How Much Support for Socialists Is Support for Socialism?

Writing in The Bulwark, publisher Sarah Longwell observes among her focus-group respondents a common explanation for Democratic voters' support for socialist candidates:

So, is Democratic socialism the new hotness? Should mainstream Democrats panic? I don’t think so. But mainstream Democrats do need to wake up to what their voters are demanding.

Here’s what I can tell you from my focus groups:

Democratic voters aren’t necessarily pining for a hard left turn on policy. Instead, they’re responding to candidates who have the backbone to take the fight to Donald Trump. Because Democratic voters are livid that halfway through his second term, their party seems to be low on energy and lower on ideas of how to oppose the president and the MAGA movement.

“We need the Democrats to figure out that they’re in a fight for democracy, and they need to fight,” said Bill, a Maryland Democrat. “We always go in with the kid gloves, but we are truly in a fight for democracy right now and the party needs to step up.”

“The Democratic party has played too nice for years,” said Jeronica, a Florida Democrat. “I have never been of the Michelle Obama mindset of, ‘When they go low, we go high.’ I am of the mindset, ’When they go low, we take it to hell.’ I think that is the only thing the Republican party is going to respond to at this point.”

See Sarah Longwell, The Real Reason the Democratic Socialists Are Surging ('More Democrats aren’t becoming socialists, they’re just really pissed'), The Bulwark, July 2, 2026.

Longwell's focus-group findings are consistent with this independent libertarian's observation of the longer trend of Democrats in Wisconsin. Beginning in 2011 with Scott Walker's union restrictions under Wisconsin's Act 10, and escalating with the Trump years, Wisconsin Democrats have become more supportive of assertive candidates in the face of union-busting, gerrymandering, and rightwing populism.

This has been true despite moments of hesitation. Two-term Gov. Tony Evers, notably, is a centrist Democrat who is a radical only in the eyes of Republican talking heads. The overall direction has nonetheless been toward a more assertive approach.

There's agreement on many issues among liberals, progressives, democratic socialists, and independent voters within the larger democratic, anti-Trump coalition. This includes agreement from those of us from libertarian or conservative backgrounds who are Never Trump. (Never, by the way, means never.)

There is, however, almost universal agreement among the voters in that coalition on the need for a bolder, more aggressive approach to Trump and the WISGOP.

There are today socialists in the Badger State, as there were once socialist mayors of Milwaukee. Socialist principles, however, are not a requirement for candidates in the broad anti-Trump coalition.

A plainspoken and unyielding opposition to right-wing populism, by contrast, most certainly has become a requirement for the support of that coalition's voters.