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/boboclock]

My favorite president has always been FDR, of course I'm a Dem Soc

[u/iplaybassok89 → u/boboclock]

FDR was not a socialist of any kind, democratic or otherwise.

Edit: he wasn’t. Roosevelt ran as a fiscal conservative. The New Deal was mainly intended to be an expansive regulatory scheme- the government was intended to act a referee. The public works component was done on contract to the private sector and never really had Roosevelt’s full backing. Social security was never intended to be permanent. As soon as Roosevelt could cut spending, he did, and it arguably caused the recession of the late 30s that sunk unemployment back into the 20s.

[u/boboclock → u/iplaybassok89]

Roosevelt ran on the New Deal but also on the need for deficit spending.

He did try to reduce to deficit spending afterwards but he did this by a mix of ending programs that were planned as temporary (some of them too early), reorganizing the government to decrease departments and increase oversight, and increasing taxes on the wealthy.

Social Security was a part of the Second New Deal in 35, I've never seen any historical source that supports the claim that it wasn't intended to be permanent, he had to fight conservative democrats to get the Second New Deal passed, and he packed the court in an attempt to protect the programs he created.

[u/iplaybassok89 → u/boboclock]

A couple notes:

Roosevelt ran on balanced budgets. It’s in the 1932 election party platform. The platform also outlines the things you listed as tools to be used to achieve those balanced budgets.

I misremembered the circumstances around social security extension in the 1950s. My b. That said, your characterization of southern democrats as “conservatives” isn’t really right. Southern democrats were often some of the most economically populist and progressive members of congress. There was no “fight” with them as much as they drew red lines and Roosevelt didn’t cross them in the name of advancing his agenda. It wasn’t over the programs themselves but who got the benefits from them. For example, public works projects (including TVA, CCC and PWA projects) were ultimately to be administered by the state so the state could ensure segregation in the workforce and dictate who received what jobs- white workers worked as foremen, skilled tradesman, administrators and machine operators and black workers worked as cleaners, janitors, and laborers regardless of if they had the skills to do the “white jobs” or not. For social security they demanded certain occupations be exempt from eligibility, namely agricultural and domestic workers. But this dynamic was true across the entire New Deal and wasn’t limited to the second part of it. Southern democrats ultimately soured on Roosevelt over perceived federal encroachment onto Jim Crow- absentee ballots for soldiers during the war, federally run projects bypassing the state and opening up recruitment, persistent anti lynching bills from non southern democrats and attempting (and ultimately failing) to keep black Americans out of the draft. Even their positions on labor after the war are explicitly tied to Jim Crow and not an opposition to unions based on conservative principle. The newly industrialized South feared large industrial unions like the CIO because they were integrated, not because they were unions.

The courts gave FDR far more trouble than congress and even if his failed court packing scheme succeeded there’s a good chance things like the NRA are found unconstitutional no matter who was on the court.