I certainly hope that Donna Brazile is right in her evaluation of the impact of prospective Democratic Socialist members of the Democratic caucus in the next Congress as she wrote in her op-ed in the Washington Post:
Contrary to ridiculous fearmongering by President Donald Trump, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) will not let democratic socialists turn America into a communist nation if he becomes speaker. And he won’t let them control the House, either.
Here are the DSA policies she points to in the op-ed:
The DSA has drawn outsize media attention because its platform is so extreme. It calls for “public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries,” defunding the Defense Department, “fully abolishing the police and prison system,” abolishing the Senate, “Housing For All,” “universal healthcare at no cost to individuals,” “a federal jobs guarantee” and “amnesty for all immigrants regardless of status,” among other demands. Trump and Republicans are trying to convince voters that most Democrats agree with these radical views. Democrats must show that they don’t. Jeffries has already said that he doesn’t support the DSA agenda.
and concludes:
Once serving in Congress, democratic socialists will realize that advocating for pie-in-the-sky proposals accomplishes nothing. They will instead need to work with their fellow Democrats to make less radical change.
I hope she’s right. I’m concerned that she may be surprised at how the party has changed since she was Chair of the Democratic National Committee. At least one of the measures she points to, “Medicare for All”, has the support of the majority of Democratic House members. Others of those measures or incremental steps in their direction may have more support than she recognizes.
As we have learned in recent years having a relatively small number of members does not mean that their proposals won’t hold an outsize influence on the caucus as a whole. The threat of primary challenges does wonders to focus the mind.
Primary voting is dominated by small true-believer minorities, and they choose radical left or right candidates of like mind. So, I think he threat of a takeover of the Democrat Party by Soxialist Democrats is real. After all, the McGovernite takeover, themselves socialists, did happen, and guys light Fulbright and Jackson disappeared from the Democrat Party.
The Democrats were on average to the right of the Republicans up to the 1960’s. The Republicans had nothing like the Southern Democrat segregationists at the time.