DSA Democrats vs. non-DSA Democrats: is there a difference?
Talk Radio host Vince Coglianese said today that “non-DSA Democrats” support the same things that “Democratic Socialists” do, but they just won’t admit it.
Note the word “support.” I don’t know what most non-DSA Democrats believe. But I have noticed for years that almost all Democrats who run as moderates vote for every single far-leftist measure proposed in Congress.
During Trump’s first term and when Biden was president, the only rebels who stopped the far left’s plans to eliminate voting security and/or to make DC a state, for example, were Sinema (who ended up leaving the party and then leaving the Senate) and Manchin (who was from a deep red state). Here’s the history of the DC statehood bill, as a memory refresher:
In February 2019, the House Democratic leadership put its support behind legislation to grant D.C. statehood. H.R. 1, the For the People Act of 2019, included a nonbinding expression of support, passed 234 to 193 in March 2019 on a party-line vote, with Democrats in favor and Republicans opposed. …
On June 26, 2020, the House of Representatives passed the “Washington, D.C. Admission Act” 232–180 largely along party lines; Collin Peterson and Justin Amash were the only Democrat and Libertarian, respectively, to vote no. It died in the Republican-controlled Senate at the end of the 116th Congress. …
In 2020 and 2021, the full House of Representatives voted on statehood bills, both approved on party-line votes with Democrats in support and Republicans in opposition.
On April 30, 2021, Democratic senator Joe Manchin came out against both H.R. 51 and S. 51, effectively dooming their passage.
This is typical. When the leadership says hop, almost all of the Democrats hop, except for a few “mavericks.” The only current Democrat senator I can think of at the moment who might fulfill that maverick function is Fetterman, and probably only on foreign policy questions.
Again, I’m not sure what the moderates actually think. But what nearly all of them actually do is to support the far left, once elected. For the most part, it’s a distinction without a difference. When running for office, however, there’s a bit more pushback from some of the so-called moderates, especially if they live in purple districts or states.
The voting electorate is another story. The committed, activist sub-group is well-informed and holds to leftist principles. The rest of the Democrat voters probably have many different levels of awareness, but many vote on one or two issues (abortion in the past, Israel-hatred or “affordability” in the present, for example). It strikes me as very odd that Democrats have managed at the moment to campaign rather successfully on “affordability,” particularly since it was under Biden that inflation soared and prices got so high, and nothing that the Democrats have proposed recently would be likely to fix the problem. However, they address people who are hurting financially through a Robin-Hood-esque promise to take from the rich and give to the poor. I suppose that’s what the word “affordability” means to a lot of people.
For me, the old man, I have come to deem all Democrats as either ignorant, stupid, or evil. It is a great failing to vote (D) just because you always have. To highjack the country and lead it over a socialist cliff is evil.
neo barely mentions Trump.
I know a fair number of people who voted D in the last several years. None of them are socialists or DSAs. I doubt many could provide a one-paragraph summary of either.
What these Democrats are is anti-conservative and anti-Trump. They’ve bought the hysteria about both. What is important is to stop Trump now, Some D-voters may figure out the rest later.
Stop Trump. Stop Trump. Stop more Trump.
It’s like the red-green coalition.
My sister, bless her heart, votes Democrat for the following reasons: 1. She’s always voted Democrat, 2. She hates Trump with a white hot passion, 3. All her friends and relatives vote Democrat, 4. She only watches network news and reads the NYT and Wapo, and 5. She is utterly uninterested in learning anything new.
I would describe most of my relatives and friends the same way.
P.S. – To the extent she has policy ideas, it’s that healthcare should be nationalized because it’s currently terrible and run by greedy right wing men.
P.P.S. – And she is someone whose net worth is in the mid seven figures.
I hope the Republican candidate for Congress will make this argument in what is now maybe a swing district in western NC. The Democrat candidate is a well-known farmer, but if he’s elected, he will undoubtedly go to Washington and vote for every available spending or “social justice” boondoggle he can find.
To be fair, voting the way the party leadership directs is pretty much SOP in representative bodies the world over. It varies in degree but it’s always there.
There was an infamous comment by a British Member of Parliament many years ago (approximate but close): “I have heard many debates in Commons that changed my mind, but never one that changed my vote.”
By which me meant that the party leadership decided his vote as a matter of course.
It has to be that way, because a true maverick won’t have financial and other party support and will tend to lose elections over time. The real action is in persuading the party to your agenda rather than defying it regularly.
When you see an apparent maverick defy the party over and over across multiple elections, you’re almost always seeing someone with tacit approval to do so. See:John McCain. The GOP leadership was quite happy with his ‘defiance” because it gave them an excuse not to do what their voters wanted.
American lawmakers are not quite as bound to the party as British MPs, because we run as individuals and not ‘party lists’. It’s a difference of degree, though.
The difference is one is on record for wanting to destroy America. The other isn’t on the record, just secretly wanting to destroy America.
