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Major Swing District Poll Shows Voters Loathe AI Giants, But Love Medicare for All
"Voters see this election not just as a referendum on Trump... but as a repudiation of the entire political system."
Sep 17, 2026
A poll released by the Cook Political Report on Thursday shows US voters in key swing districts overwhelmingly dislike artificial intelligence companies—but are feeling warm about Medicare for All.
In total, the poll finds that voters in 37 swing districts across the US view AI companies unfavorably by a two-to-one margin, with 64% of voters saying they're more concerned than excited about the technology, compared to just 31% who say they're more excited than concerned.
Opposition to AI data centers is even stronger, as 63% of voters say they would oppose building one in their communities, compared to just 28% in favor. Additionally, 44% express strong opposition to local data center construction, making strong opposition higher than overall support.
At the same time, the poll finds much stronger support for Medicare for All, with 62% of swing-district voters having a favorable view of the policy, compared to 34% who said they were opposed. The intensity gap is also notable, as 41% of voters sat they have a strongly favorable view of Medicare for All, while just 25% have a strongly unfavorable view.
This does not mean that these voters are socialists, however, as the poll shows just 32% expressing a positive view of socialism, compared to 58% expressing a negative view. When it comes to Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), 37% of voters say they have a favorable view of the group, compared to 56% who say they have an unfavorable view.
Regardless of specifics about policy and ideology, the poll shows a deep dissatisfaction with the American political system and an openness to major changes.
Amy Walter, editor-in-chief of the Cook Political Report, commented in a social media post that "the most interesting finding was that these voters see this election not just as a referendum on Trump (who’s underwater by 16 points), but as a repudiation of the entire political system."
Walter pointed to a striking finding among independent voters in the survey, who vastly preferred a candidate promising to change the whole political system compared to a candidate who would just be a check on Trump.
"This also suggests," Walter added, "that these voters would want a Dem-led Congress that focuses more on an agenda that tackles corruption and institutional rot than one that focuses solely on Trump and his overreach."
Yasmin Radjy, executive director of Swing Left, said that the Cook Political poll "tracks with everything we're hearing" in conversations with voters.
The idea that the "system is broken," wrote Radjy, "is overwhelmingly the top issue/theme we hear from voters across the ideological and partisan spectrum—even more than affordability!”
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'We Want Real Change': Sanders-Backed Democratic Socialist Wins Mayoral Primary in Providence
"Nearly a year ago this day, we launched a campaign centered around the simple vision that the working people who make Providence home deserve to live here."
Sep 10, 2026
David Morales, a 27-year-old democratic socialist endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, scored an upset victory on Wednesday to become the Democratic Party's nominee for mayor of Providence, Rhode Island.
As noted in a Thursday report in The Washington Post, Morales made concerns about housing affordability central to his campaign pitch, and he assailed incumbent Democratic Mayor Brett Smiley for vetoing a proposal passed by the Providence City Council to enforce a 4% annual cap on rent increases.
Morales reinforced this theme during his Wednesday night victory speech.
"Nearly a year ago this day, we launched a campaign centered around the simple vision," Morales said, "that the working people who make Providence home deserve to live here. A simple vision that our neighbors deserve a mayor who will fight for them."
"Together, we organized, day in and day out," Morales added, "sharing our vision of how we build a city all our neighbors can afford and feel safe calling home."
David Morales is 27 years old.
The youngest Latino ever elected to the Rhode Island legislature.
Tonight he beat an incumbent mayor in Providence — after that mayor vetoed rent stabilization for working families.
Bernie endorsed him. The people chose him.
Nobody can stop this… pic.twitter.com/qrP4BAwd0G
— Ezequiel Aguilar (@EzequielAguilar) September 10, 2026
Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, hailed Morales' victory as "another sign that something powerful is taking root across this country."
"Working-class candidates are rejecting an establishment politics that asks people to settle for less and instead showing what government can actually do for them," Geevarghese emphasized. "From city councils and mayor’s offices to statehouses and Congress, we are seeing candidates build support by organizing from the bottom up and focusing directly on the economic pressures facing working people."
Sanders in a Thursday social media post congratulated Morales for his win, which he said was a sign that voters are fed up with politics as usual.
"From coast to coast, Americans are clear: No more status quo politics," wrote Sanders. "We want real change."
Morales wasn't the only progressive insurgent in Providence to declare victory on Wednesday.
As reported by the Brown Daily Herald, challenger Miguel Youngs, who received endorsements from the Rhode Island Working Families Party and the Providence Teachers Union, ousted incumbent John Goncalves to become the Democratic Party's nominee to represent Ward 1 on the Providence City Council.
Similar to Morales, Youngs made capping rent increases a major theme of his campaign, attacking Goncalves for voting against the rent control proposal earlier this year.
Progressives have been upsetting the Democratic establishment in mayoral races across the US, as both New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson last year won with the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America.
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The New Red Scare Is a Dangerous Distraction From the GOP's Failures
The attempt to revive the McCarthyist witch hunts of yesteryear is, at its core, a reaction to the working-class rightfully demanding its fair share of the economic pie.
Sep 07, 2026
A familiar spectre is haunting the nation—that of communism. Or so one might conclude from the Republican Party’s increasingly frantic rhetoric.
Following a string of wins by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in congressional primaries from New York to Colorado to Michigan, even reaching as far as Florida, the GOP is dusting off an old refrain.
“Communism is on the ballot this November,” warned House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) at a press conference. President Donald Trump has gone further still, calling communism “the biggest threat to our nation there is, maybe since our founding.”
At first glance, this reads like little more than election-year theatrics. The candidates provoking such alarm are, on the whole, hardly the revolutionaries their critics imagine.
But, try as they might, no amount of fearmongering, surveillance, or censorship will dampen the working person’s dream for a more dignified life, one where their labor is compensated fairly, their dollar stretches further, and their children inherit a secure future.
Many of the policies promoted by today’s democratic socialists fall comfortably within the lineage of the New Deal: strengthening labor protections, expanding access to healthcare, greater investment in public infrastructure, and so on.
That House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) would liken their ascendance to “a nightmare… a trail to certain death,” ought to strike any person of sound mind as patently absurd.
Yet dismissing such a frenzied reaction as mere campaign-season hyperbole risks overlooking what it actually reveals: staggering insecurity.
If the political establishment had any real confidence in their track record, they wouldn’t need to manufacture so much anxiety around their opposition.
