Can We Agree: Democratic Socialism

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Welcome to The Smerconish Podcast for Independent Minds.

Michael Smerconish (0:49)

This is Can We Agree?, the program that asks whether two brilliant minds from opposite corners of an argument can find any common ground on questions that matter most to America. Today, a word Republicans have used against Democrats as a slur for 70 years, and which some Democrats now use about themselves.

Socialism. Here's the reality. A Democratic Socialist runs the largest city in America. Another beat the sitting chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, who rejects the label but runs on much of the program, won a Senate nomination in a state Donald Trump carried. In primaries, that's a trend. The Democratic Socialists of America, not a wing of the party, it's a separate organization. They pay dues. There's a platform, a convention. They run their own candidates, but on the Democratic line. A party inside a party. But asked what they want done, Democrats at large told the Financial Times, inflation, jobs, social security, fewer than one in five said, abolish ICE or cut aid to Israel. The label is running ahead of the agenda. So here's the question. Is this the Democrats Tea Party of movement that cost Republican Senate seats and then pave the way for Donald Trump? Or is it something this party cannot win without? Consider who likes this word, the young, and they'll be voting for the next 60 years. Tom Suozzi is a fourth term Democratic US representative for New York's third congressional district, serving since February of 2024 after previously holding the seat from 2017 to 2023 He's the former mayor of Glen Cove and Nassau County Executive. He's become the loudest voice in his party against its loudest movement. He's the author of a six-line pledge called The Promise to America.

Nina Turner is a Cleveland-born progressive Democrat, former Ohio state senator, and prominent national surrogate for Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020

She's best known as a forceful advocate for economic populism, Medicare for All, voting rights. She also served as president of Our Revolution, the political organization that grew out of Sanders' first presidential campaign. Democratic Socialism, the party's future, or its undoing. Let's see where they agree.

Let's start with that promise, that pledge that you offered. I'll put it up on the screen. This is the way the title caption appeared, The Promise to America. And if I go to the very first promise, it says this, We are for capitalism, not socialist. We are capitalist, not socialist. Nina, can you live with that? We are capitalist, not socialist?

Nina Turner (3:26)

Well, any economy that is going to serve the interests of the greatest majority of people has to be a mixed economy. So we have an experiment of capitalism, which we understand in 1929 failed us. Unfetter capitalism does fail.

And millions of people suffer because of the Great Depression, as we all know throughout history. And then on the other side of that, communism, what we know, the Soviet Union, that failed too. So I firmly believe that the best type of economy is a mixed economy, where the government is playing its role and then you have private industry playing its role. But what is important about the government's role, the government does for us collectively what we cannot do as individuals, and it also is a check and balance on capitalism running amok.

Michael Smerconish (4:13)

Can you live with the way she just articulated it?

Tom Suozzi (4:15)

I can agree with that 100%. We're done here. I think throughout America's history, we've had problems that things have not worked. The status quo is not working right now. There's too much concentration of wealth in America right now. And I think that your team has done a good job highlighting that.

I think that there are problems with the climate crisis in America and the world. I think there's a problem with immigrant injustice. I think there's a problem that health insurance is not accessible to too many people and it's too expensive. I agree with all the problems that have been identified. And whenever there have been problems in America's history, we fixed those problems. Theodore Roosevelt was a trust buster going after the monopolies in the early 1900s. As you just pointed out, after the Great Depression, FDR came around and did the New Deal and did Social Security, which people called socialism at the time. And then John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson came around and said, Let's fix the problems we have right now with health care and did Medicaid and Medicare. And there have been other problems that have been addressed in our nation's history. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama said, Not enough people are being included in our success. Let's bring more people along for the ride.