IT IS A SELF-EVIDENT FACT that the current capitalist status quo doesn’t work for the vast majority of people in the U.S. In fact, much of the wealth inequality and its myriad resulting structural failures we now suffer from are byproducts of capitalism. Due to actions from previous presidential administrations, such as providing tax cuts to the wealthiest classes and squashing labor unions, American class consciousness and worker solidarity have been depressed, repressed, and suppressed. Proponents of neoliberalism — particularly Ronald Reagan, whose administration was among the first to push these structural shifts at such a mass and public scale — broadcast the lie that supply-side economics would bring prosperity to the American public through tax breaks for the rich. Supposedly, wealth would trickle down from the upper classes to the lowest, kickstarting the economy. Over the past forty years, these economic policies have been met with more open resistance.
The United States has been witnessing a recent rise of populist politicians who have rallied against this neoliberal status quo, beginning with self-described democratic socialist Senator Bernie Sanders challenging establishment Democrat and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party’s 2016 Presidential primary. The pair revealed the uphill battle that establishment and centrist groups in the Democratic National Committee (DNC) have long presented to Sanders and subsequent progressive electoral candidates; nonetheless, there has since been a resurrection of a dormant socialist movement.
Over the course of the past decade, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have grown tremendously, with over 130 thousand members currently in good standing, contributing to and in turn benefitting from the growing popularity of DSA-backed elected politicians such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City. In 2018, Ocasio-Cortez won against incumbent Joe Crowley and, seven years later, Mamdani was victorious over establishment politicians Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams.
This increasing power of progressive politicians has led to reactionary backlash from conservative politicians and pundits like Donald Trump and Fox News, as well as centrist and liberal figures like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Representative Josh Gottheimer, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and pundit Neera Tanden. Despite the actions of these bad-faith actors, the DSA and other progressives have only grown in electoral influence, especially over this past year. Seattle elected self-described democratic socialist Katie Wilson for mayor in a narrow defeat of the incumbent Bruce Harrell in November 2025. Chris Rabb won the Democratic primary for Pennsylvania’s third district in May 2026 and is on his way to become its Representative in November. Washington, DC, is on the verge of electing Metro DC DSA member Janeese Lewis George as mayor after she won the Democratic primary in June 2026. New York City had a historic night when a Mamdani-endorsed slate of candidates, including DSA members Darializa Avila Chevailer and Claire Valdez, won that same month. A week later, democratic socialist Melat Kiros in Colorado also won an impressive primary victory against almost thirty-year incumbent Diana DeGette. In August, DSA member Donavan McKinnley defeated incumbent Shri Thander. Finally at the historic November midterms, DSA member Angela Gonzales-Torres defeated incumbent Representative Jimmy Gomez.
While many attributed the success of Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, Mamdani, and this new slate of progressives to merely “populism” and “anti-establishment” fervor, particularly with the popularity of the 2025 Fight Oligarchy Tours led by Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, another critical and overlooked component to these politicians’ favorability is that they are openly democratic socialists. After his two presidential campaigns, Bernie Sanders’ self-identification as a democratic socialist opened the door for more left-leaning and openly socialist candidates like Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani, who are prominent members of the Democratic Socialists of America, an affiliation not even Sanders claims.
This is not to say these three politicians are perfect models of the American left. In fact, they have a somewhat flawed understanding of what democratic socialism is. Sanders, for instance, doesn’t define democratic socialism through anti-capitalist and Marxist lenses, but as a continuation of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal policies, which were at best soft social democracy and at their core welfare capitalism. Similarly, when Mamdani was asked how he would define democratic socialism, he defined it as the famous Martin Luther King quote on wanting better wealth distribution for all of God’s children. Similarly, in an interview with Theo Von, he defined socialism as someone having whatever they need to live a dignified life, and that it is the government’s job to deliver on that. These may come off as well-meaning pleas to rally non-socialists, but are fundamentally mere reiterations of modern social democracy, which lacks the radical roots of classical social democracy. The former aims to reform, not replace capitalism, while the latter serves as a gradual pathway to socialism.
A political movement Sanders has pointed to as an example of his vision of democratic socialism is the Nordic Model. It is based on the economic policies of Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, and Norway, which center on a strong welfare state, universal healthcare, and free access to higher education. Former Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin stated she felt that “the American Dream can be achieved best in the Nordic countries.” While the Nordic Model is highly preferable to the current American economic system and has given great benefits to the people of these nations, it is still not the socialist paragon Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have portrayed it to be. In fact, all of these countries are capitalist monarchies. The Nordic Model operates on what is fundamentally a welfare capitalist model.
