Conflicts between the self-proclaimed socialist and centrist wings of the Democratic Party are becoming sharper, as both digest the defeat their party suffered in the 2024 election, especially their loss of support among working people.
Each seeks to adjust as they respond to the opening months of the Donald Trump presidency and aims to exert greater control over the party’s direction.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez embarked on a “Fighting Oligarchy” tour March 20, beginning in Las Vegas. Their hope is to draw a substantial layer of disaffected workers, along with the frustrated middle-class left and liberal forces, back into the capitalist party. Days earlier, Sanders told the New York Times that the tour’s purpose was to encourage people “to get engaged in the political process and run as independents outside of the Democratic Party.”
The party is “run by consultants who are way out of touch with reality,” he told Fox News March 18, and have “virtually no grassroots support.”
But Sanders’ and Ocasio-Cortez’s appeal for “independent” candidates has nothing to do with a break from the capitalist two-party system. They hope to reverse workers’ growing disgust with both parties and attract them back to the Democrats. They have no intention of carrying out a split. “So, what we are trying to do is, in one way or another, maybe create a party within the party,” Sanders told Fox News.
Ocasio-Cortez was more explicit, telling the crowd in Las Vegas, “We need a Democratic Party that fights harder for us.”
The socialist Sanders caucuses with the Democrats and for decades has been integrated into its role in the capitalist government. He chaired the Senate Budget Committee for the Democrats during the first two years of the Joseph Biden administration, when prices for basic necessities soared.
He and others of his ilk, like Ocasio-Cortez, refuse to speak in class terms. He blames Trump and a new “oligarchy” for workers’ problems, not the dog-eat-dog workings of the capitalist system. Nothing can qualitatively change for working people as long as the capitalist families rule.
What’s needed, Sanders says, is to get more “independent” Democrats like him into office. Like all Democrats and Republicans, he sees the working class as the object of government policy, not a force capable of breaking with capitalist politics and fighting in our own class interests. He presents a course to preserve the state and power of the U.S. imperialist rulers.
After their embarrassing loss in 2024, some more mainstream Democrats now say they have to work with the new Trump administration until it reveals its real face. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer voted for a Republican-sponsored funding bill to prevent a new government shutdown.
Ocasio-Cortez attacked him, calling it “a tremendous mistake.”
Carville: Democrats must get out of the way
Longtime Democratic strategist James Carville is one of those who shares Schumer’s approach. The party should “play possum. Just let it go. Don’t get in the way,” he told MSNBC Feb. 17, “until it’s time to not be nice. And that time is coming.”
Centrist Democrats, organized by the Third Way, met in February to chart their plan for the party’s comeback. They too aim at winning back working-class support, saying the party today is too closely tied to “academia, media, government bureaucracy.” Their plan is to lower the influence of its left wing, and “move away from identity politics,” which defines everyone by their race, skin color or “gender-choice.”
While Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez kick out against “billionaires,” and “oligarchs,” the Third Way says the party must stop “demonizing wealth and corporations.” It can present itself as being “pro-capitalism in a smart way.”
Reflecting how they see workers, their plan tells the party that to “reconnect” with the working class, it must “Embrace Moderation, Individualism and Masculinity.”
Sanders gave the New York Times an example of the kind of “independent” government he liked. “My hope is the Democrats can regain the kind of worldview that they had in the ’30s and ’40s under Roosevelt and Truman,” he said.
Franklin Roosevelt led the U.S. into the second imperialist world war, looking to crush the rulers’ rivals and allies alike. He imposed no-strike rules on the unions and unleashed the FBI on the Socialist Workers Party, the anti-war party. Harry Truman expanded the witch hunt after the war, used the Taft-Hartley law against the unions and presided over the Korean War.
Today the Democrats are increasingly dominated by a woke upper-middle-class layer whose comfortable lives are utterly alien to the conditions of workers, and who think they should scold and administer workers on behalf of the capitalist rulers. This makes what they call a “reconnection” with the working class difficult, to say the least, for either of the party’s competing wings.
In a March 6 Wall Street Journal column headlined “Snap Out Of It,” Peggy Noonan said that the Democrats need to find a way back. “Two strong and healthy parties vying for popular support is good for the country.” The capitalists’ two-party shell game doesn’t work without it.
For decades the U.S. capitalist rulers have governed through both their main parties, competing for workers’ support, each claiming to be the lesser of the two evils. For working people, the challenge is the opposite. We need to break with the capitalist rulers and their parties, not to try and take on the impossible task of “repairing” them.
In the 2025 elections the working class does have a voice. Socialist Workers Party candidates are running for office. They explain that the deepening crisis of the capitalist world order is inexorably leading the rulers toward new and more disastrous wars. At the same time, the bosses are driving to put the costs of their growing competition on workers’ backs.
SWP candidates point to what can be done today to build a party that can lead millions in the struggles that lie ahead to change which class rules.