Democrats Have Gone Socialist

Dear all,

We welcome you to the Greater Caribbean Monitor (GCaM).

The midterms are rarely kind to the party in power. For Republicans, an incumbent president struggling through the consequences of the Iran war and a disruptive trade confrontation makes 2026 particularly difficult—even if much of the administration’s domestic agenda has delivered better results. Yet Republicans remain competitive. That makes November considerably more consequential than an ordinary referendum on the White House, because something is changing inside the Democratic Party.

Socialism has moved from the political fringes into Democratic primaries, congressional offices and now governments. Bernie Sanders normalized it. AOC turned it into a movement. Zohran Mamdani proved it could win executive power. Behind them, another generation is preparing to enter Congress, and Americans should take them seriously.

The United States is not merely another country choosing between alternative economic programs. Its commitment to private property, individual liberty, free enterprise, and constitutional government created the most prosperous society in human history and built the power upon which much of the free world still depends.

A socialist America would therefore not only transform America. It would transform the world. November matters because the ideological direction of the Democratic Party is increasingly becoming inseparable from the future direction of the country. We can and will say it without euphemisms: socialism needs to be kicked out of America.

In this issue, you will find:

• The Socialist Future of Democrats

• A New Cold War

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For years, Republicans have been accused of exaggerating the socialist threat inside the Democratic Party. In 2026, Democrats are increasingly making that argument difficult to sustain.

In perspective. The Democratic Party is not a socialist party. Most Democratic members of Congress are not socialists. But that may increasingly describe the Democratic Party of yesterday rather than the one being built for tomorrow. Over the last decade, a movement that began on the fringes of American politics has developed an increasingly effective pipeline from activism into Democratic primaries and, from there, into government.

• Bernie Sanders normalized democratic socialism, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez transformed it into a political brand for a younger generation.

• Zohran Mamdani later demonstrated that an unapologetic democratic socialist could capture America’s largest city. Now, the 2026 primaries suggest the phenomenon is reproducing itself.

• Political parties rarely transform because their leadership collectively changes its mind, but because when one generation replaces another.

How it happened. Sanders lost the Democratic presidential primary in 2016 and again in 2020. Judged exclusively by whether he became president, his revolution failed; judged by what happened afterward, the conclusion becomes considerably different. Before Sanders, openly describing oneself as a socialist remained politically toxic in most of America. Sanders turned democratic socialism into a national political identity, particularly among younger voters.

• AOC then demonstrated that this constituency could defeat Democratic incumbents, dominate social media and produce some of the country’s most recognizable politicians.

• Mamdani represents the next step. He did something Sanders and AOC never had: he acquired executive power. And personnel may reveal more than campaign rhetoric. On his first day as mayor, Mamdani appointed Cea Weaver to direct New York’s Office to Protect Tenants.

• Weaver is a DSA member and former NYC-DSA steering committee member who has called to “elect more communists” and advocated seizing private property. Mamdani nevertheless placed her in an office directly responsible for the relationship between tenants and property owners. That represents the movement progressing from winning elections to staffing governments.

Between the lines. DSA currently has two members of Congress: AOC and Rashida Tlaib. But Chris Rabb, Claire Valdez, Darializa Avila Chevalier, Melat Kiros and Donavan McKinney have now emerged from the 2026 socialist electoral ecosystem, several in heavily Democratic districts where winning the primary makes victory in November overwhelmingly likely. New York City DSA contested ten Democratic primaries this year and won nine, including both congressional races it targeted. Six of its eight candidates were first-time challengers to incumbents.

• While this remains a small minority of Democratic politicians, the trajectory is what matters.

• These aren’t isolated celebrities anymore. Sanders. AOC. Tlaib. Mamdani. Weaver. Rabb. Valdez. Avila Chevalier. Kiros. McKinney. Around them exists a larger progressive universe including politicians such as Ilhan Omar who are not DSA members but overlap with the movement on substantial portions of its agenda.

• Individually, they can be dismissed as exceptions. Collectively, they increasingly resemble a political generation.

Why it matters. Perhaps the most interesting victory, however, came from someone who explicitly says he isn’t a socialist, but seems to be. Abdul El-Sayed defeated establishment-backed Representative Haley Stevens for Michigan’s Democratic Senate nomination. Sanders and AOC campaigned for him. His platform includes Medicare for All, abolishing ICE and taxing billionaires. Yet El-Sayed describes himself as a progressive—and a capitalist. That distinction matters. It also makes his victory more interesting.

• Socialist movements don’t need every politician they influence to carry a membership card. Political success occurs when ideas migrate beyond the people originally advocating them.

• El-Sayed potentially represents the next stage: politics associated with the socialist left becoming viable among Democratic candidates who reject the socialist label altogether.

• And unlike most DSA victories, this happened in Michigan—a battleground state Donald Trump won twice.

Voices. Even pundits like Bill Maher have noticed the transformation. Maher is hardly a MAGA Republican. Yet this month he warned that the Democratic Party was being “colonized” by communists. His wording was deliberately provocative, but his qualification was important: most Democratic politicians don’t currently subscribe to those ideas. His concern is where the party is heading. Michael Knowles has reached essentially the same conclusion from the opposite end of American politics: the politicians who matter for understanding the Democratic Party’s future increasingly aren’t its aging establishment figures, but its younger ideological insurgents.