It is precisely because they can feel their grip on the public’s trust slipping that they have resorted to reviving the McCarthyist witch hunts of yesteryear—an effort that extends well beyond incendiary speeches.
Last year, President Trump issued National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), directing federal agencies to expand policing of social movements linked to “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” among other ideological strains, ostensibly to “identify and prevent potential violent activity.”
NSPM-7 has, in turn, become the legal backbone for an aggressive crackdown on dissent, seen in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issuing “warning notices” to those who have criticized the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), whether that be through social media posts or email correspondence.
Recent reporting even uncovered a sweeping probe, dubbed “Operation Puppet Master” by DHS, into a number of left-wing groups in Minnesota after the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti by ICE and Border Patrol agents, respectively, earlier this year.
The probe included, among other things, the subpoenaing of financial records from various labor unions and nonprofits, as well as “spying operations conducted by undercover agents who posed as activists and surveilled community activities.”
It is little wonder that such egregious actions have since been compared to COINTELPRO, J Edgar Hoover’s illegal pet project designed to infiltrate, surveil, and discredit civil rights and anti-war activists who caught the ire of the federal government.
This, paired with the White House creating its own blacklist of journalists and influencers on its official “Media Offenders” page, many of whom are cited for such severe transgressions as “Left-Wing Lunacy,” suggests that the hysterical talking points GOP leadership have taken to heart are the vehicle for a broader crusade of political repression.
Such heavy-handed surveillance is undoubtedly born out of a deep-seated panic among those in power. This latest Red Scare is, at its core, a reaction to the working-class rightfully demanding its fair share of the economic pie.
The rise of the DSA, and of the left-wing ideas it propagates, owes much to the fact that its members speak plainly about the financial woes of the everyday person.
Take, for instance, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has striven to take an honest accounting of the financial hardship faced by New Yorkers, and in turn offer tangible remedies like free childcare and a rent freeze.
In contrast, Trump administration officials are desperate to pull the wool over the eyes of the people, with Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, recently claiming that the economy “looks amazing,” despite nearly 80% of voters feeling otherwise.
In fact, public confidence in capitalism broadly has fallen to 54%, according to Gallup polling released last year, the lowest level since the organization began tracking the question. At the same time, socialism commands comparatively steady support, especially among Democratic voters, roughly two-thirds of whom view it favorably.
The generational divide is even more striking. A survey conducted by YouGov and the Cato Institute found that 62% of Americans under 30 hold a favorable view of socialism, while 34% say the same of communism. Of course, each of these labels mean different things to different respondents, but the overarching trend is difficult to ignore.
For many Americans, especially those on the younger side, capitalism is synonymous with constraint, and it’s not hard to see why.
While billionaires’ assets have surged to preposterous heights, the cascading inflationary shocks of war have steadily eroded workers’ purchasing power.
Cornerstones of the American Dream have been priced out of reach for working families, with 62% of Americans now viewing homeownership as unrealistic.
Meanwhile, more than 40% of American households have persistently struggled to cover the cost of basic necessities on their current income.
Yet, rather than confronting the economic frustrations driving millions of Americans to question the status quo, the Trump administration has chosen to paint a target on the backs of those who offer the public a meaningful alternative.
But, try as they might, no amount of fearmongering, surveillance, or censorship will dampen the working person’s dream for a more dignified life, one where their labor is compensated fairly, their dollar stretches further, and their children inherit a secure future.
And it is for this reason that yet another Red Scare is an altogether futile, albeit dangerous, distraction meant to blind us to the real struggle of our time: the fight against a rigged economy.
If those in power must conjure ghosts to terrify the people, it is surely because their earthly defenses are failing.
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Can DSA's Brand of Socialism Attract the Broader Working Class?
There are a few key reasons why many working class people likely won't embrace the vision put forth by the Democratic Socialists of America.
Aug 31, 2026
Members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are proud to wear their socialism on their sleeves (and on their hats.) It lets everyone know they are serious about changing capitalism into something far more humane, transforming the system into one in which working people rather than plutocrats run the economy.
Their embrace of socialism also gives its members a sense of community. It signals a commonality in opposition to the status quo, on behalf of all working people. It’s a righteous identity that signals us against them, right against wrong, justice against injustice—a moral, almost religious bonding.
However, it also pushes people away. It creates a demarcation line between in and out. It’s not just the capitalists who are excluded, but anyone who doesn’t buy into DSA’s vision of socialism.
But why wouldn’t all working people readily embrace DSA’s socialist vision?
Let’s look at how the DSA defines its socialism:
- 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 in which ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society.
- The people should collectively own key economic drivers, such as energy production and transportation, that are used by all.
- We want the multiracial working class united in solidarity instead of divided by fear.
- We want reforms, such as Medicare for All, community-centered public safety, and the Green New Deal, that the current establishment considers radical but we think are essential for a fairer system.
So far, that sounds within the realm of progressive economic populism. Even doable, I hope, but then they go further:
- Work as much as you are able and no more than needed. Control your own labor and see it going to good use. Work is not just a job to pay the bills.
- You have no debt. You don’t need health insurance. You don’t pay a mortgage or have a landlord, no rent, because comfortable housing is a human right.
- Your retirement is publicly funded. Food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation aren’t for-profit businesses; they are common goods and utilities.
- A socialist’s day off could be like any good day now. But you should be free to spend your time how you like without worrying about cost or dreading going back to work.
- And college, as well as groceries, should be free.
When DSA candidates take to the field, they focus almost entirely on populist economic demands—housing and food affordability, fair taxes on billionaires, and Medicare for All. These are socialist in the sense that Social Security, libraries, fire departments, and our current Medicare are socialist, and yet they are also firmly embedded in our capitalist system.
I have yet to encounter a DSA candidate who discusses truly socialist reforms, like the elimination of large private enterprises and workers’ control of the corporations that employ them.
We have the word “socialism” and significant portions of the DSA platform that do not have significant working-class support, yet DSA doesn’t seem bothered by being out of touch with large segments of the working class they claim to be fighting for.
Then why does DSA use the word “socialist” if it does not involve their day-to-day political debates? And why use it when it is sure to turn off many of the very working people DSA claims to represent?
The Education Class Divide
There is a significant disparity among educational groups when it comes to having positive or negative views toward socialism.
