Michael Steele dismantles the GOP’s tired red scare as Americans recognize socialism for corporations and ruthless capitalism for workers, patients, renters and families.
Summary
Republicans have spent decades using “socialist” and “communist” as political slurs. That strategy is losing its force because millions of Americans now judge candidates by whether they will lower healthcare costs, expand housing, strengthen public education, protect workers, and confront concentrated wealth. The central political shift: material conditions increasingly overpower Cold War branding.
- A recent CNBC survey found the MAGA label more damaging than the democratic-socialist label: 57% said “MAGA” made them less likely to support a candidate, compared with 50% for “democratic socialist.”
- Michael Steele argued that Americans recognize the contradiction between condemning social programs for working people and approving subsidies, bailouts, and protections for powerful industries.
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Democratic socialists gain support when they campaign on healthcare, education, citizenship, housing, wages, and economic security rather than abstract ideological labels.
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Capitalism still receives higher overall approval than socialism, but Gallup found capitalism’s favorable rating fell to a record-low 54% in 2025, while socialism stood at 39%.
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Younger Americans increasingly reject capitalist identity: only 19% of adults ages 18 to 29 identified as capitalist in Harvard’s fall 2025 poll, down from 29% in 2020.
Republican red-baiting cannot erase the lived experience of unaffordable healthcare, housing insecurity, stagnant wages, and corporate domination. Americans increasingly care less about the label and more about who will materially improve their lives.
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Republican politicians keep reaching for one of the oldest weapons in the American political arsenal. They call Democrats socialists, communists, Marxists, and enemies of freedom. They expect those words to end the discussion before voters examine the policies.
That strategy no longer works as reliably as it once did.
A recent CNBC All-America Economic Survey illustrates the shift. Fifty-seven percent of registered voters said they would become less likely to support a candidate who identified as MAGA. Fifty percent said the same about a candidate identifying as a democratic socialist. The result does not prove that most Americans have embraced democratic socialism. It reveals something politically devastating for the right: the MAGA label now repels more voters than the socialist label Republicans have spent generations demonizing.
Michael Steele explained why during the television discussion. Americans understand that government already socializes risk and expense throughout the economy. Washington subsidizes agribusiness, rescues banks, protects pharmaceutical monopolies, underwrites fossil-fuel companies, and provides profitable government contracts to politically connected corporations. Yet politicians suddenly discover a reverence for “free markets” whenever working people demand healthcare, affordable education, childcare, housing, or retirement security.
That hypocrisy has become impossible to conceal.
Voters do not experience capitalism as an economics textbook. They experience it while delaying a medical procedure because of a deductible. They experience it when a landlord raises the rent faster than their wages. They experience it when a corporation reports record profits and then announces layoffs. They experience it when private equity extracts wealth from hospitals, nursing homes, housing, newspapers, and essential services.
Republicans can call universal healthcare socialism, but a person drowning in medical bills hears “healthcare.” They can call public investment socialism, but a parent struggling with childcare expenses hears “relief.” They can call affordable housing a government takeover, but a renter facing another increase hears “stability.”
The country has not suddenly adopted one unified socialist ideology. Gallup found that capitalism remained more popular nationally in 2025, with 54% viewing it positively compared with 39% for socialism. But capitalism’s rating fell from 60% in 2021 to the lowest level Gallup had recorded. The trend matters because support for an economic system weakens when that system repeatedly fails to produce security for ordinary people. The indoctrination that governed the American psyche that equated capitalism with democracy and freedom is broken. The truth that capitalism is but a facade on authoritarianism is breaking through.
The generational numbers reveal an even deeper warning. Harvard’s fall 2025 Youth Poll found that only 19% of Americans ages 18 to 29 identified as capitalists, down from 29% in 2020. Young people did not reach that conclusion because a politician handed them a pamphlet. They reached it after living through financial instability, crushing education costs, precarious employment, housing shortages, climate disruption, and a political system that often appears more responsive to donors than voters.
Democratic socialists have also converted discontent into electoral victories. Candidates associated with the movement have recently won primaries and local contests by emphasizing affordability, labor rights, public services, and opposition to corporate power. Their success has generated predictable resistance from both Republicans and establishment Democrats, but it demonstrates that voters will support unapologetically progressive candidates who connect policy to daily life.
Language still matters. “Democratic socialist” is not interchangeable with “communist,” and democratic socialism does not inherently require abolishing elections, personal freedom, independent businesses, or private property. Republicans intentionally collapse every form of collective action into authoritarian communism because an honest policy debate would expose the popularity of many progressive proposals.
The old fear campaign fails when people recognize that the economy already practices socialism for the wealthy and brutal market discipline for everyone else. The political question is no longer whether government will intervene. Government intervenes every day.
The question is whom that intervention will serve.
