By the looks of it, the socialist movement in the United States has petered out after the rapid rise of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in the 2016 Democratic presidential contest. While it’s true that Sanders ran and nearly won again in 2020, many political pundits have since written off the American socialist movement as a momentary blip.
In reality, this is not the case. Although Sanders and other prominent socialists like U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have not been as front-and-center as they once were, they still remain a powerful force in the Democratic Party and could very well become the leading voice of the Democrats in the not-too-distant future.
For the past several election cycles, The Heartland Institute has monitored the progress of outright socialists in local, statewide and national elections. This year, socialists won 94 percent of the races they ran in, which tracks closely with their success rates in 2020 and 2022.
Although our list of socialist candidates in the 2024 election included fewer total candidates than in 2018, 2020, or 2022, this does not necessarily mean that socialism is on the decline in the United States.
First, it must be noted that the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) – one of the three major socialist organizations used to compile our socialist candidate list – decided to refrain from endorsing candidates at the national level this year. In years past, the DSA gave its socialist seal of approval to scores of socialists, whereas this year it endorsed only a few.
We found a similar trend among the other two socialist groups that have traditionally endorsed dozens of socialist candidates in prior elections: Our Revolution and the Progressive Democrats of America.
Perhaps the DSA and these other groups thought it would be better to not shine a bright spotlight on their preferred candidates this time around. However, given the fact that many so-called establishment Democrats were defeated by MAGA populists this year, that might have been an unwise decision.
Second, just because there were fewer socialist candidates endorsed at the national level by the big three socialist organizations this year does not necessarily mean that much considering that they farmed out the endorsement process to their local and statewide chapters. This was especially the case with the DSA, which has a spiderweb of local and statewide chapters throughout the nation and worked tirelessly to ensure that their preferred candidates had all of the support they needed.
Third, as history has shown time and again, socialist movements tend to wax and wane. Like all political movements, they don’t operate in a vacuum. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the extenuating political and societal circumstances that might have affected the socialist march in 2024 and could foretell its future.
Without a doubt, the United States is in the midst of a political realignment possibly unseen since President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition forged during the depths of the Great Depression and World War II.
Since then, the Democrats have claimed to be the party of the working-class. For nearly eight decades, the Democrats held great sway with blue-collar America and championed themselves as the party that truly cared about the plight of hard-working Americans.
But that has changed. In 2024, the GOP made great inroads with less-educated, working-class Americans. Of course, much of this centered upon the economic pain and societal ostracism experienced by these “forgotten” Americans in recent decades.
Surprisingly, the Republicans are no longer the party of the C-suite whereas the Democrats have taken that mantle with gusto.
In 2024, Democrats performed well below expectations among many of the groups that have historically formed the base of their coalition. Why did this happen? Likely because the Democrats have abandoned any semblance of their economic policy that actually attracted those trying to achieve the American Dream.
This is the crux of the matter. Will the Democrats double-down on establishment policy or will they pivot in an attempt to win back their once-loyal base? I believe it is highly likely that the Democrats are on the cusp on an internal war much like the GOP has been through in recent years.
After years of bitter infighting, the GOP has finally embraced the MAGA agenda and populist economics, which paid big dividends in the 2024 election. I suspect the Democrats will soon undergo a similar civil war between their establishment members and their growing socialist wing.
This battle might take place over the next several election cycles, especially if establishment Democrats continue to lose like they did in 2024. But it would be a big mistake to assume that socialist Democrats, of which there are many, are not a political force to be reckoned with going forward.
