Democrats Have a Historic Opportunity to Rethink Capitalism
Foreign Policy · Antara Haldar ·
The model actually exists. Politics just needs to catch up.
The model actually exists. Politics just needs to catch up.
“The barbarians are inside the gate,” Republican U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson wrote on X in July in the wake of a slew of primary victories by progressive candidates. By splitting the Democratic Party and inviting the ire of Republicans, these insurgents became a defining force in the U.S. midterms, with candidates such as James Talarico and Annie Andrews winning unlikely Senate seats in Texas and South Carolina, and Peggy Flanagan and Manny Rutinel clinching victories in Minnesota and Colorado, respectively. The formal adoption of a resolution condemning socialism recently in the House of Representatives and U.S. President Donald Trump’s warnings about the “communist menace” as fundamentally un-American on the country’s 250th anniversary signal how seriously the challenge was taken this past summer, even as—amid an ongoing cost-of-living crisis and growing disillusionment with the economic system—the concept of democratic socialism has become more palatable to American voters.
The verdict at the polls this week is a referendum on not just a highly consequential political contest, but also a historic battle of ideas. Having breached the gates, can this new wave of progressives change the architecture of U.S. capitalism?
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