If the Democrats are going to make a difference in this country they need to stop worrying about being labeled socialists and communists and get to work doing what needs to be done. This humble spirit has previously expressed disappointment with the current Democratic leadership—Schumer, Jeffries, and that little goon of a party chairman—and my feelings haven’t changed. I fear they are totally unfit to meet the challenge of the moment, which requires tackling the economic inequality that is the root cause of many of the country’s problems. It can’t just be same old, same old. Hakeem Jeffries can’t be clicking around the Capitol in stiletto heels like Nancy Pelosi did, happily passing legislation that sounds nice on paper but doesn’t accomplish very much. They have to get past their “tepid, nibble around the edges approach” to economic policy, as Senator Elizabeth Warren called it.
The reason so many Democratic Socialist (DSA) candidates are popular with voters is because they’re filling the tremendous void left by the party’s ineffectual leadership. They say that “nature fills the void” and “nature abhors a vacuum,” and if ever there was a vacuous void—with a few very notable exceptions, mind you—that’s the current roster of “mainstream” Democrats. When Barrack Obama came into office in 2009 during the financial crisis, Wall Street was prostrate and the Democrats could have brought the industry to its knees, but they didn’t. This time has to be different and I’m not talking about “retribution” or silly “Woke 1” embarrassments like “defunding the police” or letting everyone out of prison; I’m talking about substantive change to restore economic opportunity for average Americans.
Back in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was president and “liberal” became a dirty word, Democrats began running away from policies that would get them labeled as “bleeding heart liberals,” let alone socialists and communists. “Supply-side economics” and “trickle down economics” were all the rage in Washington and academia, but clearly they led us down the wrong path, one that sacrificed the pursuit of economic justice and equality to the greedy ambitions of the top 1% and Wall Street’s “masters of the universe.”
Right Now the American Dream is on Life Support!
But now, some 40 years later, thanks to the Reaganesque policies introduced in the 1980s and put on steroids during the Trump Administration, a good portion of the country is downright poor, even if they delude themselves into believing they’re still middle-class. The simple fact is, too many people can no longer afford a decent life in America. President Trump can mock “affordability” all he wants, but not even a diehard MAGA can be distracted by the threat of childhood sex-change operations if they can’t afford to support their family. To illustrate just how grim things have become, according to a 2026 NBC News poll, 47% of voters aged 18 to 29 view capitalism negatively. In addition, a recent iCitizen survey showed that, among those ages 18-34, 52% favored socialism vs. 48% free-market capitalism. This humble spirit is still rooting for capitalism’s survival in a less destructive form, but I’m hardly surprised by those numbers given that capitalism, along with the government and their democratically elected representatives, has repeatedly failed them.
A while back, in a cynical mood, I joked that many Americans, especially a lot of Trump’s MAGA supporters, should pray for socialism, but unfortunately it’s no longer a joking matter. Senator Bernie Sander has long spoken of “socialism for the rich” and that’s not a joke either. (Just take a look at some of the tax laws favoring the wealthy.) We should consider the events in France, as well as other European countries, and do everything we can to avoid succumbing to a similar fate.