A new CBS News poll landed Sunday with numbers that should alarm every American regardless of party: among Democrats, 58% view socialism positively while only 32% view capitalism positively. Flip it around: 50% of Democrats view capitalism negatively. And among Democrats with college degrees, the gap widens to 71% viewing socialism favorably. Tell me again how America’s institutes of ‘higher learning’ aren’t failing us.
Anyway, Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman saw those numbers and posted two words that summarize the entire Democratic Party crisis: “This is lunacy.” He added something equally important: “I’m a proud free market capitalist.”That sentence — four words from a sitting Democratic senator — is now apparently a radical act within his own party.
Fetterman has been attacking the DSA’s influence on Democrats for months — calling them communists, refusing to endorse El-Sayed, declaring he’ll never campaign against Republican colleague Dave McCormick, and regularly serving as the last reliable voice saying obvious things in a caucus that has collectively lost its mind.
The CBS poll numbers need to be understood in their full context. Gallup found 66% of Democrats view socialism favorably. One hundred and ninety-six of 212 House Democrats refused to sign a pledge stating “we are capitalists, not socialists.” The DSA’s co-chair went on Fox News and confirmed her organization wants to abolish the Senate, the Pentagon, prisons, and borders. She called it communism with her own words. And Fetterman said what every Democrat who isn’t actively suicidal should be saying: this is lunacy.
The economic reality that should accompany this political data is equally important. Every time the federal government has made a product or service “affordable” — healthcare, housing, education, food — prices have gone up. That’s not capitalism’s failure. That’s what happens when government intervention distorts price signals, removes market competition, and substitutes bureaucratic allocation for voluntary exchange. The American middle class was hollowed out not by too much free market but by too much managed economy — trade deals that prioritized cheap goods over American workers, monetary policy that inflated asset prices while crushing savers, and regulatory capture that protected incumbent industries from competition.
That’s the argument Republicans should be making. Not “capitalism good, socialism bad” as a slogan — but the specific, documented case that the economic problems fueling DSA recruitment were produced by the very government interventions socialists want more of.
Fetterman is right that 58% of Democrats viewing socialism positively is lunacy. He’s also the only Democrat saying so publicly and consistently.
His own party’s response to his repeated warnings has been consistent: ignore him, attack him, call him a traitor, and keep nominating DSA candidates in state after state. Fetterman keeps being right. His party keeps refusing to listen. In 80 days, voters get to decide whether that matters.