Gallup’s 2025 polling found that:
- 31 percent of people with some college, but no four-year degree, viewed socialism positively, compared with 66 percent who viewed it negatively.
- Among people with a high-school education or less, the split was 38 percent positive to 57 percent negative.
- College graduates were the most favorable educational group, with 47 percent viewing socialism positively, and 51 percent negatively.
- Among independents, only 38 percent viewed socialism positively, compared with 57 percent who viewed it negatively.
This doesn’t mean working people oppose the policies associated with democratic socialism, like taxing billionaires. But it does mean that DSA’s use of the word “socialism” itself is likely to trigger a negative response and undermine its effectiveness among working-class voters, especially in red America.
Why use the word “socialism” when it’s going to turn off the very voters you hope to attract?
Because it doesn’t turn off DSA college-educated members. The reality is that despite their “Workers Deserve More” platform, DSA is a political organization by and for college graduates, especially disenchanted Democrats in blue areas. That demographic seems to have no problem with the idea of socialism. In fact, 66 percent of Democrats had a favorable opinion of socialism, with just 32 percent feeling negatively.
Which fits with several of the policies DSA supports that also are likely to turn off non-college working-class voters.
For example, the DSA platform calls for legalizing migration, granting amnesty to all immigrants regardless of status, providing a path to citizenship for all permanent residents, and ending visa caps and quotas.
Some elements of this position have considerable popular support. Pew Research found that 64 percent of Americans believe undocumented immigrants should have some way to stay legally in the United States, and 60 percent favor allowing them to apply for citizenship.
But that support generally comes with conditions: 79 percent favor security background checks, and 52 percent favor requiring immigrants to have a job.
The broader DSA position is another matter. The Pew Research Center conducted in August 2024 found that 48 percent of U.S. adults wanted legal immigration kept at its present level; 24 percent wanted it increased and 26 percent wanted it decreased.
There is little evidence that working-class Americans want to eliminate visa caps and quotas altogether. In fact, non-college voters are more likely than college graduates to see large-scale migration as contributing to crime.
The distinction is important: working people can support a path to citizenship for immigrants already here while also wanting secure borders and limits on future immigration. DSA’s position largely erases that distinction.
Abolish the Police?
DSA calls for demilitarizing police departments, disempowering police unions, redirecting police funding to public services, and ultimately abolishing the police and prison system.
Here again, polling reveals a sharp divide between progressive reforms and the more sweeping DSA position. A 2020 Gallup poll taken after the George Floyd murder found that 58 percent said policing needed major changes and vast majorities supported changing police management practices so that officer abuses are punished. However, there was little to no support for abolishing police departments.
The lesson here isn’t that working people oppose police reform. Quite the contrary: there is overwhelming support for holding abusive officers accountable, improving police-community relations, and expanding community-based alternatives.
But there is a huge difference between reforming policing and abolishing it. DSA’s position goes far beyond what polling shows most working people are prepared to support.
It’s not that working people necessarily disagree with DSA’s concern for Palestinian lives or even with major elements of its policy. Polling shows substantial support across the electorate for a ceasefire, humanitarian aid, Palestinian self-determination, and conditioning or reducing U.S. military aid to Israel.
The problem is that DSA bundles those broadly popular positions with a much more sweeping ideological program—open-ended opposition to Israel as a state, the right of return to Israel for Palestinians and their decedents who lived within its border but fled during various wars, unrestricted immigration, and prosecution of U.S. and Israeli leaders for genocide—that has not been adequately tested among working-class voters.
While justice for Palestine is a major issue for DSA members, it’s not at all clear that it is a major issue for working people without college degrees. We have no indication from polling that it ranks anywhere near as important as economic issues, nor that it influences the votes of non-college graduates. Also, it seems to rank about the same as the Russia-Ukraine war, which is not even mentioned in the DSA platform. The distinction? Palestine, not Ukraine, is a very big issue among college-educated young people and hence essential to the DSA platform.
Why would an organization that purports to be fighting on behalf of the working class develop a platform with many elements that a majority of working people do not support?
Again, the answer is that those positions do have strong support among college graduates, the real base of DSA. And those college graduates hope that most working people will support those positions, if not now, eventually.
So, we have the word “socialism” and significant portions of the DSA platform that do not have significant working-class support, yet DSA doesn’t seem bothered by being out of touch with large segments of the working class they claim to be fighting for.
That’s socialist identity politics. It lets the world know that DSA members, mostly college educated, have a vision to eliminate capitalism and the many problems it poses. While DSA would like to have broad working-class support, it is not about to give up its socialist vision and its more radical policies to get it.
And it’s doubtful to change because DSA is on a roll as it gains more and more members and support among disenchanted college graduates who they see as the new working class, or at least a large part of it. Afterall, DSA already is the largest, most active political organization in the country.
So, DSA and its members do not feel any pressure to change their political identity. They wear it proudly as the oligarchy limits opportunities for recent college graduates and drives them towards DSA.
That’s why it is highly unlikely that DSA will become a political organization of workers without college degrees. And that’s exactly why those unrepresented workers need a party of their own that reflects what they believe in and what they want from our economy and political system. (Please see my latest book for a fuller account.)
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How DSA and Democrats Can Win the Working Class (and How Not To)
If both DSA and the Democratic Party want to be of and not just for the working class, broadly defined, they have a long way to go. But the work is vital.
Aug 28, 2026
The Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America share a problem. As organizations largely run by and involved with college-educated voters, they are physically and psychically removed from working people without four-year degrees. Both the Democrats and DSA claim they are speaking for the working class, but they are not, at present, political organizations of the working class.
The Democrats have tried to avoid their working-class problem by embracing suburban Republicans and independents who have been repulsed by the GOP’s extremism. The Democrats’ embrace of Wall Street and Hollywood big money—and NAFTA—has pushed working people out of the coalition.
For DSA, on the other hand, the easiest way to address the problem is to define it away. DSA uses a broad definition of the working class that includes underpaid college-educated graduate students, unemployed and underemployed college graduates, and a host of other college-educated workers who suffer from insecure jobs and the high cost of living. While these educated workers are sometimes financially akin to the working class, the majority of working people—nearly 60 percent—do not have four-year college degrees.
And that’s the way the 2024 vote went. Trump had a 14-point advantage among voters without college degrees, while Harris carried college graduates, 56 percent to 43 percent. If DSA and the Democrats remain organizations largely of the highly educated, they will lose.
