The Democratic Socialists aren't communists

Not far from where I live, a very large billboard stands alongside one of the busiest interstate highways in the nation, in full view of many thousands of motorists every day. It reads: "Texans: Democrats Want COMMUNISM. Republicans Do Not."

This is disingenuously misleading. It echoes, in tone and content, an allegation gathering steam since a smattering of professed Democratic Socialists have achieved electoral success, particularly Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York City, and Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan Democratic candidate for the Senate.

This accusation — Communists! — is a standard component of President Donald Trump’s every speech, and other Republicans have taken it up, as well. More surprising is that several who are generally considered liberals — comedian Bill Maher and neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris, for example — have suggested that Democratic Socialism is merely a more palatable term for Communism. Just look at the Democratic Socialists of America website, they say.

But in the face of an A.I. scare, a climate-change scare, a nuclear-war scare and a rising-autocracy scare, a red scare should be the least of our worries.

I make no particular defense of the Democratic Socialists, and, frankly, they would help their cause considerably if they found a new name that didn’t include the term "Socialists."

But an examination of the DSA platform reveals an interesting mix of goals and priorities that range from the entirely reasonable to the poorly expressed, the naively ill-advised and unrealistically aspirational.

For example, the DSA advocates for "universal healthcare at no cost to individuals." This leans socialistic, but it’s a gross exaggeration to call it communistic. Much of the developed world already recognizes the value of better access to healthcare and has made provisions to provide it for its citizens. Why shouldn’t we?

The DSA wants free public education, pre-K through college. Paid family leave. Publicly owned energy and transit infrastructure. More publicly owned housing. A living minimum wage.

On the other hand, the DSA holds positions that are considerably more controversial, low-hanging fruit that Republicans are avid to devour:

The DSA imagines a post-capitalist society in which workers take power and wealth away from the top one percent. It wants to enlarge the House of Representatives, "Abolish the Electoral College" and "abolish the Senate." It wants to "Replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress."

A favorite target of Trump and the Republicans is the idea that the DSA wants to abolish all prisons and police forces. That’s dramatic, but it’s also a willful misreading of what the DSA site actually says.

The DSA wants to "Demilitarize police departments… and redirect funding to public services," with the goal of "abolishing the police and prison system which protects the rich and jails the poor."

Grammatically, that sentence would be clearer if the DSA replaced "which" with "that," but it’s a tendentious stretch to argue that Democratic Socialists imagine that any society can exist without enforceable laws and punishment for violators.

In short, the DSA represents a mix of the reasonable, the outlandish and, even, as some Republicans assert, the "crazy." Some of it even has a pinkish tinge of Communism.

But we do, indeed, have too much militarism in our police departments and too many people in prison. We do a poor job of taking care of citizens’ health. There are few more undemocratic elements in our government than the Electoral College and patently non-representative Senate.

Sometimes it takes radical voices with outlandish ideas to move the nation off dead center, even if much of the DSA platform is unrealistic.

If you’re considering a DSA candidate in November’s election, remember that everything the DSA proposes — even the pinkish parts — is legal, and the DSA advocates for accomplishing its goals only by legal means, even if "abolishing the Senate," for example, would require a constitutional amendment.

And remember that any Republican candidate in good graces with Trump has to accept the lie that the 2020 election was rigged and ignore the fact that Trump tried to overturn an election.

So, which candidate sounds more like a Communist to you?

John M. Crisp, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, lives in Texas and can be reached at jcrispcolumns@gmail.com.