The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: The Ungrateful Urban Class Turning Into the New Democrat Socialist Party

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

The disease of Democrat Socialism is slowly spreading throughout three groups of people: urban consumers, immigrants, and DEI advocates.   Their symptoms and agenda include everything abnormal to traditional American policy: open borders, amnesty for illegal immigration, and the conflation of citizenship with mere residency.   Their methodology is to run in select blue cities in local elections, giving them a chance to out-fund and out-perform the Democrats. And if they do that well, socialism could spread throughout the entire Democrat Party.   Socialists can’t afford to create a third party, so they’re simply taking over another. 👉Pepperdine School of Public Policy -  visit https://go.pepperdine.edu/dailysignal to learn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Daily Signal podcast, where we provide intelligence for the intelligent. Now, without further ado, here's today's take. On July 16th, the Hawk lands on Netflix. From the mind of Will Ferrell. Oh, mama. I'm back. Come in love. Comes a new original series. Get ready. Get ready.

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Dad, I'm the Hawk now. We'll stand in his way. That's how it's done. The Hawk, only on Netflix, July 16th. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hansen for the Daily Signal. Who are these Democratic Socialists of America that are so frequently mentioned in the news? Are they traditional European socialist? Are they anarchist?

Are they communists? I think they don't mind if you label them any of them. those three rubrics. But let's go through a diagnosis, a methodology, therapy prognosis, as if we're doctors looking at a malady or a disease. So first of all, what are their symptoms? Well, their symptoms are they have an agenda that's way out of the norm. And what is that agenda? Well, one, they want open borders, amnesty for illegal immigration, and the conflation of citizenship and mere residency. They want vastly higher taxes, including on unrealized profits and net worth, which is new. They want much more entitlements.

They want a resurrection of DEI, and they believe in the Marxist binary that the country has no middle. It's basically 30 percent who are not white, who are oppressed. and they have legitimate claims for repertory treatment from the 70% who are oppressors-victimizers. They want the Green New Deal. They want it into fossil fuels. They want to have a socialist economy. They want to appropriate, in some cases, private property, utilities, airlines they've mentioned, private wealth. They have a foreign policy that would disconnect us. from probably Europe, unless Europe is completely communist or socialist, but they especially are

angry at Israel. They want no relationship whatsoever with Israel, and that is a thinly cloak symptom of a deep anti-Semitism that they share. They can't seem to erase their social media accounts quickly enough to disguise their past anti-Semitic remarks. They have an anti-white theme that you see. as well. So they want to align us what I would call nations from the former third world. That's their symptomology. And that tells us who these patients are. Who are they? Who makes up the Democratic Socialist of America? It's definitely three groups. Number one, it's they're urban people. They're all urban people, whether it's Denver or whether it's Houston or Austin or Knoxville or New York or L.A. or San Francisco or Boston.

They're urban creatures. Their consumers are not producers of things. They don't know where their water, their food, or their fuel comes from. And many of them, one third of their support, I would imagine, are upscale white elites who went to college. Most of them are degreed. About 60 or 70% of them are degreed.

But they're degreed in the social sciences for the most part. Psychology, sociology, community studies, public policy. And then they either have majors or minors as well in ethnic studies, peace studies, leisure studies, environmental studies. These are not marketable degrees. So they have large student debt. Their degrees show that they're not educated, they're not analytical, they're not empirical, and they're not applicable to the job market, and they live in very expensive urban environments.

And that means they cannot afford rent or to buy a home, much less. They can't get married. They can't have children, and they're angry that the world didn't appreciate their genius and didn't work out. There's a second group. These are immigrants first and second generation from what we used to call the former third world, from Africa, the Western Hemisphere, the Caribbean, Asia, etc. And they tend to come from failed states, mostly because, ironically, of communism or socialism. Places like Haiti, places like Somalia. places like the Middle East Palestine, places like Peru or Venezuela or Columbia or Mexico.

And they come up here. Originally, their parents came to get out of those systems, and that's the irony of it. They want to destroy the very system that they fled to and reenact the system that they left behind that made them so impoverished and unsafe. But they come up here, and they are told by the universities and the media and the popular culture, the United States was bad. It's got worse, and now it's terrible. And they feel that career-wise, culturally, it makes sense to join the left because they don't have a lot of money initially, and they're going to get a lot of entitlements,

and they're going to get a lot of probation and support from left-wing entitlement vested interest. There's a third group, and that's the DEI, These are people who identify that they're on the 30% of victimized, and they want more affirmative action, more repertory treatment. All of them, again, are urban. All of them are angry at the Democratic Party because they feel they lost power for the left. They lost power in the White House, the Congress, the Supreme Court, and they blame them for allowing Donald Trump to take power away from them.

Their methodology is not to run in purple or red states for the most part, and not to run, for the most part, statewide Senate races. They select blue cities and blue local elections, and they count on an off-year, 7 to 10 or 15% support of the total residents or registered voters. They feel they're better organized, they're better funded, and they're more coherent than traditional democracy. and they can win if the Democrats take them for granted and they have in these primaries. If they stay in their confines, in their neighborhoods that are, as I mentioned, they have these three constituencies. I don't think that James Tala Rico will win in Texas. I don't think Graham Platner, I'm speaking today on Tuesday. I don't think he will survive over the weekend. And I do not think Mr. El Saeed and Michigan can win.

So they haven't proven yet that they can win a statewide race, even in a purple state, much less a red state. Let me just finish by offering a prognosis. Traditionally, America had no stomach for communism, Marxism, statism. Eugene Debs, the Socialists of the 20s and 30s at the turn of the century, he lost five consecutive. races. The American Communist Party, American Socialist Party, were defunct. They believe they can reenact socialism-communism because immigration has now brought in 53 million people who were foreign-born, 16% of the population. And they say that with mail and voting, no voter ID, same-day

registration and voting, they can reach their constituencies, legal or illegal, perhaps. And then, especially they have confidence that 50 years of K through 12 in higher education has indoctrinated two or three generations more toward the socialist or communist point of view. So they think, well, in the past, our message never resonated, but we're different. The good news is, if they try a third party candidacy, it never works. Not Pat Buchanan on the right, Ross Perot on the right, not Ralph Nader on the left. None of these, Dennis Kucinich, none of that works. So there's no third party that they can have an event.

Anytime either party has nominated a presidential candidate or senators, take, for example, Barry Goldwater in 1964 or George McGovern in 1972, who were felt to be by the independent middle class voter on the extreme. They not only lost, they destroyed their party in the process. And that's good news. The bad news is if they're not exposed, that is, their agenda is not exposed, and people are not informed who funds them, and we don't understand how they operate, they could surprise us, and they're getting more momentum. They have the media and the popular culture on their side. And if you look at other contemporary leftist movements, they are much better organized and more coherent than the squad or the Congressional Black Caucus or Laraza Caucus.

any of those extreme groups. They know when to be violent and when not to be violent, much better than BLM or Antifa, and they're much more organized and serious than third-party candidates on the left like a Ralph Nader in the past. So the key is not to take them for granted, but also not to be unduly afraid of them. We still have no tradition of accepting socialists and communists, and I don't think that's changed no matter what their grand dreams that it has. The point is talk about it, expose who they are, talk about their agendas, talk about their radicalism, and then get out to vote and raise money against them and that will not be a serious or existential threat. Thank you very much, Victor Davis-Hanson for the Daily Signal.

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