Here Come the Socialists

‘We’re all socialists now,” Washington Post columnist Robert J. Samuelson declared in the early summer of 2019. We weren’t, but Samuelson’s confusion was understandable. His misconception was common among his fellow Democrats.

The 2018 midterms were still an exhilaratingly fresh development, as was the rise of a new group of self-described socialists and socialism-adjacent figures — Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, part of the “Squad,” among them. The party’s influencers swiftly bought into the socialist hype, and the far left made the most of their sudden celebrity. With AOC taking the lead, progressives swung for the fences — arguing forcefully for a wholesale renovation of America’s civic and social compacts.