Heather Cox Richardson’s latest newsletter includes this observation quoted below. Some people on BlueSky are drawing the conclusion that today’s DSA isn’t that much more radical than mainstream 50’s Republicans:
In 1956 the Republican Party platform approvingly quoted “the great truth first spoken by Abraham Lincoln” that “[t]he legitimate object of Government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves in their separate and individual capacities. But in all that people can individually do as well for themselves, Government ought not to interfere.”
[…]
It called for “unimpeachable ethical standards and irreproachable personal conduct by all people in government.” Honesty was “an indispensable requirement of public service,” party officials said.
The Republicans of 1956 also said they were “proud of and shall continue our far-reaching and sound advances in matters of basic human needs—expansion of social security—broadened coverage in unemployment insurance—improved housing—and better health protection for all our people. We are determined that our government remain warmly responsive to the urgent social and economic problems of our people.”
[…]
Then the Republican Party platform addressed the needs of workers. Quoting President Dwight D. Eisenhower, it said: “Labor is the United States. The men and women, who with their minds, their hearts and hands, create the wealth that is shared in this country—they are America.”
The platform noted that Republicans had worked to raise the minimum wage and to expand Social Security and unemployment, workers’ compensation, and retirement benefits. They supported the growth of labor unions, and collective bargaining.
This is the party that went on to oppose Medicaid and also passed the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, so perhaps we should also recall the grand American tradition of putting a lot of bullshit in your party platform.
Still, HCR has a good point here: we’ve moved very far to the right in the past decades.
JD Vance has decided he’s the next Nixon. Nixon did a lot of bad things, but he also signed sweeping environmental legislation that created the EPA. Vance makes the point that Nixon’s corruption was nothing compared to Trump’s, but how that helps him is beyond me. I think Vance is both dangerous and repugnant. Luckily for Democrats, Vance doesn’t benefit from a TV show that ran for over a decade telling people that he’s the smartest businessman on earth.
Anyway, it’s true that Republicans used to be for some good things, and they aren’t anymore. But I think the broader point here is that the voters used to expect that politicians were elected to do things, and if you didn’t accomplish anything, you were thrown out. Harry Truman famously ran against the “do nothing Congress” in his 1948 Presidential win. Over the years, constant disappointment with Congress (mostly) has fostered cynicism about the political process in general. Republicans have used this to push “burn it all down” anti-government positions, while installing a King and a Supreme Court that lets him to whatever he wants. Democrats, members of a party that has passed sweeping, country-changing legislation, are mired in a morass of donor-driven excuse making for getting nothing (good) done. Obamacare is almost old enough to vote, and it’s the last piece of decent legislation that Democrats can claim.
The Democratic base isn’t flocking to DSA candidates because we’ve all become socialists all of a sudden (though the brand of socialism pushed by the DSA isn’t really that radical). It’s because DSA candidates promise to do things, and Mamdani in particular has gotten some things done. It’s such a low bar, but our politics is so corrupt that this low bar is powering some primary wins in safe Democratic seats.
It’s telling that the Democrats who are facing those primary challenges are getting really nasty. Most recently, in CO-1, they’ve taken a fairly anodyne response to a question in an interview by Melat Kiros and used it to paint her as an anti-semite. Kiros is an Ethiopian immigrant who lived in Denver since she was 11 months old, left to work a job, and then came back to live in her hometown, but DeGette is trying to portray her as some kind of transplant. These attacks are all calculated to convince the base that these candidates aren’t the “right kind of people” — that they don’t pass a purity test (which is ironic because the other attack that you hear all the time is that the left are “purity ponies” who won’t compromise). These attacks aren’t working, because the reality is that our “pure” incumbents, who say all the right things, don’t get shit done.
What’s really happening with the DSA is that these primary fights are re-focusing the Democratic base on a couple of things:
The true measure of a candidate’s commitment to a given position is how hard they’ll fight to get it done, not how pretty their words are when they lose. Further, a candidate’s willingness to buck the party orthodoxy on aid to Israel is a proxy for their overall willingness to fight.
Corporate money and AIPAC money are signs of corruption. They are disqualifying, and the DSA candidates are raising consciousness in the base of how establishment Democrats doing very little starts with taking money from big donors.
Incumbents are showing their true colors when they have a real primary challenge. They’re hiding out, wasting millions of dollars on attack ads, and going negative instead of defending their records. In other words, they’re reminding the base of how Democrats lose elections.
We need this fight, and we need DSA-like candidates to win, because if the current crop of incumbents have shown anything, it’s that many of them hope to revert to business as usual in 2028. It’s not about ideology — most of what DSA candidates believe is what mainstream Democrats believe — it’s about a willingness to fight.
