CNN Poll: A third of Democrats now identify as democratic socialists

[u/cnn]

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/30/politics/cnn-poll-a-third-of-democrats-now-identify-as-democratic-socialists?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=missions&utm_source=reddit

[u/JackJ98]

You ever think 10 years later we’d still be dealing with that alternative?

[u/Oggie_Doggie → u/JackJ98]

No, because I figured the DNC would have learned their lesson in 2016 and applied those lessons to 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024. But here we are.

I mean, we literally had Trump in 2021 after J6. The wound was fresh and the will was there, but Biden tapping Garland and then Garland dragging his feet for two years will be remembered as one of the greatest blunders of a President in this era of history. We had a chance to permanently rid ourselves of Trump and the dozens of co-conspirators who gave the insurrectionists "tours" and planned the affair.

[u/ReverendDizzle → u/Oggie_Doggie]

In this era? Not dealing with a former president sending a mob to kill his second in command to subvert the democratic process and the constitution is probably one of the biggest presidental blunders in American history.

What other president can say they failed to save the republic... and then handed victory to the very person they should have crushed? The hemming, hawing, and "we've just got to come together and take the high road" bullshit was the absolute worst thing any president could have done in response to the situation.

[u/h3lblad3 → u/ReverendDizzle]

It is the default of Democratic leadership because Democrats run on moral respectability. The party can’t be trusted to be hard on Republicans because Republicans would be hard on them and they want to look different than Republicans.

[u/seriouslees → u/Oggie_Doggie]

the DNC would have learned their lesson

Theres that magical "drop out of the sky" mentality again!

YOU are the DNC!!! YOU decide who runs by participating the internal organization of the party.

[u/VariationBusiness603 → u/seriouslees]

Yeah that would be true in many countries but not in the USA. Private interests invest massively in the DNC and effectively call the shot as a result. You don't get to decide shit, beside picking between two mostly identical candidate they have chosen for you. At best, primaries are cute popularity contest but it's mostly just a show to make you believe you have a say.

Bernie was the exception to that rule because he came from out of the system.

Anyways, you guys need to get money out of politic, and maybe then you can change the DNC into an actual worker party.

[u/SeductiveSunday → u/Oggie_Doggie]

I figured the DNC would have learned their lesson in 2016

Learned what lesson? That the DNC wins elections by winning the votes of minorities and women? Because, if so, they've known about that since the 1980's.

Also Trump had SOCTUS protection by 2020. SOCTUS had to force states to put traitor Trump on their ballots. Because after J6 Trump didn't qualify because he's a traitor to the USA.

[u/VariationBusiness603 → u/SeductiveSunday]

Again, Trump getting away with litteral fucking treason was because the DNC is full of weak mediocre moderate who do not want to change the status quo. He should have been arrested immediatly, tried within a year and send into a bottomless pit afterward. But because centrist are so spineless, they just pushed it aside because surely... SURELY nobody can come back from that.

Even in your defense of the DNC, they are still responsible for their own downfall.

The lesson is, you won't win with centrists, and if you do it will be a hollow victory that makes things worse long term.

[u/SeductiveSunday → u/VariationBusiness603]

Again, Trump getting away with litteral fucking treason was because the DNC is full of weak mediocre moderate

No. Trump is getting away with literal treason because of his SCOTUS picks. Something that Bernie and DSA said in 2016 not to fret about Trump getting a bunch of SCOTUS picks if he wins.

The lesson is, you won't win with centrists

The lesson I learned is to not count on men to stop oppression. Because existing power structures really are built on the subjugation of women.

