From the The Other 98%:
"A third of democrats now call themselves democratic socialists, and that number alone should tell the party establishment everything it needs to know about where its base is headed. A new CNN poll conducted by SSRS found that roughly one in three democrats and democratic leaning Americans identify with the label, and they are not some fringe group grumbling on the sidelines. They are younger, more motivated to vote, and more enthusiastic about the party than their moderate counterparts. This is not a warning sign for democrats. It is a roadmap.
None of this came out of nowhere. Last year, Bernie Sanders and AOC's "Fighting Oligarchy" tour packed arenas across the country, including a stop in deep red Utah that drew roughly 20,000 people, in a state trump won by more than 20 points. They filled a 15,000 seat arena at the University of Utah with thousands more crowding outside just to listen through the walls. Around the same time, Zohran Mamdani rode that same energy to a stunning upset over Andrew Cuomo and became the democratic socialist mayor of New York City, the biggest city in the country. Between the crowds in Utah and the win in New York, this was the moment the wing stopped looking like a coastal curiosity and started looking like the future of the party.
Look at what has followed. In Michigan, Abdul El Sayed just opened up a commanding 15 point lead over Haley Stevens in the Senate primary, according to an Emerson College poll, even after Governor Whitmer endorsed Stevens. El Sayed is crushing it with voters under 50, and the numbers only get more lopsided the younger you go.
And it is not isolated to one state. In Maine, democrats just nominated Troy Jackson, a fifth generation logger and former state Senate president, to replace scandal plagued Graham Platner in the Senate race against Susan Collins. Jackson is running on Medicare for All and taxing the rich, the same platform that got Platner to a historic primary win before his campaign collapsed. Delegates chose Jackson in a landslide, 566 to 5, and Sanders is already backing him. Even Collins's campaign and the Republican National Committee are calling him a socialist trying to shove his politics down Mainers throats. Given how popular those actual policies are, that attack may not land the way it used to.
Here is the part democratic strategists keep missing. Americans flinch at the word socialism because decades of cold war messaging trained them to. But when you actually explain what democratic socialism means in practice, taxing billionaires and corporations, universal healthcare, real climate action, affordable college, higher wages, lower costs, people do not recoil. They nod along, because most of it is just popular policy that has been poll tested for years. Democratic leaders can keep clinging to a cautious centrism that keeps losing enthusiasm and turnout, or they can notice that their own voters are already telling them where they want to go. The writing is on the wall."