These politicians’ lenient understandings of progressive ideologies reflect in their attitudes toward domestic politics. For instance, Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani sometimes show leniency toward Hakeem Jeffries, despite him having shown nothing but hostility towards his own party’s progressive wing, including those affiliated with the DSA. He holds a similar attitude toward progressive policies, even those popular with his base, as he withdrew support for Medicare for All to instead favor slight reforms of the current status quo of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which still leaves approximately 50% of Americans with insufficient access to affordable healthcare. Furthermore, he maintains a hardline Zionist position of providing unconditional support for Israel, refuses to address the ongoing apartheid and genocide of Palestine, and holds closed-door meetings with the right-wing American engineers of such violence. Despite these critical violations of DSA’s core platform, Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani remain steadfast in supporting Jeffries — going as far as to offer him amnesty for meeting with Kushner — even over a potential primary challenge from New York City Council Member and fellow DSA comrade Chi Ossé.
Despite the flaws each of the three have, Ocasio-Cortez, Mamdani, and Sanders have been a positive influence in developing the progressive movement, particularly with the Democratic Socialists of America, and their hard work and dedication should be commended. Their steadfast identification with democratic socialism in spite of the many attacks they face from the political establishment is especially admirable.
California Representative Ro Khanna is one of many progressive politicians who, alongside Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, Mamdani, and others still have led the charge against the capitalist status quo. He has been seen as a progressive torchbearer and potential contender for the 2028 Democratic Party primary.
Khanna is a breath of fresh air as he leads the legislative fights to release the Epstein Files, pass Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, enact a wealth tax, and end the genocide of Gaza and occupation of the West Bank. He was even detained by the Israeli government for his criticism of the policies against the Palestinians. Despite his support for popular, progressive legislative acts, his approach still has major flaws that reflect economic populism without a cohesive political line.
Khanna wrote Progressive Capitalism: How to Make Tech Work For All of Us, a book serving as an endorsement of “progressive capitalism,” the biggest flaw of which is that it fundamentally fails to give an alternative to the current capitalist status quo. There have been instances in which Khanna contradicts himself. Despite being one of the more vocal pro-Palestine Democrats in office, Khanna arguably used his detainment in the West Bank as a publicity stunt and still supports providing American funding for Israel’s “defense” systems. Even though he talks like a champion of progressive priorities, he also gives an olive branch to conservatives such as outgoing Republican Representative Thomas Massie and former Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who don’t share any core beliefs of the modern American progressive movement.
In fact, both Massie and Greene are ardent conservatives who have vocally supported Donald Trump on all but a few issues, such as Palestine and the Epstein Files. It should also be noted that, until very recently, Taylor-Greene had shown her support for Israel, and her “coming to Jesus” moment of opposing the Israeli government was due to Donald Trump not supporting her political ambitions. Her opposition to the actions of the Israeli government isn’t due to empathy towards the Palestinians and a standard of justice, but due to anti-Semitic beliefs held against Jewish people.
While Khanna has shown great promise in holding the progressive banner after someone like Sanders, he still acts like a politician following only the populist wave, willing to adopt an ideological stance that seems to oppose the establishment instead of advocating for an advancement toward a socialist future. It is in the best interest of socialists and leftists to look with suspicion at those like Khanna who offer progressive policies but still have other motives.
Former presumptive Democratic nominee for Maine’s open Senate seat, now-disgraced Graham Platner, is yet another example of the limits of economic populism without socialism. Despite his years of work for the private military mercenary group Blackwater and his proud service to America’s imperialist war in Iraq and Afghanistan, Platner supported progressive policies. His platform prioritized support for Medicare for All, labor unions, a wealth tax, an end to Israeli genocide in Gaza, and the occupation in the West Bank.
While Platner was representative of a growing number of Americans frustrated with the status quo, he alarmingly lacked principled allegiance to left-wing political identities. For instance, in a Reddit post, Platner stated he was a vegetable-growing, psychedelic-taking socialist. However, in a December 2025 interview with The New Yorker, he denied any affiliation with the socialist movement or even that he considered himself a socialist. Doing his best Oppenheimer impression, he instead called himself a “New Deal Democrat,” echoing Sanders’ self-described political platform.
In the weeks leading up to that interview, the Platner campaign grew immersed in scandal: supposed old Reddit posts, spanning from inconsequential matters such as considering himself a communist and calling the police “bastards,” to explicitly racist actions like posting photos of his Totenkopf tattoo and questioning why African-Americans don’t tip. Despite both these issues and his past as a Blackwater mercenary, key progressive politicians did not hesitate to endorse and amplify his campaign: Sanders and Khanna, as well as Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ruben Gallego, all publicly threw their support behind him.