@ HC68 > “It has to be that way, because a true maverick won’t have financial and other party support and will tend to lose elections over time. The real action is in persuading the party to your agenda rather than defying it regularly.”
Agree with you on both McCain and the looser party-politician ties in America. But Parties are where the real money is.
In order to escape that bond, you have to be kind of rich. And famous. And energetic. And in tune with the electorate that the Party leadership has been shafting with their tame mavericks. And able to shape the party to yourself instead of changing to fit their Procrustean folding chairs.
Wonder if we can ever find someone like that.
huxley on August 17, 2026 at 3:56 pm
What he said.
Let’s say typical Dem voter, Mr. X, has been consuming left-wing media and voting for 60 years. He knows that he was supposed to hate Ronald Reagan, but his friends forgave him because Ronnie seemed like such a nice guy. Then he really did hate the following with every fiber of his being: Newt Gingrich, G.W. Bush (in spite of his compassionate conservatism pitch), and Donald Trump.
What do those people have in common? They were/are GOP leaders actually displaying leadership power.
What about poppa G.H.W. Bush? He got rolled and raised taxes for the Democrat machine, so he gets a pass.
This is how divisive wedge politics works.
“The difference is one is on record for wanting to destroy America. The other isn’t on the record, just secretly wanting to destroy America.” Unwillin Bar-Kiss
Yes to the first, mostly not so with the second. Hanlon’s razor applies,
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”
Bill Maher is a perfect example of a “useful idiot”. Which is NOT an indication of being a moron. It is an attribute of believing in things “so absurd that only an intellectual could believe in them.” ‘Gender studies’ is a perfect example.
He’s become desperate to change the democrat trains’ ‘engineer’, willfully blind to the DSA being a natural result of the positions he cherishes. He’s yet to realize (and may never) that, liberalism leads to socialism, which in turn inescapably leads to communism. Which has no use for liberals like Maher.
Geoffrey Britain
I spent a year in Berserkeley circa 1970. I witnessed the rise of Ron Dellums, before he beat 6-term Congressman Jeffrey Cohelan for the Democratic nomination for the local House of Representatives seat. As radical as Berserkeley was then, it is even more so now. Which makes Berserkeley the poster child for your idea that liberalism leads to socialism leads to communism.
Mainstream Democrats assume that all change is good (unless the change results in a Republican being voted in). Which makes them unable to stand up to the likes of DSA. After all, the DSA are just “liberals in a hurry.” (Back in the day, that phrase was used to describe Commies.)
Um no, not secretly at all.
“By their acts [and lies] thou shalt know them.”
Thanks for spelling “Berserkeley” correctly, Gringo. Very few people do.
Berkeley, particularly the university, led the way in radicalism but a big part of the country has equaled or surpassed it. It’s no different than any other woke locale and the leadership is more weakling than firebrand.
In my neighborhood about a mile south of campus a weekly late Friday afternoon sign-holding “protest” re-emerged on our main intersection. Every single participant was a senior citizen (like me) and several had 86-47 written on them.
Whatever. I still find Berserkeley a very pleasant place to live and I’m not going anywhere.
Ive never subscribed to Hanlon’s Razor. I always attribute to malice what appears as stupidity. I’m usually right.
What do DSA candidates propose and how is that distinguishable from your run of the mill Democrat?
For starters:
Wyden, Warren, Sanders and Harris have all supported some form of a “billionaire tax” on unrealized capital gains. But the Democrats never pushed these wealth taxes when they controlled congress during the Biden administration. While they may support them, they know where the money for their campaigns comes from.
My perception is the DSA candidates are the left’s “populists”.
Class envy can still only go so far in the US. Case in point. The socialists running Washington state, through various shenanigans passed a “millionaires tax”.
We now have an initiative on the ballot to repeal the tax. It’s a tax on earners that won’t affect every person that signed the initiative petitions to get it on the ballot.
I will say it wasn’t a grass root effort that accomplished it though. For two to three weeks a very personable young man taking petition signatures at my local Walmart. He was from California. Every day collecting signatures. Some one spent a lot of money paying those workers sitting at local stores across the state collecting signatures to repeal a law that none of the signers would be affected from.
So we’re some time away from them being a significant force in politics. I do wonder if there will be an alignment with the fringe socialist left and the fringe anti-semitic right though. The alignment is broader than just their anti-Jew hatred.
The non-DSA Dems want to stay in place on the slippery slope; the DSA Dems want to keep moving down it.
Oh good grief, how I effed up my name I don’t know. Into moderation it went. Please delete
My brother worked for a first term state rep in Olympia. She was disillusioned by the vote-the-party line or forget about reelection or any role of any kind either. She didn’t run for reelection.
An example given was another first term guy, an actual farmer, denied a role in farm policy because he was not pro abort. Better to have a party loyalist that knows nothing about farming you see.
Marisa, Thanks for the update on Berserkeley. Regarding us oldsters, I am reminded of a 50-60-something woman in 1970 telling me that “in the 30s, we were all communists.” Rather amusing to find out that today oldsters demonstrate with “86-47” signs. I wonder if there is anyone I knew who is in those demonstrations.