• There is an important distinction between “democratic” socialism and communism. AOC isn’t a communist simply because people call her one. Neither is Mamdani. El-Sayed explicitly rejects even the socialist label.

• But DSA isn’t a Republican nickname invented to attack Democrats. It is an actual socialist organization whose members proudly identify as socialists, endorse candidates, mobilize volunteers and increasingly win Democratic primaries.

• The argument, therefore, isn’t that Democrats secretly became communists overnight. It is that socialism has acquired an institutional foothold inside one of America’s two governing parties without an obvious contemporary equivalent on the American right.

The other side of the aisle. The Republican Party has undoubtedly transformed. Trump radically altered its positions on trade, immigration and foreign policy. But populism and nationalism are not synonyms for fascism. Whatever Democrats may call MAGA, there is no organized fascist equivalent of DSA openly winning Republican congressional primaries, constructing a bloc of legislators and supplying personnel to Republican governments.

• There is, however, an organized socialist movement doing precisely that through Democratic politics.

In conclusion. Sanders may ultimately prove more consequential than his two failed presidential campaigns suggested. He never entered the White House. Instead, he removed much of the stigma surrounding an ideology for a generation of Democratic voters. AOC made it fashionable. Mamdani proved it could hold executive power. Weaver demonstrates the ideological personnel that can enter government behind an electoral victory. The 2026 primary class demonstrates that the movement can reproduce itself. El-Sayed may represent the next stage: candidates who don’t need to call themselves socialists because ideas once associated with the socialist left have already migrated beyond it. The old Democratic establishment still controls much of the party. For now.

• But Schumer, Pelosi and their generation are leaving the stage, and Sanders’ political grandchildren are entering it. The question is no longer whether socialism can survive inside American politics. It clearly can.

• The question is whether the Democratic Party can continue absorbing socialists without eventually becoming their party.

Artificial intelligence is becoming another dividing line in the emerging geopolitical order. And, much like the original Cold War, Washington and Beijing are increasingly competing not merely to develop superior technology, but to organize the world around rival systems.

In perspective. The map shows two competing blocs. Washington’s Pax Silica brings together the United States, European Union, Japan, South Korea, India and other partners around access to semiconductors, critical minerals, computing infrastructure and the supply chains necessary to dominate AI. China’s World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO) offers an alternative. Its coalition stretches across Russia, Iran and Brazil, but also through significant portions of Africa, Southeast Asia and the developing world.

• The result resembles a technological Cold War—but one considerably messier than the twentieth-century version.

• The Soviet and American blocs were principally military and ideological. The emerging AI blocs are built around chips, minerals, data centers, energy and supply chains. Alignment is consequently less binary. A government can depend on American semiconductors, Chinese infrastructure and Gulf investment simultaneously.

• That explains the most important part of the map: the countries that remain outside either camp.

Between the lines. Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and Vietnam are identified as swing states, but each matters for a different reason. Mexico sits directly inside America’s industrial ecosystem while maintaining significant commercial relations with China. Canada is one of Washington’s closest traditional allies and possesses enormous mineral resources, yet current political tensions complicate automatic alignment. Türkiye has made strategic autonomy almost a defining principle of its foreign policy. Vietnam combines deep suspicion of Beijing with enormous economic exposure to China. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, possesses something both AI ecosystems desperately need: capital and energy.

• Winning these countries could therefore matter more than accumulating dozens of smaller formal partners.

• Kazakhstan illustrates the complexity particularly well. Wedged between Russia and China and possessing substantial mineral wealth, it is economically integrated with its neighbors while simultaneously cultivating relationships beyond them.

• The geography that makes Kazakhstan strategically valuable also makes choosing sides dangerous.

The Wild West. Latin America presents another revealing battlefield. Argentina, Chile, Panama, Costa Rica and El Salvador appear inside the American ecosystem, while Brazil, Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua fall within Beijing’s. Colombia, Peru and Mexico remain outside the two blocs. Unlike Europe, the Western Hemisphere has not automatically consolidated behind Washington.

• China’s ability to construct technological partnerships inside America’s traditional sphere of influence represents precisely the kind of strategic penetration Washington’s broader hemispheric policy is attempting to reverse.

Why it matters. The winner of the AI race will not necessarily be the country producing the smartest model. AI supremacy requires an entire physical architecture: rare-earth minerals, semiconductor fabrication, electricity, data centers, capital, engineering talent and secure trade routes. Neither superpower possesses all of those ingredients alone. That transforms AI from a technological competition into a geopolitical one.

• Washington needs allies controlling minerals and manufacturing. Beijing needs markets, financing partners and access to resources that American restrictions increasingly attempt to deny it. Middle powers understand this—and can exploit the competition.

• The map consequently shows something larger than two technology clubs. The first Cold War divided the world according to ideology and military power.

• The AI Cold War may divide it according to who controls the infrastructure upon which the twenty-first-century economy runs. And this time, many countries have every intention of playing both sides.