The Socialist Wave Isn’t About Trump—It’s the Democrat Party’s Reality
Jarrett Stepman
• July 5, 2026
This year has seen socialists make their furthest inroads into “mainstream” American politics than any time since the early 20th century.
Even though this is clearly a phenomenon manifesting itself within the Democrat Party, more than a few media commentators have incorrectly attempted to tie this socialist red wave to President Donald Trump.
A recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal titled, “Trump Opened the Window for the DSA,” argued essentially that Trump is just so mean and awful, he’s caused so much derangement on the Left, that they decided to embrace communism to stop him.
“Both his genuine sins and his imagined ones handed the left permission to come unglued, pushing otherwise serious but mainstream left-leaning ideologues to adopt positions they would have laughed at a decade ago,” the authors argued. “The radical, dangerous and merely stupid are not only permissible but mandatory.”
Undergirding this argument is the absurd premise that to stop Democrats from becoming bloodthirsty communists we just have to be nicer to them—unlike that meanie Trump—and maybe give them what they want.
But this argument is bunk for several reasons, a significant one being the words of the insurgents who’ve been quite clear that their movement is only tangentially about the president.
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https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/07/05/socialist-wave-trump-democratic/