Racial Silos?
Looking at voters as racial groups is another way to avoid dealing with the working-class issues the Democrats and DSA face.
The Democrats have historically done well with Black and Hispanic voters, and the working class is increasingly multiracial. The idea is that if we stop viewing the working class as dominated by white workers, people of color will lead to stronger vote totals for the Democrats.
Alas, ethnicity is no longer a sure sign of voting Democratic because working-class Black and Hispanic voters have been leaving the party. Twenty percent of Black voters without four-year degrees and 48 percent of Hispanic voters without four-year degrees supported Trump in 2024.
White voters without four-year college degrees made up 42 percent of the 2024 electorate nationally. In seven states where Democrats have largely abandoned the political field—Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, and Idaho—they constituted a majority of voters, ranging from 51 percent in Kansas to 58 percent in Montana and Idaho.
No significant progressive political movement can succeed without attracting large numbers of working-class voters of all colors. (Please see my latest book for the development of this argument.)
The Fox News Strategy?
Perhaps a good way to reach the working class is through conservative media. Some in DSA believe that their base can be extended by appearing on Fox News and making their case.
According to Pew Research, the median age of Fox viewers is 55, and most are Republicans or Republican-leaning independents. Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has been making Fox News appearances lately that have drawn attention, but it’s not at all clear that Fox News reaches deeply into younger working-class communities, especially those independents who are open to progressive economic populism. A good case could be made that progressives are wasting their time on conservative media, though El-Sayed’s performance this November could change my mind.
Electoral Canvassing?
DSA has done a remarkable job of fielding large numbers of door knockers during its political campaigns. The one-on-one conversations that take place are key to getting out the vote and sharing information about progressive policies such as taxing billionaires and Medicare for All. When thousands of DSA activists hit the streets during an election, public education certainly takes place.
But where and with whom?
Most DSA canvassing to date takes place in blue districts. And within those districts, it’s not clear whether working-class areas have been targeted. Often in political campaigns, the goal of canvassing is to find those voters most likely to support your candidate and make sure they vote. Harvesting the most likely supporters usually means targeting the areas where they live. Since DSA candidates thrive among college-educated voters, there is likely to be a tendency to concentrate canvassing in gentrified and upper-middle-class areas. Working-class urban areas will also be reached, but the balance is likely to tilt toward where the most likely supporters live.
More importantly, to date, most of the canvassing has taken place in urban areas and in and around college towns. Maybe I’m missing something, but reaching deeply into red working-class communities has not yet become a significant part of DSA’s ground game.
Long-Term Engagement with Working-Class Union People?
Unless and until DSA—and the Democrats, for that matter—set up precinct-level organizations in working-class neighborhoods, electioneering will be episodic and superficial. Door-to-door conversations are worthwhile, but they are no substitute for continual engagement within local organizations.
In my opinion, the best way to reach the working class is to engage with people through their labor organizations. The labor movement is much smaller than it was a generation ago, but there are still thousands of union meetings taking place each month, ranging from small local union gatherings to larger regional and national conferences. Political activists need to show up and listen to what union members care about.
It takes work, often hard work, to get in the door. That’s something the Labor Institute, which I cofounded, had to do a half century ago when we started our work. To get educational opportunities, we reached out to countless labor leaders and activists, gradually gaining their trust and finding venues to show our wares.
It takes lots of time and lots of trust-building, but the conversations that emerge through ongoing educational engagement taught us as much as we taught others, greatly enriching what we were able to offer. DSA would broaden its support and deepen its connections with working people if it engaged with large numbers of blue-collar and service workers in trade unions.
If DSA wants to be of and not just for the working class, broadly defined, it will have to get in the labor door. It will need to learn how to have a dialogue with working-class groups who might be progressive populists but are also likely to have concerns about socialism and whether DSA really can advance the cause of non-college-educated working people.
DSA, more than the Democrats, has the troops and the energy to do that work. The jury is out, however, on whether it can deploy that passion, and commitment to engage with working people who don’t already agree with them.
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In Post-Primary Media Tour, Angie Nixon Refuses to Take Corporate Media's Bait on Hasan Piker, DSA
"I am actually focused on Florida and making sure that I'm talking to voters here, to uplift their needs and their concerns," said the progressive Democrat. "And so that's what my focus is going to be over the next 76 days."
Aug 21, 2026
The corporate media has spent months helping to push the narrative that progressive Democratic candidates are anti-American and have radical foreign policy views that are out of step with a majority of voters—claims that are not backed up by polling—and news outlets were ready this week to pepper Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon with questions after her stunning Democratic primary victory in the US Senate race.
But Nixon (D-13) suggested Thursday night she prefers to discuss her desire to represent working Florida residents' interests in the Senate over the topics that news anchors are eager to talk about, including various positions held by some members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the specific label she would apply to her political views, and the progressive political figures she does or does not plan to campaign with ahead of the November midterms.
On NBC News, correspondent Kristen Welker asked Nixon on Thursday why she recently joined the DSA "if you disagree with various parts of their platform."
Nixon has expressed in interviews in recent days that she does not support the DSA's platform positions of abolishing prisons—noting that she does support abolishing those that operate for profit—or defunding the police.
Welker asked if Nixon's disagreement with some aspects of the DSA's platform becomes "a distraction from your own campaign and your own agenda."
The state lawmaker, who supports Medicare for All, universal childcare, and annual wealth tax on billionaires, replied, "You all are the only ones that are distracted."
KRISTEN WELKER: Why join the DSA if you disagree with various parts of their platform? Does it not just become a distraction from your own campaign and your own agenda?
ANGIE NIXON: You all are the only ones that are distracted. I’m actually going out, talking to voters about… pic.twitter.com/wgEX6csNB8
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) August 21, 2026
Nixon's hint of exasperation at the question came after a number of interviews in which she was grilled about topics that, she suggested, had nothing to do with the priorities of Floridians whom she's met on the campaign trail.
She quickly pivoted away from Welker's DSA focus and toward the struggles a growing number of Americans are facing with affording healthcare, following the Republican Party's termination of Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies and cuts to Medicaid.
"The fact remains that there are people who are dying because they don’t have access to quality healthcare," said Nixon as she turned her attention to her GOP opponent, Sen. Ashley Moody. "Meanwhile, Ashley Moody voted to end the ACA subsidies. As I stated, nearly 300,000 people fell off the Affordable Care Act rolls."
