I feel like the Dems should have an easy time in the next elections if they don't fumble it given the current state of things. On the other hand, they seem to purity test each other in ways that make such a coalition harder to attain.
The weak kneed leadership will be getting replaced by the populist message of Trump but coming from the left, people like Mamdani, the DSA candidates, etc.
The people clearly want leaders who will say : we will use political tools to help the economic situation of the poor and middle class.
Everyone from Jon Ossoff to Angie Nixon has some version of this message and its resonating
clearly they are smartening up
Socialism (to contrast with social-democrats like some European nations which are primarily democracies, free markets, with a social component) is not a democracy those are opposing ideas.
As for their agenda, you are wrong.
"The Democratic Socialists of America is the largest socialist organization in the United States, with over 100,000 members and chapters in all 50 states. We believe that working people should run both the economy and society democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits for a few."
"Capitalism is a system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own profit. We must replace it with democratic socialism, a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society."
"democratic socialism" is an oxymoron. socialism conflicts directly with democratic values. At the very least there is no pre-existing example of democracy and socialism working side by side. All previous socialist "experiments" were not democracies.
When you say "socialism conflicts directly with democratic values" I genuinely have no idea what "democratic values" you're talking about.
No it's not, check out Europe, mostly northern countries, it's working just fine.
> At the very least there is no pre-existing example of democracy and socialism working side by side.
Again, northern europe screaming at you.
So you're wrong...
Also, you're Canadian, maybe it's not your business
I feeel those topics are a bit of my business.
In other words, Social Democrat != Democratic Socialist
Scandinavian model relies on competitive private enterprise to create wealth, combined with strong labor union collective bargaining, universal public services, and high consumption/income taxes that apply broadly across society.
DSA seeks to move past or dismantle the capitalist economic system, advocating for social, public, or worker ownership of the means of production.[1]
[1] https://www.dsausa.org/about-us/what-is-democratic-socialism...
Why are you lieing?
From what i can read they want the same scandinavian model with strong labor unions, universal public services and so on.
From the linked website. Now, that's not quite "the means of production", explicitly stated. It's just "the key economic drivers", so most of the means of production.
Maybe you ought to be a little less quick to accuse others of lying.
Norway collectively owns its 'key economic drivers'.
Is that a bad thing?, they're still capitalistic, just with better respect for its people.
You probably collectively own things via the stock market too.
In socialism with supposed democracy, where the state owns the means of production and supposedly the workers supposedly have a say about everything, they actually end up with a say about nothing (at least not without greasing the right palms in the inevitably corrupt system that arises).
In Social Democracy, capitalism is the underlying system, where corporations and workers can own means of production, but it operates under sufficient regulation that the excesses and systemic failures of captialism (e.g., failure to prevent Tragedies Of The Commons, tendency towards monopoly and excess concentration of power, consistent tendency to abuse and impoverish workers, etc.), you end up with successful systems like Northern Europe.
The two are very different, and we need to hold the DSA people to the latter and not let them sneak in the former.
The term you are looking for is communism, not socialism.
Nordic countries are practicing Democratic Socialism.
DSA is not communist.
Why are you spreading this crap when it takes 2 neurons and a few searches to find out you are wrong?
Different beasts as I explained in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49404166
So tell me how Social Democrat parties of Denmark or Sweden views on capitalism same thing as DSA views on it stated in DSA sites I linked elsewhere?
Do these social democrats also want to replace capitalism?
Youre statements peak at a single sentence with minimal signal. You’re not interested in conversations or debates
Skimming through your comments, your only goal is to demonize DSA because they go against your views with respect to Israel.
It doesn't matter to you if what you're saying is true or not, you are not looking for a debate.
* replace capitalism [0]
* own means of production [0]
I state the fact that Scandinavian/Nordic countries are Social Democracies (embracing capitalism) and Not Democratic Socialist countries.
You state that Social Democracy and Democratic Socialism is the same.
I ask you "tell me how Social Democrat parties of Denmark or Sweden views on capitalism same thing as DSA view" [1]
And your response is "nobody wants to replace capitalism, you're being absurd reply" inspite of official DSA statements that i linked to in [0]
My 2 points stand:
* DSA is pretty clear about its desires to replace capitalism [0] and own means of production [0]
* Nordic countries are Social Democracies. THey embrace capitalism, not aim to replace it (as its stated on DSA's own site). Your statement is factually wrong, unless you can find it in your heart to prove me wrong.
I dont know why you felt that bringing Israel discussion about clear socialist goals of DSA will help your argument whatever that is, but try to keep focus about systematic issues with DSA, not geo-political.
That reads as though you’re saying they want to abolish the democratic process, but as somebody living in a country with many of the democratic processes they’re proposing, looking in on what seems like a very dysfunctional democratic process in the US, it seems to be that they want to replace it with a much better version of itself.
