The Democratic Party is as Socialist as European Social Democratic Parties

Democratic voters have shifted dramatically to the left in the last generation - and both federal policy and blue state governance reflects that

This is part of a series on the relationship of liberalism and socialism in US politics. The first entry was:

• AOC, Bernie and Zohran are Socialists – but so are Kamala and Joe

For most of the twentieth century, pundits made much of “American exceptionalism,” largely meaning the absence of a strong socialist party in the US comparable to social democratic parties in Europe. This was largely due to the reality that U.S. Democratic Party was an uneasy coalition of northern liberals and Southern Dixiecrats opposed to even labor making inroads in the South or any kind of civil-rights plank for the party.

But while the rise of Right absorbing Dixiecrat votes in the wake of passage of the Voting Rights Act got lots of attention, the left shift of the Democrats not just on cultural issues (which the media harped on) but on core social democratic concerns received less focus. But in recent decades, the Democratic party’s core economics has moved far to the left of its older New Deal compromise positions to become comparable to the European socialist tradition.

In 2019 the Global Party Survey asked scholars to score 163 parties on taxation, regulation, and welfare generosity. The result startled many pundits: the U.S. Democrats landed slightly to the economic left of Sweden’s Social Democrats and Spain’s Socialist Party, and just a tick to the right of Jeremy Corbin’s UK Labour Party, considered a standard bearer of the European center left then. On the canonical “tax-spend-regulate” axis, America’s main center-left party had entered Europe’s social-democratic mainstream. (Note that the Republican Party being so far to the right of almost any major European conservative party is the key explanation for why U.S. policy more generally is to the right of Europe).

That verdict relied solely on the party’s 2016 platform. It came before Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez helped draft the 2020 document and, with Biden’s own pro-labor views, shifted the platform to the left. With Keir Starmer taking the UK Labour Party rightwards, the U.S. Democrats have now moved to the left of most of the largest social democratic parties in Europe.

A Bigger State: How Spending Levels Quietly Converged

If anything defined the rise of socialist and social democratic parties in the 20th century, it was the rise in social spending by their governments. Many people don’t really recognize that 19th century capitalist states truly had minimal spending- roughly one to two percent of national income- on public programs.

Yet US government social spending now hovers just under twenty percent of GDP, more than Canada and less than much of Europe, but not at a level that makes it appear in a different political universe.

And the ambitions of the Democratic Party to expand that spending became evident when the opportunity arose during Covid. Where the European Union governments provided relatively weak spending for recovery, the Democrats, both through the 2020 CARES Act and Biden’s $1.9-trillion American Rescue Plan, pushed through programs that drove 5.7 percent growth in 2021, the fastest in the G-7, and as importantly, prioritized real wage growth that focused on low-wage working families, not just the economic elite.

Washington used to export lectures on fiscal discipline to other countries, but more recently demonstrated that aggressive Keynesianism still works.

Health Coverage: From Patchwork to Nordic Numbers Where Democrats Govern

Nothing defined US exceptionalism from European social democracy more than health care for decades - but that difference has rapidly diminished. Democratic voters themselves have become almost universal adherents to the idea the government should guarantee health care for everyone as this Pew poll reflects.

And in practice, Democrats have helped drive up Medicaid enrollment jumped from just 33 million enrolled in 1996 to 94 million by 2022, a tripling that alone dwarfs every government-run health care system in Europe. Combined with subsidized insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchanges, the ranks of the uninsured have plummeted, particularly in Democratic-run states where Medicaid has most expanded.

Those Medicaid expansion states as of 2024 had an uninsured rate of just 7.6 percent versus 14.1 percent in the exclusively Republican-run states that have refused expansion. Drill down further and the comparison grows starker: Massachusetts posts just 2.6 percent uninsured, New York 4.8 percent. Still with some gaps but the differences with Europe have become tiny, mostly due to national policies blocking coverage for undocumented immigrants.

A More General Growth in Socialist Policy Commitment by Democrats

This deeper commitment to national health insurance is part of a more general growing commitment by Democratic voters to a stronger role for government across the board. As recently as the mid-1990s, less than half of Democratic voters wanted a “bigger government providing more services” but that number had soared to 74 percent by 2024. Democratic voters have had a similar increase in those wanting the government to do more to aid the poor.

This is combined with a rising commitment by Democrats to racial justice. Back in the mid-90s, less than a third of Democrats believed that “immigrants strengthen our country” where over 80% now believe that. Similarly, less than 40% saw racial discrimination as the primary barrier to equality for blacks, where 64% now see that as a key barrier to be addressed. While European parties have made progressive on racial justice, even left parties in Europe have notably lower support for immigrant rights than US Democrats - and the Democratic Party has had greater success in holding onto political support despite these stronger stances on racial justice.

Comparing Democratic-run States to Europe

One way to even better understand how comparable Democrats are to social democratic parties in Europe is not just to look at federal policy, where the filibuster has limited implementation of Dem policies, but at state governments where Democrats have often had full power to implement their policies, if dealing with the more limited funds and powers available to state governments

As mentioned, health care is one area where this difference has been clear, but support for labor unions, a core aspect of socialist-oriented politics, is dramatically higher in such Democratic-run states and comparable to European states.

Looking at the states that have generally voted Democratic since the 1990s, what some call the “blue wall”, they don’t look out of place compared to many European countries and New York’s union membership is higher than quite a few countries in Europe. If in right-to-work South Carolina unions count two percent of workers; in deep-blue New York they claim nearly 25 percent, a figure that eclipses Germany’s and matches Britain’s. There is no overall “U.S. exceptionalism” discouraging participation in unions, just a “red state” exceptionalism where hostile conservative policy has undercut even the weak protections in federal law

And if you compare unionization rates of public employees, where US states have essentially similar legal power as European states, Democratic leaning states are generally more unionized in the public sector than in Europe, with states like New York and Connecticut pushing into the Scandinavian league of unionization.

This is not accidental, blue states have supported a range of pro-labor policies from banning right-to-work laws to supporting union wage standards in public works to extending bargaining rights to previously excluded home-care and child-care workers.

A similar dynamic plays out in minimum wage legislation, where Democratic blue states generally outpace almost every European government. Most solidly blue states now have at least a $15 per hour minimum wage with Washington State topping the list at $16.66 per hour (although California has a $20/hr minimum wage exclusively for fast food workers). The highest minimum wage is Seattle’s $20.76/hr rate, but what’s notable is that the only European countries with minimum wage rates as high as Washington State are the United Kingdom and the Netherlands and most, including France and Spain, are below the $15/hr blue state benchmark.

All of which is to argue not that the United States has achieved any kind of socialist parity with Europe - impossible to argue with Trump’s political vandalism ransacking the federal government - but that there is a rising core of socialist-oriented ideology among Democratic voters that matters for the future of not just the U.S. but of global social equity.

Can the US Become the Socialist Model for Others?

With many social democratic parties in retreat in European states, it’s notable as I argued a few weeks ago that Kamala Harris’s 75 million votes in 2024 is roughly equal the combined haul of every social-democratic, socialist, and green list across the 27 European Union elections. The Democratic Party therefore commands almost half single largest electorate committed—at least in principle—to an expansive welfare state, strong labor unions, and an aggressive anti-poverty policy.

The long-run implication is profound. If Trumpism can be defeated and the world’s Democratic Party completes its policy convergence with Europe’s historic left, the intellectual balance inside global capitalism could tilt decisively towards a more egalitarian model.

It’s not inconceivable that soon, the European left will be looking to the US Democratic Party as a model for how to move their own countries once again in a more socialist direction.