Julia Demaree Nikhinson, Associated Press Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive candidate in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Michigan, speaks with reporters at the Spirit of Detroit following the March of the Many, Aug. 2, 2026, in Detroit. Let’s face it — the Democratic Party is in the doldrums. Recent polls show that 53 percent of the American public view the party unfavorably, compared to just 38 percent who view it favorably.
That its leadership in Congress is old and most often uninspiring may explain why only 24 percent of the public approve of the way congressional Democrats are handling their job. And looking ahead to 2028, among people most likely to vote in the Democratic presidential primaries, there is a pronounced age split: Voters under 30 favor Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), whereas California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) leads among Democrats over 65.
Even President Trump’s declining popularity has not given Democrats a boost. Indeed, the only ray of hope for the party has come from the enthusiasm generated by people who call themselves democratic socialists — about one-third of those who identify themselves as Democrats.
That’s more bad news for the Democratic Party.
On July 30, the Washington Post released the results of a survey that found “less than half of all Americans” said they would be willing to support a democratic socialist for president. And although three-quarters of Democrats said they would be open to it, 54 percent of independents would “rule out a democratic socialist candidate.”
As Michael Greenberg noted in the New York Review of Books, “Moderate Democrats seem possessed by the fear that Americans will abandon them — not for their lassitude in the face of a far-right takeover of the country, but because they might be poisoned by the contagion of a handful of socialists who won Democratic primaries in New York in June.”
At a time when the future of democracy in this country hangs in the balance and rests on the success of the Democratic Party, ideological schism is a luxury it cannot afford.
Ideological schism in our political parties has been a feature of American politics for a very long time. For example, the so-called Whig Party, which had considerable success in the early 19th century, fell apart over the issue of slavery. Northern “Conscience Whigs” opposed slavery, while Southern “Cotton Whigs” defended it. The division led to the party’s collapse in 1855.
Later in the 19th century, the Democratic and Republican parties both faced deep internal conflict over whether to support the gold standard in the federal government’s monetary policies. Fast-forward to the early 1960s and the rise of Goldwater conservatism in the Republican Party. Led by Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.), that movement attacked Republican moderates whom they called “squishy” for being insufficiently conservative.
Moderates responded by attacking what one person called Goldwater’s “crazy‐quilt collection of absurd and dangerous positions” and his casual attitude toward the use of nuclear weapons. The party chose to go with ideological purity and nominated Goldwater for president in 1964. He lost in a landslide of historic proportions.
In 2009 and 2010, the Tea Party movement rocked the Republican Party. “The movement,” wrote political scientists Nella Van Dyke and David Meyer, “spurred the formation (or redefinition) of several national organizations and many more local groups, and emerged as a strong force within the Republican Party. Self-described Tea Party candidates won victories in the November 2010 elections.”
And then there is the MAGA-fication of the Republican Party and the ongoing purge of dissidents.
This history suggests that insurgents can sometimes take over political parties and bring them electoral success, but that at other times they bring only chaos and crisis.
The Washington Post poll results are a warning: If democratic socialists take over the Democratic Party, they will have to work hard to educate the electorate about what it means to be a democratic socialist — and to persuade voters that they will not bring the end of America’s capitalist economic system.
The paper suggests that “Americans have not reached consensus on what being a democratic socialist actually means.” The meaning ranges from typical concerns about economic equality and a desire for a universal health care system, to wealth redistribution and outright communism. “No more than 13 percent of the public coalesced around any singular view” of what democratic socialism is supposed to mean. Many agreed with the idea that “democratic socialism is similar to communism.”
That is why we can expect President Trump and his allies to ramp up their use of the word “communist” to describe those democratic socialists winning primaries, and by extension the entire Democratic Party.
Benjamin Wallace-Wells is right that at the present moment, “the defining problem” for the Democratic Party is “how to manage the movement … whose populist appeal and generational momentum it needs in this anti-institutional moment but whose principles it does not fully share.” The fate of the party and of democracy itself depends on how Democrats solve that problem.
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.
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