Isn't it clear to you that you're misrepresenting DSA's position?
"We want a democracy powered by everyday people. The capitalist class tells us we are powerless, but together we can take back control."
What are they not saying? They are not saying things like we should raise taxes to fund social programs so we can be more like Europe. Europe is capitalist. Europe has free markets. DSA opposes capitalism. DSA wants to, in their words: "We want to collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation.".
What am I not understanding? Barrack Obama wanted accessible healthcare for all, he was not DSA. That's an awesome idea for the US that Democrats rallied behind and partly failed. Show me in DSA's words, material and action, how they are really social-democrats who just want more vacation, healthcare, worker protection while still maintaining capitalist free markets - like Europe. I mean they want all that but not in that way.
I think most of us want a moderate Democrat. I hope populism dies with Trump/MAGA in the coming years. We don’t need to match them with our own distasteful populism.
"Defund the police" was a campaign slogan at last election.
I'm looking from Europe and I'm often impressed how extreme american leftists are. If it's not socialism, it sure shares the same conclusions. And yet "The most extreme left in the US is the most extreme right wing for Europe" is a common belief.
I am often impressed how abusive and violent US policemen are. And they have budgets rivaling the defense spending of whole countries and are armed to the teeth with military grade equipment.
The republican party has become extreme, and they are wrecking your republic
Except form the million of black people living in the south of the US. For them, the USA is a democracy only since 1964.
And if you argue "yes but it got better", the Republicans are making everything to get back to before 1964.
Incidentally, your "we can't let workers decide" sounds a lot like "we can't let negroes vote" or "we can't let women vote". And is as much FUD.
I had a similar discussion in real life. Where we concluded it that Roe vs. Wade being overturned was the biggest step backwards. Most of the other stuff is noise but this one is a biggy that's hard to fix. It sucks for Americans (which I'm not but I was debating an American).
Nobody is saying we can't let workers decide. Most of us are workers. Most of us vote. We are deciding. The US has also made progress on workers' rights at the state level to my understanding. At the end of the day we still have to lean on the democratic process, we need to debate policies and we need to get people to think critically and think things through. This is very hard to do today given the public discourse and tribalism.
And sure, there are also ideas like healthcare for all which I think are similar but that isn't really what the DSA is about. It's definitely not about transforming the USA to have a better social network like healthcare or protection for employees. It's a lot more radical than that.
Yes, they are center-left at best, and your frenzied rebuttal against regular people trying to improve their lives and the country they live in is alarming. Free public transportation..the horror.
> Yes
Respectfully, you may have skimmed some material or watched a couple of minutes of MSNOW, because you wouldn't come to the conclusion that the DSA just wants free public transportation otherwise. Key aspects of the DSA's goals and the actual policy implementation actions of elected DSA-aligned politicians that are quite well aligned with the position of a person holding communist and other relatively extremist sympathies:
- state-controlled grocery stores [0]
- public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries [1]
- abolition in full of police and prisons ("cut police budgets annually toward zero") [1]
- ending sanctions on states backing terrorist activities [1]
- permitting open, uncontrolled immigration [2]
- disregarding the existence of Israel ("democratic secular state [Palestine], from the river to the sea") [3]
- giving voting rights to noncitizens and prisoners [4]
[0] https://edc.nyc/program/nyc-groceries (a city headed by a DSA-aligned mayor)
[1] https://program.dsausa.org/
[2] https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/using-power-builds-po...
[3] https://www.dsausa.org/statements/on-the-ceasefire-in-gaza/
[4] https://program.dsausa.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/DSA_WD...
[edited for formatting]
I can’t wrap my head around why you would sacrifice your life and well being so that a small number of people can become impossibly wealthy?
I read those pages and find it absolutely fantastic. How someone could fight for the position to be a wage slave with no security against inflation, cost of living or bankruptcy or homelessness due to illness is frankly insane.
Wouldn't you recognize that bad faith characterizes the DSA lines?
Public-transit where I live is not free, but it is subsidized, with various recent efforts from municipal and state governments to further reduce costs for all residents.
Germany is defined as Social Democracy or a Social Market Economy. It marries free-market capitalism with social welfare policies, state regulation, and collective bargaining to ensure economic growth and social security, including robust social safety nets.
The US once had stronger unions and basic worker-oriented safety nets. This has been dismantled since the 80s, while piling on the National Debt by pilfering the treasury and "returning" the money to the (rich) end of the tax base.
There was a great quote in the original Deus Ex: "In 1945, corporations paid 50 percent of federal taxes. Now they pay about 5 percent."
