of a Marxist-style pamphlet depicting a red DSA fist choking a snake labelled ‘CAPITALISM’” in the words of The Washington Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross.

El-Sayed also says Israel is just as evil as Hamas and calls the world’s sole Jewish majority state guilty of “apartheid” and “genocide,” in what has become a rote mantra for progressive candidates.

And, like most progressives, he’s called to “defund the police,” though he now plays that down.

Where progressives go the Democratic Party is likely to follow. As USA Today’s Dana Taylor commented in July, “(t)he Democratic Party’s left wing is no longer knocking on the door — it’s kicking it in.” The test, of course, is whether the Democratic Party is successful with a rising progressive faction that’s hostile to free enterprise, as well as law and order, and despises a key ally that’s a haven for a religious minority.

With Republicans offering a muddled message that offers little to inspire opposition to the hard left, political forecasters now give Democrats a strong likelihood of taking the House of Representatives in the midterm elections and a better than even chance of capturing the Senate. If progressives feature prominently among the winners, look for them to tighten their hold over the Democratic Party and to boost their efforts to reshape America.

National Post