"The status quo is broken," she added, "and the people at the top want to stoke division... At the end of the day I have always been about the people of Florida, which is why my campaign is Angie for Florida."
Welker didn't follow up with a question about Nixon's plans to make healthcare more affordable for Florida voters, instead asking whether she views herself as "a capitalist."
The interview was the latest in a slew of media appearances Nixon has made this week after she won the Democratic primary by 12 points despite being outraised by an estimated 13-to-1 average by former national security official Alex Vindman.
The candidate's suggestion that the corporate media is "distracted" when it comes to her campaign came a day after CBS News anchor Gayle King questioned Nixon about who she has campaigned with, incorrectly claiming that left-wing commentator and streamer Hasan Piker had joined her on the trail during the primary race, along with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).
Nixon politely but firmly replied that she has not campaigned with Piker before noting that Tlaib, who has joined her at rallies, "wants the same things that I want, to make sure that government is working for people and not against it."
"So I'll continue to do the same thing, but I have not campaigned with Mr. Piker at all," she said. "Not sure where that came from."
King then pressed her on whether she would be interested in campaigning with Piker—whose involvement in Michigan US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed was used by the centrist think tank Third Way as an attack line against the progressive earlier this year. The news anchor appeared incredulous when Nixon replied that she didn't "really know who he is."
"I am actually focused on Florida and making sure that I'm talking to voters here, to uplift their needs and their concerns," said Nixon. "And so that's what my focus is going to be over the next 76 days."
Journalist Glenn Greenwald commented that King's shocked reaction at the news that the progressive candidate didn't know Piker was "so revealing of the insular media mindset."
"It's the only thing we in the media ever talk about," he said sardonically. "You must be fixated on what we're fixated on."
Nixon also used questions from journalist Don Lemon and MS NOW's "Morning Joe" about whether she supports abolishing prisons as a jumping-off point to discuss her opposition to for-profit prisons, which have secured hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts to run immigration detention centers after they donated millions to President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign.
"They exploit labor, and they usher many of our children into the school-to-prison pipeline," said Nixon.
Florida Democratic Senate nominee Angie Nixon faced a DSA platform gauntlet on Morning Joe, with hosts pressing her on “defunding police,” “abolishing prisons,” and “open borders.”
🔹Nixon, who recently joined DSA, rejected all three characterizations. She said she supports law… pic.twitter.com/uwh1Lr1UPf
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) August 19, 2026
Screenwriter Dan Therriault said that "younger left candidates" like Nixon "are dealing with media in an assertive way that the old Democrats don’t have to do because they’re the status quo."
"The push by media against young left Democrats, who are fighting for their voters," he said, "is causing the media’s conservative corporate bias to be exposed day after day."
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Corporate Democrats to Young People: Run for Office! Corporate Press: No, Not Like That...
Instead of being praised for contributing to civic life by participating in democracy, young progressives and democratic socialists have been pilloried as threats to both the Democratic Party and democracy itself.
Aug 21, 2026
As he was leaving office in 2017, President Barack Obama urged Americans concerned about where their country was headed to act. “If something needs fixing, then lace up your shoes and do some organizing,” he said (Time, 1/11/17). “If you’re disappointed by your elected officials, grab a clip board, get some signatures, and run for office yourself.”
Ten months earlier, then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had made a similar comment (The Hill, 3/1/16). At a campaign stop in Minnesota, a young woman pressed Clinton about her past remarks on “superpredators.” After a brief exchange, Clinton said, “You know what, dear? You have a different opinion… Why don’t you go run for something?”
A decade later, it’s clear that a new generation of leaders has taken that advice. But instead of being praised for contributing to civic life by participating in democracy, they and the organizations that support them have been pilloried as threats to both the Democratic Party and democracy itself.
DSA as ‘Parasite’
The Atlantic, which published a 2024 essay (5/17/24) asserting, in the context of Gaza, that “it is possible to kill children legally,” ran an article (7/21/26) on the Democratic Socialists of America headlined “The DSA Is a Parasite.” (I belong to the organization’s New York City chapter.) Writer James Kirchick averred that “ideologues on the left are attempting a hostile takeover of the [Democratic] party.” He suggested that the organization’s rise was enabled by a
yearslong effort by socialists and progressive activists to steer one of America’s two major political parties toward identity politics, isolationism, and hostility to capitalism.
Kirchick’s disdain for those who join standard efforts to influence political parties is anti-democratic, ahistorical, and willfully obtuse. He also conflates and misrepresents the goals of progressive and socialist activists. “Hostility to capitalism” is accurate enough if one is describing socialists—not necessarily progressives—but “identity politics” and “isolationism” are not.
DSA opposes military bases and economic warfare, but it explicitly champions immigration and international law, and working toward “a world without war or poverty”—that’s not “isolationism.” The group also calls for “a world where no one suffers for their race, gender, or religion”—an enormously popular view that Kirchick dismisses, insultingly and inaccurately, as “identity politics.”
Kirchick and his ilk, of course, wouldn’t be able to caricature socialists’ views so easily if they were held to basic editorial standards, and if socialist perspectives weren’t almost entirely excluded from corporate media.
Hijacked by a ‘Radical Fringe’
A recent spate of articles have, like Kirchick’s, sought to repackage normal political practices as novel, violent, or disease-like threats unrelated to the will of voters. An Axios column (7/28/26) by the site’s co-founders Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen began: “Republicans didn’t decide to become President Trump’s party. They surrendered to him, one stage at a time, over a decade, in plain sight.” It then posed the (paraphrased) question: Will the Democratic Party similarly surrender to the creeping threat of socialism?
While acknowledging that socialism is popular with the Democratic base, the Axios story portrays it as a disease whose “transmission is slower” than Trumpism. It’s not clear why Axios treats socialism as a pathology; in what way is it harmful to, or impairing the normal functioning of, America or American democracy?
The Hill (7/24/26) also noted “fears” that “the [Democratic] party is being taken over” by democratic socialists.
The Wall Street Journal warned darkly that
DSA’s advances are stirring consternation—and sometimes panic—among mainstream Democrats dreading their own Tea Party moment, in which a radical fringe hijacks the party and taints their brand just as they are trying to appeal to swing voters to win control of Congress.
Odd if true, given that recent socialist wins have coincided with an uptick in favorable views of the Democratic Party, which suggests that DSA’s success may in fact be burnishing the party’s brand.
