With socialism threatening to break into mainstream American politics, many are asking how the country reached this point. Some on the Left recognize that the shift has been years in the making, but few are willing to address its underlying causes.
In a July 14 article in the New York Times titled “The Democratic Establishment Had This Coming,” opinion writer Mara Gay argues that the rise of the socialist wing in the Democratic Party rose from years of establishment failures, including defeats in presidential and congressional elections and an inability to shape the Supreme Court.
According to Gay, “Millions of rank-and-file Democrats—and anyone else keeping track—can see clearly that the positions, tactics and approach of conventional Democrats have failed.”
Democrats have undeniably suffered a string of major defeats. Many still have not recovered from Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump in 2016, then-Vice President Kamala Harris’s collapse in 2024 after then-President Joe Biden withdrew, or the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade. Over the past decade, the party has repeatedly failed to mobilize enough voters to place its candidates in power and advance its agenda.
Even if the New York Times is still downplaying its failure to criticize former Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, the rest of the country can see that the Democratic political apparatus is deeply dysfunctional. A scandal-plagued candidate such as Platner does not get that close to the spotlight without serious institutional failures behind the scenes.
While Gay touches on serious shortcomings in the Democratic Party’s structural and systemic issues, she does not mention any of the platform’s inherent problems. In other words, what a lot of Democrats see as the issue with the Democratic Party is their inability to win, rather than their messed-up platform.
The mainstream Democratic platform centers on several familiar goals, including expanding government-funded social services, reducing military spending while increasing foreign aid, protecting illegal immigrants, and providing reparations for past injustices. In essence, the progressive project seeks to transform America from a nation-state that gives special obligations to its own citizens into a cosmopolitan state that treats citizens and noncitizens more alike.
Democrats already struggled to win consistently at the national level with this ostensibly centrist platform. Yet, even when the party presents itself as mainstream, the ideas energizing its radical fringe often shape the broader Democratic agenda.
Take, for example, the issue of how to legally treat people who see themselves as nonbinary or transgender. Should they be allowed to use any locker room or bathroom? Should they be allowed to play in sports with the wrong gender, which might be dangerous for them or others? As the Overton Window moved from a general aversion to laws promoting anything related to transgender-identifying people to full acceptance, it has become clear that the Left must constantly welcome the most radical ideas into its tent.
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One key difference between conservatism and progressivism is that conservatives look to the principles of the nation’s founders, while progressives continually pursue the next social or political transformation. Progressivism is therefore defined by a moving target, whereas conservatism is guided by fixed ideals, even when those ideals are difficult to achieve.
It is simply a misunderstanding to say that the socialist faction is a fringe movement relegated only to the most extreme voter demographics in New York or Maine. So long as the Democratic Party welcomes its socialist comrades into its big tent, the minority faction has a chance to shift the trajectory of the entire party. If this weren’t the case, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), a hard-line Democrat, would not have expressed his fears of Platner by endorsing Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME) over the disgraced former Democratic nominee.