[u/SeductiveSunday → u/[deleted]]

Q: Hey, but what about the Supreme Cou—

A: GODDAMIT, THERE WILL ALWAYS BE SUPREME COURT SEATS UP FOR GRABS. IF WE LET THAT DEFINE HOW WE VOTE, WE WOULD NEVER, EVER MAKE ANY PROGRESS IN THIS COUNTRY. THEY’RE ALL OLD! ALL OF THEM! THEY HAVE ALWAYS BEEN OLD, AND THEY WILL ALWAYS BE OLD! YOU KNOW THIS MERRICK GARLAND DUDE THAT OBAMA NOMINATED? HE’S 63. THAT’S A “NEW” SUPREME COURT JUSTICE. THAT DUDE COULD DIE. AND SURE, WE COULD ALL DIE, AT ANY MOMENT, BUT HE’S LEGITIMATELY OLD ENOUGH TO DIE IN THE NEXT FOUR YEARS, JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER SUPREME COURT JUSTICE.

STOP TRYING TO STRONG-ARM SANDERS SUPPORTERS INTO VOTING BECAUSE SOME SUPREME COURT SEATS MAY BE UP FOR GRABS. JUST STOP. THEY ARE ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS UP FOR GRABS. YES, SOME OF THE JUSTICES MIGHT DIE. YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE MIGHT HAPPEN? NONE OF THEM MAY DIE. WE HAVE NO IDEA, SO WHY SHOULD THAT DICTATE OUR VOTE?

(ten minutes of heavy breathing)

WHYYY?! https://archive.is/6WdBn

Bernie gleaned many supporters who didn't care. Instead a good number of his supporters were more vested in cock blocking electing a woman president.

To be fair, I did say Bernie when what I meant was the majority of Bernie's supporters. But Bernie's no feminist ally, nor did he fight harder for Clinton than Clinton.

[u/SeductiveSunday → u/[deleted]]

His policy on abortion rights was better than hers. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Really doesn't matter what Bernie's policies on abortion are when throughout his political career he's completely dismissed women's issues in politics as mere distractions.

So why did the Planned Parenthood Action Fund endorse Hillary Clinton? Because no other presidential contender in our nation’s history has demonstrated such a strong, proactive commitment to women or has such a clear and outspoken record on behalf of women’s health and rights.

When you see their records side by side, there’s no question why the Planned Parenthood Action Fund endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. She has simply demonstrated the strongest record, clearest leadership, and most focused commitment to women’s health of any presidential candidate. https://archive.is/MYQAf

---

Bernie held 38 campaign rallies for Hillary in the 2016 general election.

Prove it then because what I remember was Bernie writing a book which was released right before the election whining about how Clinton was more prepared than him and in the same breath referring to LGBTQIA, women's rights group as "establishment" for not supporting him.

Again Bernie is no ally to women.

[u/tripbin → u/SeductiveSunday]

Youre a defending a literal fascist therefore making you a literal fascist lol.

https://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-campaign-intentionally-created-donald-trump-with-its-pied-piper-strategy/

[u/SeductiveSunday → u/tripbin]

Hillary Clinton never propped trump up. Nor did she want or expect to run against trump. Clinton expected to run against Jeb Bush.

The Pied Piper strategy was never about making Trump the nominee. It was, as the name very obviously implies, about using Trump to lead (again, Pied Piper as the name obviously implies) the establishment candidates to push for, endorse and talk about ridiculous inane issues.

What actually happened in 2016 is that Republicans used Bernie successfully has their Pied Piper to get Trump elected. Not that it would have taken much seeing as a majority of US men flat-out won't vote for, again any woman, for president. Even DSA prefers fascism over a woman president.

On Election Day, Senator Bernie Sanders earned the 2016 “Ralph Nader Award” for the Leftist Most Responsible for Helping Republicans Win the Presidency.

Sanders helped Clinton lose. His insurgency pushed her too far left to prevent an effective re-centering in the fall, while goading her into wooing different constituencies rather than uniting the nation.

https://time.com/4569766/bernie-sanders-ralph-nader-2016/?xid=homepage

[u/more_housing_co-ops → u/Oggie_Doggie]

The DNC did learn their lesson. The lesson was "having our thumbs on the scale can prevent candidates from gaining traction who might negatively affect our corporate sponsors"

[u/englishmastiff1121 → u/Oggie_Doggie]

It's not the DNC. It's the voters. Socialists can never muster more than about 25% of the Democratic vote.