DSA’s leaders, the Journal continued, “scarcely hide their disdain for a Democratic Party they view less as a partner than a hostile takeover target.” It’s true that DSA does not view most senior Democratic Party leaders as its partners; the organization is succeeding by appealing directly to the party’s supporters. (In the words of DSA member and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, “What’s a party if not its voters?”) If those who regularly vote or are inclined to vote in Democratic Party primaries ultimately succeed in changing the party’s platform to better represent their views, that’s not a hostile takeover—that’s democracy.
The “takeover” language is telling: The corporate press sees any assertion of agency on the part of everyday people as a threat to establishment interests. The Free Press (7/21/26) sounded the alarm in an article headlined “What the Movement Taking Over the Democratic Party Wants.” And Fox News (7/27/26) went further with a story headlined “[US Rep. Steve] Scalise Warns ‘Bolshevik Revolution’ Taking Over Dem Party After Socialist Primary Wins.”
DSA does, like the Bolsheviks of more than a century ago, defend people’s rights to peace, land (housing, in a contemporary US context), and bread. But unlike the Bolsheviks, the organization is not armed or violent, and is committed to democratic change (hence the name).
‘Getting Away With’—What?
Seeking to change a political organization by appealing to its supporters and competing in its primaries is what politicians of all stripes do; it is how democracy works. Yet The New York Times(6/20/26) has characterized quotidian political participation as “an uprising from the left,” which poses a larger “threat”—it’s not clear to whom, other than House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who may eventually be primaried from the left. To the Times, DSA is not competing in congressional primaries but “targeting high-profile House races.”
And though the Times (8/10/26) acknowledges that “democratic socialists and their allies have scored a series of victories over traditional Democrats with superior messaging and organizing tactics,” it also reports that these tactics have “terrified” the party establishment, causing them to “burn through gobs of cash,” and leaving them to wonder: “How do progressives keep getting away with this?” Most see winning a primary election thanks to better messaging and organizing as entirely above board; the Times tells readers it’s a scary heist.
Martial analogies are common in political writing, but the corporate press covers intra-Democratic Party tensions as if progressives and democratic socialists were the only combatants. As a recent AP article (7/27/26) noted:
Establishment Democrats, including former Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison, have forcefully pushed back against DSA candidates who run in the party’s primaries while criticizing the way the party is going.
But if you’re seeking to change a party’s direction, forming organizations to influence it, running in its primaries, and organizing caucuses within it are the most obvious and common ways of doing so. Centrist Democrats—including Bill Clinton, who went on to win two of his party’s presidential primaries—did this when they founded the Democratic Leadership Council in 1985 and the Progressive Policy Institute in 1989. Clinton and his allies were fighting in what some at the time called a “battle for the party’s soul” (Time, 7/10/95)—a struggle that continues to this day.
Working together to alter the priorities and structure of theoretically representative institutions like Congress and the Democratic Party is a necessary and crucial form of democratic participation. It is precisely what leaders like Obama and the Clintons have repeatedly enjoined Americans to do. And when done by individuals and organizations that are honest and forthright about their intentions—e.g., those with clear public platforms—there is nothing sneaky, underhanded. or sinister about it.
Research assistance: Emily Marie Spencer.
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Without the Working Class, There's Only So Much Progressives Can Win
Placing all of our chips on reforming the Democrats is a bad bet, even if we deem it a necessary one in the near future.
Aug 08, 2026
Yes, it should be possible this November to elect enough Democrats to stop MAGA and undo some of the damage Trump et al have done. But without the support of the working class the progressive wish list will remain just that—a series of unfulfilled wishes.
Despite big hopes and a likely small majority, we won’t see Medicare for All, an increase in the federal minimum wage, a green New Deal, job security for working people, labor law reform to facilitate unionization, a billionaire’s tax, elimination of big money from politics, the break-up of mega-corporations, and affordable housing for all, to name just a few.
None of these ambitious and popular reforms will pass as long as the blue-red margins remain narrow, ensuring that there are never enough votes to enact major reforms even if the Democrats control all three branches after the 2028 elections.
Ask any labor leader and they will tell you the sad and maddening 50-year story of failed attempts to level the labor-management playing field, despite Democratic tri-fectas during Obama and Biden. And because of these slim margins one of the biggest recent Democratic victories, Obamacare, is a Rube Goldberg-like contraption relying on corporate subsidies, massive costs, and spotty coverage that has failed to deliver universal and affordable health care.
Bad stuff can be stopped and maybe some of the worst MAGA policies reversed, but there won’t be a progressive majority to win the big stuff even if the Democrats win the House, the Senate and the presidency in 2028.
So, instead of pushing toward a more just economy, we sail in the opposite direction and are increasingly dominated by what Bernie derides as the billionaire class.
We just assume these days that razor-thin blue-red margins are a fact of life, the result of increasing political polarization, money in politics, gerrymandering, and misinformation, etc. But not so long ago there were times, under FDR and LBJ, when progressive political majorities were massive. That’s when the Democratic Party included and could count on most working-class voters (roughly defined as those without college degrees). That is no longer the case.
The numbers are stark, especially among white working people.
- In 1976, Jimmy Carter received 53 percent of the white working-class vote. In 2024, only 33 percent voted for Kamala Harris.
- In a working-class county in the heart of coal country in West Virginia, like Mingo County with its fierce union tradition, Bill Clinton received 70 percent of the vote in 1996. After 3,000 of the county’s 3,300 coal jobs disappeared, Harris got a miniscule 12 percent in 2024.
If a sizable majority of those voters returned to the Democrats’ fold, one could imagine enough votes to enact major economic reforms. Could that happen?
How do Democrats win the working class back?
My comrades at the Center for Working Class Politics have spent years showing that working-class candidates, especially with union backgrounds running on a strong progressive economic program, can win in contested districts. Their arguments are persuasive. But the current handful of successes leave most of the working-class swimming on their own in red America, where the Democratic Party is dead and gone.
For example, of the roughly 1,211 state legislative seats in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, and Idaho, the Democrats don’t even run candidates in 40 percent of them.
The Democratic Party needs to be reformed dramatically if it is to adopt CWCP’s strategy. But we have just learned from the missing chapter in the Democratic Party’s autopsy report, released this week by its author, that the party’s functionaries have become “generationally wealthy off politics.” Sponging off the status quo, whether they win or lose, the party’s ecosystem of pollsters, consultants, ad agencies, and such has grown fat, rich, and happy. This is not a political culture open to radical reform.
