The Democrat Party’s socialist wing just notched its biggest statewide breakthrough in history.

Party leaders are scrambling to distance themselves from a movement their own voters are rapidly embracing.

And what House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said about the Democratic Socialists of America reveals just how badly the Democrat establishment has lost control of its own base.

What the Polls Actually Say About Democrats and Socialism

Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), won the Democratic US Senate primary by defeating an establishment-backed candidate, according to Fox News. She did it outspent by a margin that would have buried most campaigns, raising just $975,000 against Alex Vindman’s $16.3 million.

Nixon was not alone. DSA-aligned and progressive candidates racked up wins this spring and summer in crucial Democratic Senate primaries in Michigan, Minnesota, and Florida, according to Fox News Digital.

And the polling tells the real story behind those victories.

A Fox News national poll conducted last month found that 52% of Democrats — but just 11% of Republicans — held positive views of socialism. According to the same poll, Democrats held more favorable opinions of socialism than capitalism. A CBS News survey conducted earlier this month reached similar conclusions.

Political scientist Chris Galdieri, a politics professor at Saint Anselm College, told Fox News Digital that “since 2016 and the Bernie Sanders campaign, there are lots of Democrats, particularly younger ones, who don’t think socialism is scary and wouldn’t mind seeing more of it in U.S. policy-making.”

Gallup polling from late last year found that “socialism starts from a much less favorable position in Americans’ minds” compared to capitalism or free enterprise — but that’s among all Americans. Inside the Democrat Party, the numbers have flipped.

The DSA Platform Is Not a Reform Proposal — It Is a Blueprint for Dismantling the Republic

Before examining what Jeffries said, it is worth being clear about what exactly he was distancing himself from.

The DSA’s agenda includes defunding and abolishing police and prison systems, ending Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportations and detentions, abolishing borders, granting voting rights to noncitizens, and implementing a single-payer “Medicare for All” health system, according to Fox News.

The DSA’s updated platform also calls for abolishing the Senate and replacing the presidency and Supreme Court with leadership chosen by and subordinate to Congress.

That last part deserves to sit on the page for a moment. An openly Marxist organization is winning Democrat primaries across the country while simultaneously calling for the elimination of the Senate, the subordination of the courts to a unicameral legislature, and the seizure of major corporations under public ownership. These are not fringe proposals buried in a footnote. They are the stated, published goals of an organization whose members are now winning Senate nominations.

Every country that has traveled this road — the concentration of political power, the elimination of constitutional checks, the state seizure of private enterprise — has ended up in the same place: economic ruin, authoritarian drift, and the destruction of whatever middle class existed before the experiment began. Venezuela. Cuba. The Soviet Union. The pattern is not a coincidence.

The DSA calls it “building a classless society.” History calls it something else.

And the government-run healthcare piece alone should give every American pause. Countries operating single-payer systems — Canada, the United Kingdom — routinely produce the rationing, wait times, and denial of care that their advocates never mention in campaign speeches. Patients wait months for procedures that Americans receive in days. The DSA wants to import that model and eliminate the private insurance market entirely.

Jeffries Rejected the Agenda — Then Promised to Caucus With the People Pushing It

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) appeared on NBC News’ *Meet the Press* and told host Kristen Welker: “I don’t support the DSA agenda, as has been articulated by the DSA itself.”

He went further. “I do not support defunding the police. I do not support open borders. I do not support abolishing the Senate,” Jeffries said.

But Jeffries stopped well short of saying DSA-aligned candidates have no place in his caucus. “You’re going to have individual members who have been elected in Democratic primaries and, if they are elected in the general in November, will be part of the House Democratic Caucus,” he said. “It’s going to be a broad caucus. There will be progressives. There will be New Dems. There will be Blue Dogs.”

So the top House Democrat publicly rejects the agenda and then promises to hand committee assignments and floor votes to the people who built it. That is not a policy position. That is a man trying to hold together a coalition that is coming apart at the seams.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, described as a potential 2028 Democrat presidential contender, called socialism a “failed experiment” during an appearance on CBS News’ *Face the Nation*. Longtime Democratic strategist and pundit James Carville was considerably less measured. “They’re a bunch of silly people… a pack of fools,” Carville said, referring to DSA members, during a recent appearance on Fox News’ *Jesse Watters Primetime*.

Carville is right about the DSA. But the party he spent decades building is the one producing these candidates.

The Strategists Who Helped Build This Moment Are Now Explaining It Away

Longtime Democratic strategist Joe Caiazzo, a veteran of Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, told Fox News Digital: “Health insurers have acted irresponsibly making access to affordable and quality care beyond challenging for Americans, wages aren’t keeping up with soaring inflation and there is no plan to reconcile any of these issues. Voters are looking for a solution to the affordability crisis.”

Caiazzo also emphasized that “progressives are winning primaries around the country because the electorate is desperate for leaders that will address the affordability crisis that has swept the country.”

The affordability argument deserves a straight answer. Inflation is real. Wages have not kept pace. Housing costs have crushed younger Americans. But the DSA’s answer to these problems — government seizure of corporations, abolition of ICE, single-payer healthcare, open borders, and a 32-hour work week with no reduction in pay — is not a plan to solve an affordability crisis. It is a plan to replicate the economic conditions that created poverty in every country that tried it.

Free markets, limited government, and competition between providers have done more to lower prices and raise living standards than any central-planning scheme in recorded history. The DSA is not offering a cure for the affordability crisis. The DSA is offering the disease dressed up as the medicine.

And it is worth noting who Caiazzo worked for. Bernie Sanders spent years mainstreaming the idea that socialism is not something to fear. The 2016 campaign normalized the label inside the Democrat Party. The 2020 campaign pushed it further. The DSA’s current surge is not a surprise development — it is the logical outcome of a decade of deliberate ideological groundwork laid by the progressive wing of a party whose establishment now claims to be shocked by the results.

What Comes Next If the DSA Keeps Winning

The DSA does not need to win a presidential election to reshape American policy. It needs enough members in a future Democrat House majority to extract concessions from leadership — the same way the Freedom Caucus has used its leverage on the Right. Jeffries himself acknowledged this dynamic when he promised a “broad caucus” that includes DSA-aligned members.

That is the quiet admission buried inside his public rejection of the DSA agenda: he knows he cannot govern without them if Democrats take the House, and they know it too.

The DSA’s platform calls for abolishing the Senate outright. If that sounds like an extreme demand that no serious politician would entertain, consider that the same organization’s candidates are now winning Senate nominations in major states. The Overton window does not stay in one place. It moves in the direction of whoever keeps winning primaries.

Jeffries can say he does not support abolishing the Senate all he wants. But if the DSA sends ten members to Congress in November and those members become the margin of his majority, the agenda they carry with them does not disappear just because the Speaker does not endorse it on television.

Every American who values constitutional government, private property, and the freedom to make economic decisions without a federal bureaucrat’s permission should be paying very close attention to what is happening inside the Democrat Party right now. The establishment is losing. The Marxists are winning. And the people nominally in charge are promising to work with both.

Sources: Fox News Digital; CBS News; Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime; NBC News’ Meet the Press; Fox News national poll; CBS News survey; Gallup polling