Last week, JD Vance, who famously sold his soul for Pez and the less valuable vice presidency, was asked, “How do you define socialism personally?” and his response was characteristically smug and dishonest.
“I think in reality what it actually means in the American context is you want to replace American workers with foreigners workers, and you want boys to play in girls' sports,” Vance said.
However, when liberal pundits and publications challenged Vance’s remarks, they weren’t entirely honest, either. They narrowly defined socialism in economic terms. Some folks online quoted John Lennon, who said in a 1980 Playboy interview, “I think people should get their false teeth and their health looked after, all the rest of it.” They neglected to include the rest of the quote: “But apart from that, I worked for money and I wanted to be rich. So what the hell — if that's a paradox, then I'm a socialist. But I am not anything. What I used to be is guilty about money. That's why I lost it, either by giving it away or by allowing myself to be screwed by so-called managers.” (Lennon’s net worth when he died was around $100 to $200 million.)
In fairness, when Republicans defend the MAGA movement strictly on economic terms — i.e. the classic tax breaks for rich people, liberals rightly point out that MAGA is much more than that, most of it bad. The Never Trump conservatives who voted for McCain and Romney didn’t reject MAGA because of its lousy right-wing economic principles.
Liberal defenders of socialism will primarily focus on health care, because that’s its most popular policy position. However, socialism as a political force in America encompasses far more than health care or even basic economy theory. So, obviously, Vance will define American socialism by what he considers its less popular policy positions on immigration and trans right (thus, his offensively framed “boys playing in girls’ sports”).
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Democratic Socialists of America Co-chair Megan Romer received bipartisan rebuke this summer when she obligingly expressed opinions in interviews that were, putting it charitably, well outside the political mainstream. Unlike Zohran Mamdani or Abdul El-Sayed, she didn’t stick to an affordability message. She told Fox News that she believed in “open borders,” defunding the Pentagon, and abolishing prisons. She told The New Yorker’s David Remnick that the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, was “largely inevitable” (violence is never “inevitable,” but always a choice) and said she would’ve attended a pro-Hamas rally in New York.
I’m not venturing down the rabbit hole to examine Romer’s positions in further detail, because I haven’t taken the necessary mind-altering potions. My larger point is that Romer and the DSA overall have indelibly linked socialism with a sweeping far-left ideology. The left will often argue that modern socialism is no different from FDR’s New Deal or LBJ’s Great Society, but both of those presidents believed in prisons, law enforcement, and, well, western civilization. President Roosevelt openly waged a war on crime starting in 1993. He didn’t give criminals a Great Depression-era hall pass. President Johnson signed the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) bill in 1968, which sent billions of federal dollars directly to state and local police forces and prisons.
Romer told Remnick that the safest communities are “not communities with cops on every corner. It’s communities that have good schools, good jobs, good park systems, good recreation for their teenagers, things like that. Those are the safe communities.” This remains a hard argument to make when you look closely at Democratic-run cities with high income tax rates, such as Seattle, and junkies are relieving themselves in the park where kids used to play. (Also, Cornell is a good school with good recreation for their teenage students, whose material needs are fully met, and I would not necessarily describe a Cornell fraternity house as a “safe community.”)
Socialism could use more Democrats like FDR and LBJ. Not surprisingly, many on the left will dismiss FDR as a racist and blame LBJ for mass incarceration. These debates are worth having, though, but it would mean that those who support socialist economic policies should feel free to disagree on other key issues.
Troy Jackson, the Democratic Senate nominee from Maine, once held socially conservative views on abortion, gun rights, and LGBTQ rights. He’s shifted left on all those issues, which he attributes to personal growth, but that’s also the best way to get elected as a Democrat in Maine. At least he didn’t go MAGA.
Center-left writers Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias have argued that Democrats could win elections in “red” states if they embraced conservative views on social issues — specifically trans rights, guns, and abortion — and more liberal views on economic policy. Klein suggested in 2025 that an anti-abortion Democrat would have a better chance of winning a Senate race in Kansas and Ohio. A year later, Klein was proven wrong: Democrat Adam Hamilton, senior pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, supports abortion rights and is leading in polls against Republican Roger Marshall. Democrat Sherrod Brown is making a comeback in Ohio and has not drastically modified his positions on social issues. Pro-choice Democrat Amy Acton is leading Vivek Ramaswamy in the Ohio gubernatorial polls, and all JD Vance can do is grossly suggest that she’s a drunk.
Republicans might’ve hoped to saddle mainstream Democrats with the views of DSA Democrats, but perhaps candidates like Adam Hamilton, Sherrod Brown, Amy Acton, and Josh Turek in Iowa benefit from the comparison. Sure, they’re what Fox News would’ve once called a “radical socialist” but they believe in prisons, immigration laws, and seasonal holidays.
During her failed Wisconsin gubernatorial campaign, DSA candidate Francesca Hong gained the most blowback for her anti-Thanksgiving position: “Cancel Thanksgiving,” she’d once posted on social media. “Should have done this in 1621.” Democratic nominee David Crowley later stated in an interview that he enjoyed Thanksgiving, as most normal people do. It’s convenient that Crowley could distinguish himself from Hong on a basic “pro-turkey” platform. There is probably room for a candidate who has socialist economic positions but supports Thanksgiving and Halloween (Hong wrote in 2019: “I don’t allow myself to work Halloween weekend or the day of. I would actually ask every single person in costume to leave.” That’s when she lost me.)
The left will often point out that voters overwhelmingly support certain socialist economic policies when polled individually. Perhaps then it’s beneficial not to anchor those positions with unrelated ones that are far less popular. Not every socialist has to embrace land acknowledgements or think that a white woman should lose her job because she wore cornrows in public. I do think there is a winning coalition for socialists who believe public spaces shouldn’t be open-air drug dens, criminals should be prosecuted, and popular holidays should be celebrated. Stranger things have happened.
Dems are saddled with everything that anyone identified as part of "the left" or as a socialist says and does. It doesn't matter whether they believe it or not, and that there is no evidence that they ever did. No matter wild or outside of the mainstream their ideas are, just one person who is labeled as part of "the left" or as a socialist, speaks for ALL Dems. They are not given the grace that repubs have - which is to speak for themselves, and given the opportunity to disavow controversial statements and actions from other cons.
Not really the point here I know, but I don't think that's a really fair characterization of Troy Jackson's political journey-he's Catholic and from the more socially conservative 2nd CD, and initially held social positions one might expect given that demographic. He first ran for office as a Republican in 2000, a logger focused on labor issues, then won his first race as an independent in 2002. In 2004 he became a Democrat, mostly because of the worker issues, and the more liberal social views followed. But it's really incorrect to say he changed his social views for electoral convenience-where he's from, being anti-abortion, pro-gun and an LGBTQ skeptic ARE the issues that get you elected, as Maine is not just one big blue blob. In fact, it's *very* red in some spots, including way up north from where both he and Susan Collins hail. So I would say his evolution to a more liberal social ideology is less cynical than presented here.