DSA to the rescue?
The Democratic Socialists of America, arguably the most vibrant political organization in America today (though the bar isn’t high), have attempted to reform the Democrats by knocking off establishment Democrats in primaries and replacing them with DSA-backed candidates. They have succeeded this year in heavily Democratic urban areas, such as New York City, but will now be tested in Michigan, where Dr. Abdul El-Sayed gained a narrow victory in the Democratic Senate primary this past Tuesday. Similarly, Francesca Hong, another DSA candidate, is the favorite to win the upcoming Wisconsin gubernatorial Democratic primary in another state won in 2024 by Donald Trump. Can El-Sayed, not a DSA member but a very progressive candidate, and Hong win in purple states?
Ironically, DSA members and the establishment Democrats generally come from the same class – the class of the college educated. El-Sayed reportedly ran “strongest in communities with young voters, college students and educated and wealthy white voters.”
DSA claims to be speaking on behalf of the working class, but according to its own 2021 survey, only four percent of its members are blue-collar workers, and another six percent work in retail, food service, or similar occupations. Roughly 40 percent are teachers, academics, white-collar professionals, tech workers, or students. Of those 25 years old and older, more than 80 percent have bachelor’s degrees, compared to only 39 percent nationally.
Working people did not disappear from the much redder parts of the Midwest and the Great Plains when their jobs moved to Mexico and China, but the Democrats did.
More importantly, what they put forth as their program did not grow out of a dialogue with non-college working-class folks or even union leaders. If they had had those discussions they would have learned that many of their positions, like abolishing “the police and prison system which protects the rich and jails the poor,” would be opposed by the working people they say they champion.
We will learn more this fall about how DSA candidates adapt and fare with working people in red areas. But as DSA is now structured, it is unlikely to recruit many people without college degrees.
The path to a progressive majority?
Clearly, it is essential that the Democrats win back enough working-class voters to disrupt the MAGA onslaught. Let’s hope and pray they do. But unless huge numbers of Trump voters stay home for the midterms, and the working class breaks heavily for the Democrats, the margin of victory is not likely to be nearly enough to produce the political majorities necessary to rework the economic order.
Bad stuff can be stopped and maybe some of the worst MAGA policies reversed, but there won’t be a progressive majority to win the big stuff even if the Democrats win the House, the Senate and the presidency in 2028.
The Democratic Party brand is just too tarnished among working people for them to readily join in significant numbers. Sure, go ahead and run more union candidates, and let’s see if the DSA can overturn the Democratic Party’s establishment and even spread into the working class. But it would be wise to have Plan B—a parallel, not substitute, strategy.
An Independent Workers Party of Their Own in Red America
Working people did not disappear from the much redder parts of the Midwest and the Great Plains when their jobs moved to Mexico and China, but the Democrats did. In red America there is no spoiler problem because in hundreds of state races and congressional districts the Democrats have abandoned ship. That has left an enormous vacuum and few political choices for working people. We can now see a very few working-class candidates trying to fill the void, but there is no organization that ties them together.
A new political organization of working people should be constructed where working people can gather and speak in their own voices about what they want to see changed in America—an organization that recaptures the voice and power they once had in the region.
Building that formation will be difficult, but maybe not as difficult as taking over the Democratic Party. For starters, it will require an anchor tenant, a large union or state labor federation, that realizes that most of its members have given up on the Democrats and want something new. So far there have been no takers, though clearly some labor leaders, like the UAW’s Shawn Fain, share at least some of our analysis of what’s necessary.
But that will change, I believe, as union leaders come to the recognition that they can no longer sell the Dems to their own members. And if one or two unions or state labor federations set up a new independent operation in red America, I think they will be pleasantly surprised by the enthusiasm it generates. Our polling suggests that working people just might come running.
If this organization takes off, it becomes much easier to imagine working-class political alliances with enough power to secure substantive economic change. Something working people are sure to need soon as AI and the billionaires take a wrecking ball to what’s left of their livelihoods.
Someone, somewhere, sometime must build something new so that working people can develop their own political voice, just as the Populists did 150 years ago.
Is this the only solution to our problems? Maybe not. I’m wide open to other strategies. I just haven’t heard any that don’t start and stop with reforming the Democrats, whose elites are not about to give up their power and access to riches.
And I don’t see how DSA gets deep enough into red America as long as it’s an organization of college grads talking to themselves about what’s best for the working-class. Even if El-Sayed and Hong win in the general election this year, the wealthy party fuctionairies will still be in power.
By all means, go for it. But someone, somewhere, sometime must build something new so that working people can develop their own political voice, just as the Populists did 150 years ago.
Am I howling in the wind? Maybe. I guess that’s what I do. My contribution is to get you to square up to the problem: We need a serious strategy that leads to serious progressive change.
Placing all of our chips on reforming the Dems is a bad bet, even if we deem it a necessary one in the near future. At the very least, I think, that bet needs to be hedged by building a new independent political organization of working people in red America, an organization that’s responsive to and expressive of their political needs. That’s far better than abandoning working-class families to the next round of Republican charlatans.
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Actually Michael Harrington Would Probably Love Today’s DSA – and Hate It Too
The "big tent" of the Democratic Socialists of America has its drawbacks too.
Aug 07, 2026
Kirkpatrick Sale has it half right in his lament over today’s Democratic Socialists of America, “Michael Harrington is Spinning in His Grave.” The imagined spinning stems from post-mortem distress at what its founding leader would make of the organization today. Sale—best remembered for SDS, his history of Students for a Democratic Society, the seminal 1960s “New Left” organization—calls himself Harrington’s “close friend and traveling companion,” and feels that today’s DSA “has stood on its head the principles that Mike and his colleagues stood for.”
While I cannot claim to have been Harrington’s friend, I did know him and arguably qualify as one of his colleagues, in that I was a member of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, his prior organization whose 1982 merger with the New American Movement created DSA. I remain a member of the organization to this day, and when serving in the Massachusetts House of Representatives was once one of DSOC/DSA’s handful of public elected officials. From my vantage point, while I understand Sale’s real–and Harrington’s imagined–distress at some of what he sees in today’s DSA, not only does he ignore developments that would have made Harrington proud, but I also think his take on Harrington’s politics is not quite right.
