Gavin Newsom has spent the past year touring red states, scolding Democrats for forgetting ordinary voters and carefully auditioning for the national role of Guy Who Can Explain California Without Mentioning the Rent. Then PBS asked him about the Democratic Socialists of America. Newsom’s answer was that Democrats are “pretty aligned” with many DSA ideas, including universal healthcare and action on climate change, and that he believes in a big tent. The Democratic Party has apparently solved its factional problem by declaring the tent expandable and hoping nobody asks what happens when the campers disagree about private property.
Fox News highlighted the comments Tuesday as evidence that democratic socialist ideas have moved into the Democratic mainstream. The Guardian has independently documented the DSA’s rapid growth, its influence in recent primaries and the awkward relationship progressive candidates now have with the label. The organization has more members, more elected allies and more power than it did a few years ago. Newsom’s position is that Democrats should not panic about that. On several policy goals, he says, the party and the socialists overlap. This is true in the same way a cat and a tiger are aligned on meat.
The distinction matters because Medicare for All, stronger labor rights and aggressive climate policy are not owned by the DSA. Democrats can support those ideas without joining a socialist organization, just as Republicans can support tariffs without enrolling in a 19th-century protectionist society. Newsom’s attempt to separate shared policy goals from organizational identity is reasonable. The comedy arrives when he simultaneously presents the overlap as proof that the DSA belongs comfortably in the tent. A big tent can contain arguments. It cannot make the arguments disappear by adding folding chairs.
That is especially true because Democrats are already arguing publicly about the DSA. National Review reported Wednesday on a group of House Democrats developing their own anti-socialist resolution after Republicans pushed a messaging vote condemning socialism. Those Democrats are not all conservatives in disguise. They are members of a party that understands Republicans are going to spend the fall trying to make every swing-district Democrat explain Zohran Mamdani, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the word collectivism before breakfast. Newsom would like everyone to relax. The candidates whose districts are decided by three percentage points may prefer a slightly smaller sleeping arrangement.
There is a substantive defense of Newsom’s view. Parties are coalitions, not book clubs. Republicans contain free traders and tariff enthusiasts, libertarians and nationalists, interventionists and isolationists. Democrats contain social democrats, centrists, democratic socialists and people who mainly want the group chat to stop using the word neoliberal. Governing requires accepting allies who do not share every principle. A party that expels everyone with a different theory of healthcare will eventually hold very disciplined meetings in a very small room.
But big-tent politics works only when the roof is supported by clear structural beams. What does the party actually stand for? Which ideas are negotiable? Which organizations are partners, critics or competitors? Newsom’s answer emphasizes shared goals while skating past real disputes over Israel, capitalism, policing, nationalization and party discipline. Those are not tiny disagreements about the catering. They are the disagreements that determine what happens once candidates leave the rally and start writing legislation.
The far left also benefits from the ambiguity. DSA-aligned candidates can argue that their policies are popular Democratic ideas when a socialist label becomes inconvenient, then argue that their victories prove socialism is ascending when the label becomes useful. The establishment performs the same trick in reverse, borrowing popular left policies while insisting voters should not read too much into the people who popularized them. Everyone enjoys ideological flexibility when it comes with turnout.
Newsom is particularly funny as the messenger because his current national project is built on blunt diagnosis. He told the Washington Examiner that Democrats stopped showing up in parts of the country and need to perform better. That is a useful critique. Performance also includes answering questions clearly enough that voters know which coalition they are buying. If Democrats are pretty aligned with the DSA on major policy goals, say where they are not aligned. If the differences matter, explain them. Otherwise the big tent starts to sound less like coalition-building and more like a lost-and-found bin for political labels.
Republicans will exaggerate this relentlessly. Jim Jordan will call people socialists who have never attended a DSA meeting. Campaign ads will turn municipal broadband into the seizure of the means of production. That is predictable and often silly. Democrats do not have to help by responding to every boundary question with a philosophical meditation on inclusion. Sometimes voters are asking whether a faction’s agenda would govern the party if it gained power. ‘We have a large tent’ is not a policy answer. It is a fire-code description.
Newsom may ultimately be right that Democrats can absorb the energy of the socialist left without becoming a socialist party. American parties have always swallowed movements, translated their demands and changed in the process. The unresolved question is how much translation occurs in each direction. If a presidential hopeful says the party is pretty aligned with democratic socialists on several defining issues, voters are entitled to ask which parts of the socialist project are outside the tent. A coalition becomes clearer when someone is willing to point to the door. The tent can be broad without pretending every pole points the same way.
If Democrats and the DSA are “pretty aligned” on major goals, which disagreements are important enough for voters to treat them as different political projects?
Sources
Fox News: Newsom admits democratic socialist ideas ‘mainstream’ in Democrat party: ‘Pretty aligned’The Guardian: Leftist insurgents are storming the midterms – just don’t call them all democratic socialists
National Review: House Democrats’ Budding Anti-DSA Caucus
