Peter Schweizer: One Third of Democrats Now Call Themselves SocialistsSage San Martin 6 Aug 2026
Wild election results in Michigan have many Democratic Party establishment figures worrying about insurgent socialists taking over their party, with uber progressive Michigan Senate candidate Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed being the latest to score a win over an established Democratic candidate. But for author and investigative journalist Peter Schweizer, the real question is not whether the Democratic Socialists of America are “making inroads” in the party or not.
It is whether establishment Democrats can stop the socialists without joining them.
“We’ve seen socialists win this year in places like California and New York, but this is the first DSA victory in the Midwest,” says Schweizer on the latest episode of The Drill Down. Coming in a swing state in America’s heartland, “This is a massive sea change in where American politics is heading,”
El-Sayed’s key to victory was the “coalition strategy,” Schweizer adds. El-Sayed appealed to the deeply anti-Israel and pro-Hamas Muslim enclaves in Michigan’s cities, while also capturing the overwhelmingly white progressives in the state’s university towns of Ann Arbor and Lansing. He comes from the Muslim-majority city of Dearborn, which also sends Rep. Rashida Tlaib to Congress.
His campaign overcame the state’s Democratic establishment, including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and retiring Senate incumbent Gary Peters, who supported progressive Rep. Haley Stevens of Rochester Hills in the race. Stevens campaigned against her opponent’s “path of anger.”
El-Sayed denied to the Wall Street Journal that he is “technically or practically” a DSA member. However, democratic socialist lawmakers such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) campaigned aggressively for him even as establishment Democrats poured funds into his opponent’s coffers. That didn’t appear to work.
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https://www.breitbart.com/podcast/2026/08/06/peter-schweizer-one-third-of-democrats-now-call-themselves-socialists/