As a flat statement, Sale’s contention that DSA “is no longer anything that could be called democratic or socialist” is wrong, but he is not wrong in identifying parts of 2026 DSA that would seem unlikely to have appealed to Harrington. Sale clearly recognizes that the roots of the organization’s dramatic changes—its 20-fold inflation from the 6,000 member group of the 90's—lie in Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. He errs, though, in calling Sanders “a leading DSA figure and its only representative in Congress.” Sanders actually was not then, is not now, and so far as I know has never been an actual member of DSA—counterintuitive as that may seem.
After Sanders introduced “democratic socialism” to millions of American living rooms in his debates with Hillary Clinton and politically “lived to talk about it,” a whole lot of people who’d also been thinking about the idea googled the term and found DSA; some joined. They were then followed by some who indeed did not identify with the democratic socialist tradition but recognized that this was now where the action was—the hazard of success.
The result is generally understood as a “big tent” organization—a tent thus far large enough to contain both US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Democratic New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani—figures for whom I cannot imagine Harrington having anything but admiration—along with caucuses by no means committed to that approach, groups that Harrington would consider bizarre and out of place (as does this writer.) It contains serious divergences between local chapters and a tenuous national organization. How long this tent holds up is anyone’s guess. As for Sale, if he would actually consider the entirety of organization (the best description of which I’ve seen was recently published in a German Left Party newspaper—"Von Degrowth bis ML" Jungle World, July 30, 2026) he might well see similarities with the late years of SDS (an organization Harrington subsequently regretted having failed to productively engage with.)
Among those similarities is a certain not-ready-for-prime-time quality common in organizations trying to cope with the increased glare of the public attention spotlight. Foibles and foolish statements surface from the past. My personal nomination for the dumbest left slogan of recent years is “Defund the police”—its rational kernel of re-evaluating government’s approach to certain types of public safety situations smothered in a seemingly naive call for an end to law enforcement. And yet, even someone like Mamdani who is generally considered to possess masterful political skills—correctly, I think—has had to walk that one back.
On some points of his critique of current DSA, Sale seems perhaps frozen in time, such as his noting that “Mike was an outspoken champion of the new Israel.” That “new Israel” has changed quite a bit in the thirty-seven years since Harrington has been gone. Would he remain a champion of a nation now planning a prison for Palestinians that includes a moat stocked with crocodiles – a proposal temporarily stalled by consideration of the animals’ subsequently repealed protected status? Sure hope not.
But where I really think Sale is just wrong is in essentially arguing that Harrington was not actually a socialist. Yes, Harrington did talk of being “the left wing of the possible,” and that “generally meant working within the Democratic Party”—as do most current DSAers running campaigns to do something for the American working class in the here-and-now. And while Sale is accurate in saying that the DSA of Harrington’s day “put forth a vision of a democratically elected government that would be like those of the Scandinavian countries, providing state services in health, education, housing and the like,” his contention that back then there was “Nowhere stuff about ending capitalism” makes it sound like Sale missed a lot of meetings—and maybe didn’t keep up on his reading so well either. Even the small DSA had differing strands of thinking. One major one was all about imagining how to reach a genuinely democratically controlled economy beyond the “welfare state” and capitalism, something you will find reflected in Harrington’s writing.
So would the imagined Harrington be troubled by some of what he’d see in today’s DSA? Yes, I’m sure he would. And would he be positively thrilled by some of what he found in today’s DSA? Yes, I’m sure he would.
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Corporate-Funded Third Way Plans to Spend $15 Million Waging 'War' on Progressives
"Instead of going to war against the left, why not attract votes by going to war against insurance companies gouging patients, against employers busting unions, or against polluters?" said one critic.
Aug 06, 2026
Abdul El-Sayed's victory in the Democratic US Senate primary in Michigan this week was just the latest example of an insurgent progressive challenger defeating candidates backed by the Democratic establishment.
The establishment, however, is vowing to not go down without a fight.
In an interview with The New York Times published Thursday, Jonathan Cowan, the president of the corporate-funded group Third Way, revealed plans for a $15 million campaign to counter the influence of organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which he described as a "mortal danger" to the Democratic Party.
"We are preparing for the next war that is coming," said Cowan, who added that "it is deeply troubling to see radical, far-left candidates winning in places that are potentially presidential swing states."
The Times report noted, however, that big moneyed interests, most notably the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), spent tens of millions of dollars attacking El-Sayed, who nonetheless emerged triumphant in the race.
Some critics fired back at Third Way, noting that the group only appeared interested in attacking progressives rather than promoting a positive agenda to improve people's lives.
Maurice Mitchell, the director of the Working Families Party, told the Times that groups such as Third Way are "missing a point of view" and are not seeing the "populist insurgency taking place in this country."
Mitchell was far from alone in criticizing the group's plans.
Jon Favreau, co-host of Pod Save America, remarked in a social media post that Third Way's $15 million investment would be better spent "building a movement and coming up with a vision that actually excites voters."
Favreau's comments were echoed by journalist Nathan Newman.
"Have moderates thought about presenting compelling policies more appealing to voters?" Newman asked. "Instead of going to war against the left, why not attract votes by going to war against insurance companies gouging patients, against employers busting unions, or against polluters?"
Even some critics more in line with Third Way's politics expressed skepticism of its proposed campaign.
Derek Thompson, co-author of Abundance, a book that critiqued progressive governance, argued that Third Way's efforts would only reinforce progressives' narratives about big moneyed interests trying to squash a grassroots rebellion against the status quo.
"People should do what they want with their money but moderate Democrats' deficits relate to candidates, messaging, organizing, and enthusiasm... not money," said Thompson. "Plus, I hope people see the risk in a headline about moderates raising millions of dollars to attack a popular left insurgency that attracts support in part... by representing themselves as a bulwark against moneyed interests."
New York University School of Law professor Chris Sprigman was similarly dismissive of the Third Way campaign, predicting that "centrists [are] likely to be no more effective against their own democratic left than they’ve been against the authoritarian right."
Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, argued that Third Way and other neoliberal organizations needed to look in the mirror when it comes to placing blame for the current state of US politics.
"The reason we are in this mess is because the biggest risk we face is market fundamentalism," Owens wrote. "That's what broke the country and voters know it. That's why they are turning against Third Way corporate Dem-style candidates. That’s the thing to fix."
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