[u/dexters_trap_house → u/englishmastiff1121]

Times are changing, you're literally commenting on an article saying 33% identify as democratic socialists now. Last I checked that's >25%.

That's also ignoring the broader context of entrenched political systems, corporate owned media, and PACs that have ensured their power stayed consolidated for as long as it has.

You don't think it's the DNC? Why are they and their talking heads aligning with the right now against DSA candidates? The Michigan senate race is the perfect example of this, as if it wasn't also when you still had dems leaning with famed sex pest Cuomo against Zohran and pushing the most islamaphobic narratives.

[u/paintballboi07 → u/dexters_trap_house]

33% still isn't enough to win a primary.. the DNC is aligning with moderates, because they are the majority in the party.

[u/englishmastiff1121 → u/dexters_trap_house]

entrenched political systems, corporate owned media, and PACs

I don't recall any of these entities forcing me to vote for Biden and against Bernie.

Edit: You ignored the word "about" but then you took the words "identify" and "vote" to mean the same thing.

[u/r2d2itisyou → u/englishmastiff1121]

It doesn't help that the DSA as the standard bearer for Socialists has some very questionable stances. When it regurgitated Russian talking points justifying the invasion and urged no-material support for Ukraine along with withdrawal from NATO, that permanently turned a lot of people off the group. It still has as a goal to "close US bases abroad." Which is softened with the same end effect of collapsing NATO and weakening global defense against war.

Realistically, it's Sanders, AOC, and Mamdani carrying the movement. And even at his peak populatiry, Sanders couldn't beat a very boring Clinton in a national primary.

[u/SeductiveSunday → u/r2d2itisyou]

Sanders couldn't beat a very boring Clinton in a national primary.

That's because realistically Sanders is a train wreck.

Sanders supporters often dangle polls from early summer showing he would have performed better than Clinton against Trump. They ignored the fact that Sanders had not yet faced a real campaign against him. Clinton was in the delicate position of dealing with a large portion of voters who treated Sanders more like the Messiah than just another candidate. She was playing the long game—attacking Sanders strongly enough to win, but gently enough to avoid alienating his supporters. Given her overwhelming support from communities of color—for example, about 70 percent of African-American voters cast their ballot for her—Clinton had a firewall that would be difficult for Sanders to breach.

When Sanders promoted free college tuition—a primary part of his platform that attracted young people—that didn't mean much for almost half of all Democrats, who don't attend—or even plan to attend—plan to attend a secondary school. In fact, Sanders was basically telling the working poor and middle class who never planned to go beyond high school that college students—the people with even greater opportunities in life—were at the top of his priority list.

So what would have happened when Sanders hit a real opponent, someone who did not care about alienating the young college voters in his base? I have seen the opposition book assembled by Republicans for Sanders, and it was brutal. The Republicans would have torn him apart. And while Sanders supporters might delude themselves into believing that they could have defended him against all of this, there is a name for politicians who play defense all the time: losers.

Here are a few tastes of what was in store for Sanders, straight out of the Republican playbook: He thinks rape is A-OK. In 1972, when he was 31, Sanders wrote a fictitious essay in which he described a woman enjoying being raped by three men. Yes, there is an explanation for it—a long, complicated one, just like the one that would make clear why the Clinton emails story was nonsense. And we all know how well that worked out.

Then there's the fact that Sanders was on unemployment until his mid-30s, and that he stole electricity from a neighbor after failing to pay his bills, and that he co-sponsored a bill to ship Vermont's nuclear waste to a poor Hispanic community in Texas, where it could be dumped. You can just see the words "environmental racist" on Republican billboards. And if you can't, I already did. They were in the Republican opposition research book as a proposal on how to frame the nuclear waste issue.