His upward trajectory came to its long-overdue end with the publicization of a credible accusation of sexual assault. Before this point, there were already multiple rumors of Platner having sexted other women while being married and blaming victims of sexual assault for the immense harm they experienced. But after Platner defeated Maine governor Janet Mills in the primary, his former partner Jenny Racicot came out to accuse Platner of assaulting her while he was drunk. This followed reports that he would take off condoms without her consent during sex. In a delayed video response, Platner finally announced the end to his campaign, but still denied the ever-increasing allegations against him.
Just as damning as Planter’s immoral past was the popularity he enjoyed among populists, especially progressive politicians who saw his policies and “anti-establishment” rhetoric to be enough to atone for his sins, and the white privilege Planter enjoyed, as he was consistently given second chances for his problematic past. Notably, this is a privilege African Americans and other people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ individuals are not afforded.
The rise of Donald Trump over the past decade has led to the rise of right-wing populism, which primarily entails a series of socially conservative, anti-globalization, and nativist worldviews combined with questionable promises of economic improvement. Trump’s ability to field this rhetoric has captured vulnerable Americans. Right-wing populists proclaim their “America first” tendencies, opposing the neoliberal policies of previous administrations.
Some conservative “populists” have tried to portray themselves as opposing some of America’s 21st-century interventions into other sovereign nations. A popular component of the platform of his two successful campaigns entailed denouncing the neoconservative interventions by the Bush administration in Afghanistan and Iraq, the interventionist adventures of the Obama administration, and the support for Ukraine by the Biden Administration. Trump proclaimed that if he was elected, he wouldn’t continue the military interventions from previous administrations, but instead be the “pro-peace” President.
However, as seen with many aspects of the Trump regime, that supposed “non-interventionism” promised to the American people is a lie. Under Trump, America’s unlawful interventions into Venezuela and Iran have occurred based on the same neoconservative lies the Bush administration gave 25 years ago to manufacture consent for America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Trump also continued his hostility and indifference towards Ukraine and its struggling defense against Russian aggression. Despite some hiccups, he supports maintaining unconditional aid for Israel in the midst of their genocide against Palestine.
Some supposedly on the left accept popular right-wing figures such as Greene and Tucker Carlson for opposing neoliberal policies and the genocide in Gaza and parading as anti-establishment voices. This speaks to the fundamental problem of “populists” across the spectrum as they unite with those who don’t share the same political vision, ultimately compromising their own ideological values in the process. For those on the left, this looks like abandoning values of social justice and defense of marginalized groups. An example of this is the Breaking Points podcast, in which left-leaning populist Krysten Ball aligned herself with known conservative populist Saagar Enjeti.
Some, like The Young Turks founder Cenk Uygur, have supported welcoming Carlson and Greene because of their criticisms of the Israeli government, but show hostility toward Ocasio-Cortez, who is suspicious of including far-right figures in the movement. Even people like Briahna Joy Gray, who served as National Press Secretary for Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, said there were some people on the left who were more likely to vote for Carlson than Ocasio-Cortez. Such sentiment rises from the belief that it would be a more fruitful approach to align with “dissatisfied” conservatives in opposition to “elite,” even ideologically progressive ones, because they believe it would be more productive in achieving their desired change in establishment.
A critical example of why alliances based solely on populism without ideology is a mistake lies in Carlson’s attitude toward Israel. His opposition to it spawns from reasons contrary to why the American left opposes the government in Israel or the country as it currently exists. For instance, DSA opposes the Israeli government for its acts of genocide and apartheid against the Palestinians, and a good number of members support a binational-state solution, in which those of all religious and ethnic backgrounds co-exist in a singular democratic state with equal rights. On the other hand, Tucker Carlson opposes Israel because he is an avowed anti-Semite who openly and regularly spreads anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, conflating anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism and in turn doing far more harm than good to the broader movement.
The solution to the political issues facing the United States is not going to be populism. It is as effective as the status quo liberalism and centrism have been for almost fifty years. Instead, a more principled and sustainable solution would be giving workers the means of production and establishing universal healthcare, education, food, and housing as fundamental and universal rights that are enjoyed by every American, regardless of social status, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, ability or disability, immigration status, or national origin. While populist energy and rhetoric matter for winning over voters, populism doesn’t reduce the need to replace the capitalist system with democratic socialism. Despite its mass appeal, populism fails to provide adequate solutions to the inequities of capitalism, while socialism corrects this. Only democratic socialism can achieve full equality and equity and would move America away from capitalism.