In my mind the DSA is trying to shift the Overton window towards something more reasonable, that has already existed in the US. Focusing on the extremes to dismiss the DSA entirely is like throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Bernie is probably the most well-known democratic socialist in the US, but he is not a member of DSA. By his political positions he would be either in the left wing of Finnish Social Democratic Party or in the mainstream of the Left Alliance. He would probably choose the Left Alliance, since it is more like a coalition of like-minded activists, while the party is the primary actor for the Social Democrats.
AOC, another well-known democratic socialist, would also fit in the Left Alliance. She is part of the moderate wing of DSA. But if you start looking into the ideological wing, you find plenty of actual socialists who would make Finnish mainstream leftists uncomfortable.
> The DSA wants to abolish the existing US democratic process.
So, getting into elected office by winning elections is wanting to abolish the democratic process?
I think I'm beginning to understand why the hardcore MAGA folks loves Trump so much.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/07/senate-representat...
Incidentally, if I wanted to sabotage a movement, I'd probably try to convince it to adopt ideas I know would be controversial with the wider public
You misspelled "Trump".
There is only one party making it harder for people to vote, and it is the Republican party.
I don't know enough about the Tea Party to confidently give my opinion, I am a bit too young to have been politically aware when they were in their heyday as far as I know.
Smartening up would have been the Democratic Party ejecting Swalwell because he was a known creep. Instead he was the front runner for the CA Governor until like a couple months before the election when scandal, NOT the party cleaning house, took him out.
Leading but honest question: Are those candidates the same as Trump? I do not see how they share anything other than strategy and spin, and those things don't make policy.
Wag the Dog (movie) came out like 3 decades ago
If Chuck Schumer is asked about the weather, he'll first check with Netanyahu.
Just look at what Senatorial campaigns Schumer supports and doesn't. There's a lot of suspicion that Schumer (and the DSCC) is going to leave Abdul El-Sayed out to dry because he's anti-Israel, basically. Mandela Barnes got similar treatment in 2022. And yet you have blockbuster challenges like Jaime Harrison's, which spent $130M to oust Lindsey Graham. He lost by 10. Trump won by 12 so I guess he gained 2? Well done, everybody, the system works.
Oh and what did the DNC do with Jaime Harrison after he spent $130M to lose by 10? They made him the DNC Chair. The Democratic Party loves a loser. Just like Howard Dean.
The DSCC funding is a drop in the bucket of the overall funding in these races, and they have their own goals which may or may not be aligned with the party as a whole.
If your single issue is Israel funding (which it probably shouldn’t be but that is your choice), the Democratic Party and presidents did far more to reign in Israel’s behavior than republicans.
Support for Israel's current government (elections in October 2026) being but one example.
Republicans do this too. Two of the seats they're at most risk of losing are Maine and Alaska held by Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski (respectively). They currently have 53 votes (well, 52 with Mitch McConnell MIA). That means they can pass things with 50 votes (and JD Vance's tie break) on anything that can get past or doesn't require cloture (eg approving judicial nominations, reconcilation). So, every time you have a controversial nomination or bill, you'll often find Collins and Murkowski vote no because their votes aren't needed. The leadership is insulating them from attack. But when their votes are needed, they're there (eg Collins's required vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh).
As for the number of Democratic senators who voted against weapons for Israel, it is significant because it never would've happened 5 years ago, but it's also mostly performative because there's no way it was going to pass.
As another example, Democrats did a rare move to invoke the filibuster last year to stop ICE funding. This resulted in a government shutdown and important programs being punitively defunded (eg there was a reserve fund for food stamps that was intentionally not tapped). What happened? The Republicans needed 60 votes to force a vote. There were 52 votes. 8 Democratic senators crossed the floor to vote with Republicans. That's so weird. It's the exact number required. What a coincidence. Whatever that number was, 1, 5, 8, 12, it doesn't matter. There will most of the time be that number of exact senators requried. This, by the way, is part of the rotating villain role within the Democratic Party.
This is how calculated it was. All 8 of those who crossed the floor were either retiring or they weren't up for re-election in 2026 so the voters couldn't punish them. John Ossoff, the current liberal darling, was going to be one of the 8 but he's facing re-election this year so Chuck Schumer whipped another vote to replace him.
Another classic example was the Epstein transparency act. Trump threatened members who signed the discharge petition. Mike Johnson actually shut down the House for 7 weeks to try and get those that did to change their vote. yet when the discharge petition got 218 votes (the minimum required), suddenly the votes in the House and Senate were almost unanimous. Well, if support was almost unanimous, why not just have a vote to begin with?
Mitch McConnell can really be credited with pioneering a new era of obstruction in the Senate. He realized there was a political cost to some votes. Some things were popular and he didn't want to pass them so he'd just make sure they never made it to the floor for a vote.
