Unless the Democrats break the cycle of extremism, theirs will be a Communist Party
Communists traditionally used to begin their addresses with “workers and peasants”, but Communism in America doesn’t have much rural appeal. 30% of city dwellers view Communism positively while only 14% of people in rural and 17% of people in suburban areas do. That’s why despite the flannel and gimme cap, Graham Platner is failing among non-college rural voters.
Dense, diverse urban environments with lots of students and young people are the most fertile ground for Communism, which helps explain recent DSA victories in New York City, but suggests that it will have limited headway outside a limited number of areas in the country.
Considering the radical foreign composition of the DSA’s push centering around foreign nationals like Zohran Mamdani, Dariazila Avila Chevalier, Melat Kiros and others, one might have expected Communism to be an immigrant problem, but Americans born to American parents are more susceptible to Communism (22%) compared to the children of immigrants (21%) and immigrants (17%) reflecting the reality that younger generations of Americans have no clue what Communism is while a number of immigrants came to America from countries that were ravaged by Communism. As the son of a refugee from Communism, I have insights into Communism that all too many younger Americans just don’t have as part of their history.
The bad news for the Democrats from these statistics is that Communism has become all too popular among the demographic groups that the party has come to depend on, leftists, younger voters, students, urbanites, black people and the overly educated.
The Democratic Party alienated much of its working class base, southern white people disappeared, so did rural voters in general, and non-college voters, leaving an electorate prone to leftist extremism and a party machinery that had lost the ability to push back against it.
It’s no coincidence that the rise of the ‘Berniecrats’ accompanied the ‘Obamaization’ of the party and the loss of the rural and the working class base. Every political cycle, Democrats have become more radicalized, more prone to extremist ideology, and Socialists, Marxists and even Communists are their next steps on the road from democracy to tyranny.
Unless the Democrats break the cycle of extremism, theirs will be a Communist Party.