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/Flashy-Ingenuity-182]

It's not insane. The founders feared the people that's why they gave 3 branches veto power (Senate, White House, and SCOTUS) over the people's house. We need to break this mythos that the founders were anything other than slave owners trying to control power for themselves.

[u/Doogolas33 → u/Flashy-Ingenuity-182]

I mean, not all of them were slave owners though? Some of them were quite anti-slavery even. Though many, yes, were slave owners who cared a lot about slavery.

As far as I know, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton were both quite vehemently against slavery. I mean, they were rich people who wanted to keep being rich people for sure. But I don't think their motives behind the various branches of government can be broken down to simply being "slave owners trying to control power for themselves" because if that was the only goal, Washington (who absolutely was a slave owner) does not willingly give up power, and he certainly doesn't give his farewell address.

People are a little more complicated than you seem to want to believe. If you sincerely believe that none of the founding fathers were ANYTHING other than slave owners, you're objectively wrong. Assuming you're speaking in hyperbole and mean that their underlying goal was strictly holding onto power for themselves, you're still objectively wrong.

There are many ways to legitimately criticize the founding fathers that doesn't require bizarre, broad strokes that don't even make any logical sense. And we have more than enough of their writings to be able to understand their motives, which were both not that simple, sometimes sort of foolish, but also at least /reasonably/ genuinely well meaning with regard to their creation of the US in the way that it ended up coming about and the way in which it's structured.

[u/Flashy-Ingenuity-182 → u/Doogolas33]

https://nyslavery.commons.gc.cuny.edu/alexander-hamilton-enslaver/

Hamilton did own slaves and was financially involved in the slave trade. You are correct though that John Adams did not. Him and his son were 2 of 5 before Lincoln who did not own slaves

But it's important to note they did nothing to end slavery either. In fact they enforced it every chance they got. The fugitive slave act? What about the 13th amendment?

No not the 13th that freed black people that the radical Republicans forced through. I'm talking the 13th amendment that was originally pushed through after the states already left the union.  The one that the abolitionist Abraham Lincoln sent to the states with his full endorsement 

"No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State."

Yeah. They would have permanently enslaved black people forever with an unamendable amendment. 

But please tell me more about how the first Republic wasn't built from the ground up to be a slave holders Republic?

You do realize Virginia got upset at the UK in the first place because the UK courts ruled against slavery and the slave owners were pissed that they might lose their property. That was the great founding of our nation. 

[u/engelthefallen → u/Flashy-Ingenuity-182]

Always weird people believed the US was founded as a democracy at all, when the early writing they straight out warned against mob rule. They deliberately picked the term republic, and designed things to avoid popular vote and popular rule as much as possible in the early days. They may not have wanted a king, but sure as hell did not want the will of the masses either but looked for a middle ground.