So my point is that imagine the Democrats control the House, the Senate and the White House in 2029 and that same Israel funding bill came up. Will all those Senators and House representatives vote for it when it might pass and become law? Nope.
However, I also highly doubt Schumer would be in Epstein files. People seem stuck on the meme that being in Epstein files is the main reason why someone acts one way or another. This degenerate over-simplification has to stop.
They’ve demonstrated over and over that their core principles don’t actually exist, and are simply maxims that they have heard often enough that they blindly parrot them back.
Honestly wild opinions to have. Watch 30 seconds of fox news. A significant chunk of their coverage is about protecting women and children from migrants/pedos/trans people. They want a tough on crime executive branch almost as much as they want low taxes.
Fox News ideology may at times declare opinions that, in complete isolation, might seem reasonable. "Border control", "safe streets", "responsible government" etc. But they approach it from a place of exaggeration and lies, and an outright visceral anger and hatred toward migrants, trans people, etc. They ignore other activities that might be troublesome. Such as ignoring GOP sex offenses, GOP bribery in the oval office, unconstitutional actions by their executive, or needless wars that cost half a trillion dollars and weaken the US' national security.
So I agree with your parent comment, that Fox News and many of its viewers pick and choose what to say they're angry about, either out of intellectual dishonesty or, in the case of the viewer, outright ignorance or deeper thought about the whole picture of the government and society right now.
[0] https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/01/the_invisible_t.htm...
> They ignore other activities that might be troublesome. Such as ignoring GOP sex offenses, GOP bribery in the oval office, unconstitutional actions by their executive, or needless wars that cost half a trillion dollars and weaken the US' national security
Conservatives, above all else, assume everyone in government is corrupt and terrible, hence wanting smaller government. That they can't reconcile that with their love of social security is a matter of self preservation, not malice.
But he lacks empathy for groups of people he's never interacted with, and ultimately, if they vote for Donald Trump or his enablers, they either believe a lot of lies told to them by media claiming to be on their side, or they aren't as good of people as they themselves think they are.
Respectfully, my quote and your rebuttal have nothing to do with each other. Nice people can be hypocrites and ignoramuses, which is what one must be to willfully support the GOP in almost any race in the country at this critical time.
edit to add some stories:
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I'm in Texas.
My relative tried delta 8 and liked it. He doesn't drink alcohol much anymore because of headache and urinary stuff. He took a little and he laughed more, relaxed, and enjoyed some movies. My mom took it for her body aches and she said it helped with pain and made cooking dinner a little more fun.
Now they'd both be felons. I told my relative that they would be felons for having any, and that I too would be one for using this cheap, safe drug. I joked that maybe he could at least vote Dem for Texas Lt. Gov. to kick out the moronic criminal who pushed the new law.
He said "No, I'll never vote Democrat". He talks about trans people being a problem. He's never knowingly met one. He says they should be left alone, but shouldn't in sports or adopt kids.
He has no idea what kinds of laws are being created to wipe trans people from legal existence across the country, and he's fine supporting felons and criminals and people who want me to be in jail for using delta-8. When I told him about one of Trump's proven criminal acts (taking $500 million from the UAE buying stock in his cryptocurrency clearinghouse) he said he didn't believe it. When I talk about Trump's sex trafficking scandals and Epstein, he's silent. When I ask about the Iran war, he's silent.
He would rather his nephew be a felon for a safe and decade-long-legal drug than vote for a Democrat, because of lies and hatred he watches on Fox news from his middle-of-nowhere plot of land where he interacts with about five people a year for the last two decades.
I could go on about how he rants about socialism as he considers using Meals on Wheels, or how his wife got Medicare-funded palliative care for almost no money out of pocket, or any other number of things. But he, living in rural Texas, mentions Mamdani's "communism" for considering opening a few publicly-operated grocery stores in a city of 10 million people.
---
I have to re-iterate: I know many GOP people are good people. I certainly don't hold them to the same individual responsibility for the ongoing coup of the federal government for which I hold the elected politicians. Many are duped by Fox News, and many more are checked out of the daily updates of crimes committed and norms broken. But that's what's happening, and I refuse to acknowledge any merit of an argument for supporting Republicans in elections until the threat from Trumpism is eliminated, the government repaired and patched against the vulnerabilities exploited, and the Democrats screw up royally somehow again.
The baseline Republican base doesn’t give a shit about the more extreme racist stuff, they don’t care about women being raped, etc they tolerate it. But they hate paying taxes above all else.
Trump closed the stretch IRA loophole in 45, and implemented the largest tax increase in recent history with the tariff regime. Only the really rich people and real estate folks get the big tax breaks.
If someone asks Chuck Schumer what the weather is like, he should say: “It’s a good summer day, but it would be a great one if tax and spend Trump released the Epstein files”