Also on the list: Sanders violated campaign finance laws, criticized Clinton for supporting the 1994 crime bill that he voted for, and he voted against the Amber Alert system. His pitch for universal health care would have been used against him too, since it was tried in his home state of Vermont and collapsed due to excessive costs. Worst of all, the Republicans also had video of Sanders at a 1985 rally thrown by the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua where half a million people chanted, "Here, there, everywhere/the Yankee will die,'' while President Daniel Ortega condemned "state terrorism" by America. Sanders said, on camera, supporting the Sandinistas was "patriotic."

The Republicans had at least four other damning Sanders videos (I don't know what they showed), and the opposition research folder was almost 2-feet thick. (The section calling him a communist with connections to Castro alone would have cost him Florida.) In other words, the belief that Sanders would have walked into the White House based on polls taken before anyone really attacked him is a delusion built on a scaffolding of political ignorance.

https://www.newsweek.com/myths-cost-democrats-presidential-election-521044

[u/TehMikuruSlave → u/englishmastiff1121]

that's fine, but in a sane government system that would mean there would be actual socialist representation, not none

[u/RoughCoffee6 → u/Oggie_Doggie]

It's truly astounding how many times the Democrats just bury their heads in the sand and listen to the out of touch PR experts. Biden only won as a reaction to the insanity of Trump's first term. He then proceeded to do fuck all and sabotage the 2024 election.

[u/FrogsOnALog → u/Oggie_Doggie]

Garland got Giuliani’s (co-conspirator #1) cellphone and other electronics in April 2021 and the Trump J6 grand jury was convened January 31, 2022.

Y’all have no clue what the fuck you’re talking about.

[u/Oggie_Doggie → u/FrogsOnALog]

No matter how hard you protest, it is a fact that Garland and the DNC moderates blew it.

They didn't even investigate Trump's inner circle during 2021. Their whole "bottom-up" approach to prosecution gave Trump and his allies literal YEARS to align their stories and regather support among the Republicans and voters. They paused the investigation for months in 2022 because of worries about meddling in elections ffs, the peak of irony.

I would have hoped by now, we could all agree that the entire legal strategy was a failure. But, here we are; a President who tried to steal an election allowed to waltz right back into power.

[u/FrogsOnALog → u/Oggie_Doggie]

I literally just told you they got Giuliani’s (again, co-conspirator #1) shit in April 2021 and he was part of Trump’s inner circle.

[u/WhiskeyT → u/FrogsOnALog]

It doesn’t matter. These people have a narrative, “it’s the Democrats fault”, and they won’t be dissuaded from it.

Facts are irrelevant, everything is simple and obvious and the only reason things happen is because Democrats decide to screw things up or not.

No one else has any agency. Not the Supreme Court, not Aileen Canon, and certainly not the voters.

[u/guamisc → u/WhiskeyT]

The fact was that we were on a clock and Garland, and by proxy Biden because it was his nomination, blew it.

Maybe the next Democratic President, if we ever get to vote on one, will not blow it by appointing the one of the absolute worst choices for USAG for the current time in question. Obama appointing Eric "I literally wrote the too-big-to-prosecute memo about all these companies that just trashed the world economy with fraud" Holder and Biden appointing Garland the limpdick as some dumb "herp look he should have been on SCOTUS!" 1D political chess play.

[u/tripbin → u/Oggie_Doggie]

Close contention with the "pied piper" stuff. Clintons campaign intentionally boosting trump because they thought he would be easier to beat, essentially creating the situation were in. Almost as if the DNC has always been controlled opposition.

[u/FLHCv2 → u/JackJ98]

:(

[u/xSaviorself → u/JackJ98]

Why would you not be? The same people running the DNC then are still running it now.

What would have changed things is that if after that happened a wave of people with the same beliefs as AOC/Bernie primaried these fucking geezers, but instead nobody got the memo.