Whatever. I still find Berserkeley a very pleasant place to live and I’m not going anywhere.
I am reminded of making the acquaintance of Haakon Chevalier. I had seen a petition in a local paper with signatures against the Vietnam War. One of the petition signers was Haakon Chevalier. I asked Haakon if that were his father who signed the petition. Yes, was the reply. He volunteered no further information about his father, nor did I ask for any.
I didn’t find out until decades later that Haakon M. Chevalier the father had some historical significance: a Commie who was friends with Robert Oppenheimer, who got fired from his professorship at Berkeley and went to France.
Even though UC Berkeley had fired his father, Haakon L. Chevalier chose to stay in Berkeley. His wardrobe was not that of a hippie, but of a faculty member–tweed sports coat.IIRC, also w sweater.
My only solution to both types of Democrats and DSA is to require executive level vote proportions in in the sinecures of state government, the bureaucracrat’s work force to be reflected in the state’s employees party voting. That, and teachers unions, are all hive-minded. So, let’s break them up!
Start in the states, and work towards Congress and the Executive branch to do the same.
HC68 writes “To be fair, voting the way the party leadership directs is pretty much SOP in representative bodies the world over. It varies in degree but it’s always there.” True, but not necessarily relevant here. Individualism is a vale in portions of certain nations in Europe. But is a value and personality type more often seen in the US.
Evidence? In the USA you find last names used as first names more often than anywhere else in the world! For example, President Andrew Jackson becomes Jackson for a baby, like the classic rocker named Jackson Brown.
No one really knows why this is so. But I have yet to see a proposed explanation that does not express or implicate individualism.
Finally, Brian E mentions that the DSA lives on cries over the rich and wealth inequality, demanding that they pay their fair share.
It’s almost easy to show others how wrong this is after seeing mathematical economist John Early — co-author of “The Myth of American Inequality — unveil the data here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzLykjB6dyc
JUST GIVE IT 10-15 minutes.
Brian E at 9:09 pm:
“So we’re some time away from [DSA] being a significant force in politics.”
I wish I shared your optimism.
What do you think are the chances of the Millionaires’ Tax being repealed?
The distinction betwixt the two “DSA’s” is akin to the distinction between Trotskyites and Stalinists, or betwixt Hitler and Ernst Rohm
In the end, no matter which flavor of tyranny prevails and seizes power, the citizenry will be totally F****d.
It is no coincidence that the communist DSA vermin, hitched their horses to the democrat party; there simply is not much difference between the two.
The latter are for open borders, for non-citizens being allowed to vote and for shutting down as much as possible oil and gas production in the USA, packing the SCOTUS, ridding the USA of the electoral college, etc. etc.
In short, they are for policies aimed at destroying our Constitutional Republic.
History does show that the less radical elements grease the skids for the extreme radical elements. So, one can think of the less radical elements as being the
driver of the get-away car, while the actual bank robber is actually committing the robbery.
Regardless, they are symbiotic and both should be considered very very dangerous if they assume the reins of power or help tyrants take power.
The Polish Mercenary, Rafal Ganowicz treated communists the way they should be treated.
When asked how does it feel to kill people he said, “I wouldn’t know, I’ve only ever killed Communists.”
An unpleasant fellow I encounter online who has some useful observations offered that ‘progressives’ have no limiting principle. What they favor is what you’ve already conceded + MOAR. They have no intellectual architecture to take exception to anything DSA cadres are pushing. Starboard discourse actually has fixed objects It also has a sense of apposite procedure, as opposed to the progtrash view that proper procedure should get us what we want.
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The motor of progtrash agitation is to injure social segments they despise and to appropriate the assets, income, and prospects of the social segments they despise to dispense patronage to favored social segments. Nothing more elevated that that. Rank and file Democratic voters are less self-aggrandizing and operate under the illusion that they wish to ‘help’ people, but evince little interest in measuring empirical effects. All of this is attended by an absurd amour propre which sees every question as an opportunity to heap scorn on others. (See disputes over various policy measures in re COVID).
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The difficulty we have as a society is that faculty positions and the fancy professions are increasingly a monoculture of people who have it in for the rest of society. The media may be more variegated than it was 30 years ago, but it’s also less conscientious.
Selfy– we don’t get much information in the hinterlands, but it will be an interesting gauge of the leftward drift if I-645 doesn’t pass. No doubt it’ll pass in most if not all of the westside, but what parts of eastern Wash. vote to keep the tax, since in 2024 I-2111 was passed which banned personal income taxes, which the legislature adopted.
So how could the legislature adopt the millionaires tax in 2026?
According to Grok:
As to the DSA’s growing influence. As a general statement, I think the idea that “the rich don’t pay their fair share” is considered fact by a majority of Americans.
They may pay a significant portion of income taxes on wages, but as the economy changes, more high wealth people aren’t paid by wages. The problem is who gets to decide what’s fair?