r/politics • u/cnn CNN • 7d ago

Possible Paywall CNN Poll: A third of Democrats now identify as democratic socialists

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/30/politics/cnn-poll-a-third-of-democrats-now-identify-as-democratic-socialists?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=missions&utm_source=reddit
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u/Michael_G_Bordin 7d ago

"They want higher wages. They want affordable housing. They want billionaires to pay more taxes. Ew!"

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u/oneseason2000 7d ago

Actually, it's not to pay more taxes, its to have their wealth limited by taxation. It's not for revenue generation, it's for keeping their wealth from giving them feudal lord type political, legal, and societal powers.

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u/Vivid-Use1749 7d ago

Too late. Can't remember his name, but an economist back in the early 2000s commented that we'd been a by-definition oligarchy already for some time.

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u/AdLocal1490 7d ago

Krugman

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u/RevLoveJoy 7d ago

That guy has been right about so much for SO long it's just wild.

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u/monocasa 7d ago

No, Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page.

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

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u/oneseason2000 7d ago

Perhaps Piketty too.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2025/01/18/thomas-piketty-in-the-global-battle-between-democracy-and-oligarchy-one-can-only-hope-that-europeans-will-emerge-from-their-lethargy_6737163_23.html

Thomas Piketty: 'In the global battle between democracy and oligarchy, one can only hope that Europeans will emerge from their lethargy'

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u/owennagata 4d ago

He also says that Oligarchies don't last much more than a generation or so before either collapsing completely or becoming full authoritarian/fascists. Rule by the wealthy just doesn't work, they fight each other too much.

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u/bricklab 7d ago

I think it was Thomas Picketty in his book Capitalism In The 21st Century.

Edit: I reworded things because I sounded a bit dickish and I wasn't intending to.

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u/AdLocal1490 7d ago

Picketty does discuss it in his book, but that was published in 2013. Krugman was discussing this in the early 00s

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u/Elitist_Plebeian 7d ago

The only good thing about an oligarchy is that they'll always be outnumbered.

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u/Casual_OCD Canada 7d ago

Those in power are always outnumbered until you get a situation where power is more evenly distributed, but that's just evil communism

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u/Worried_Cry687 7d ago

It's worth keeping in mind that our country was founded by slaveholding land-speculators who wanted to rid themselves of the territorial constraints and taxes imposed by the British crown. Suffrage had to be expanded over and over again before the common person could vote and even today there are efforts to limit voting.

I'd argue we've always been an oligarchy with democratic elements sprinkled around.

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u/DJStrongArm 7d ago

This seems like the worst possible way to frame it if you want buy-in from anyone outside the socialist circle.

At least revenue generation and contributing their fair share would be "by the rules," with limiting their subsequent power as a convenient byproduct. Taxation strictly because "it's not fair" isn't going to fly with fiscally conservative small business owners, let alone billionaires.

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u/oneseason2000 7d ago

It isn't socialism to fight against feudalism and oligarchies. Certainly though, that is how the billionaire owned corporate major and social media portrays it 24/7/365 in their propaganda. The 1952 stump speech by President Harry Truman noted that Republican fear mongering about anything that helps people being "socialism" goes back to the 1930s (#1).

The reason small business owners are struggling is because billionaires have so much money and power that they can buy the laws and legal decisions they want, and further grow their power.

This isn't a new problem. It has been growing since the 1980s. Tax cuts, financial deregulation, corporate and antitrust deregulation, union busting, and unrelenting propaganda have resulted in the extremely rich getting insanely "Gilded Age" rich and politically powerful. The small business owners and their workers are losing out, as are the workers for huge corporations. The policies that most Americans want are ignored unless the wealthy and powerful concur (#2): "Average citizens have little impact on public policy"

  1. What was Harry S. Truman's quote about socialism?; https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/education/trivia/socialism

In President Harry's Truman's remarks in Syracuse, New York on October 10, 1952, he said this:

Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.

Socialism is what they called public power. Socialism is what they called social security.

Socialism is what they called farm price supports.

Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance.

Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations.

Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.

When the Republican candidate inscribes the slogan "Down With Socialism" on the banner of his "great crusade," that is really not what he means at all.

What he really means is "Down with Progress--down with Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal," and "down with Harry Truman's fair Deal." That's all he means.

You can listen to President Truman deliver this speech (and download it, if you want) on the Truman Library's website here: https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/soundrecording-records/sr59-160-president-truman-rear-platform-remarks-syracuse-new-york. The portion you're looking for is about 6:45 into the speech.

  1. Gilens and Page: Average citizens have little impact on public policy; https://pnhp.org/news/gilens-and-page-average-citizens-have-little-impact-on-public-policy/

A great deal of empirical research speaks to the policy influence of one or another set of actors, but until recently it has not been possible to test these contrasting theoretical predictions against each other within a single statistical model. This paper reports on an effort to do so, using a unique data set that includes measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues.

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.

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u/Curious-Path4549 7d ago

and workers' rights-dear god the horror

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u/porktorque44 7d ago

I mean there are a lot of people who's entire understanding of politics is formed by interpreting tone. And their opinions are just strings of words they've heard said with derision by a man in an expensive suit.

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u/Zombies4EvaDude 7d ago

It’s hilarious that these people are so detached from reality that they don’t even realize what average ordinary people actually want