How deeply is President Donald Trump mired in disasters of his own making? Let me count the ways:

His deeply unpopular war against Iran resulted in a stronger Iran regime, dared Iran to restrict the Strait of Hormuz and led to a damaged-but-hardly-obliterated nuclear program. On the home front, gas and grocery prices are high, and consumer confidence is low. The looming midterm elections could shift the balance of power in Congress to Democrats, at least in the House, which would signal the beginning of Trump's lame duck era.

It's no wonder the president is so desperately trying to reanimate one of the most reprehensible propaganda campaigns of modern history: the Red Scare.

On Wednesday, the day after candidates aligned with Democratic Socialists of America prevailed in primaries across the country, Trump told supporters in Las Vegas, "These people are dangerous and frankly, they are lunatics. They're crazy, and we can't let them get into office. Communism is the greatest threat to our country in its history, including even World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, 9/11."

Nevermind that Trump is conflating communism with democratic socialism. As it happens, "they" are already in office.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani won by a landslide in November, despite fear mongering by Republicans and Democrats alike that a Mamdani administration would drive rich people out of the city and devastate the local economy. And despite accusations of antisemitism against the DSA (some of which are well founded) , a third of the city's Jews voted for him.

On Tuesday in Michigan, in perhaps the most closely watched and hard-fought race of the season, progressive former health official Abdul El-Sayed beat the establishment candidate U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens for the Democratic U.S. Senate primary, despite a massive cash infusion for Stevens from the powerful pro-Israel lobby AIPAC. (Stevens is a true class act, making a point of hugging El-Sayed onstage Thursday at a Michigan Democratic "unity breakfast" and urging the party to rally around him.)

"I am not somebody who is a socialist," El-Sayed told CNN last month. "I believe in capitalism, I just believe that capitalism has to be regulated."

All the doomsday predictions about socialism cannot obscure the fact that a growing number of Democratic voters, particularly younger ones, are looking for an alternative to pro-corporate, reflexively pro-Israel Democratic business as usual.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has described Israel's over-the-top response to the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023, as "genocide," is America's OG democratic socialist, having introduced the movement to the national mainstream with his two high-profile presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020. His political ally, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, is the subject of 2028 presidential chatter.

Both have helped redefine how Americans view "socialist" ideas like reducing economic inequality, expanding public control over essential services and reforming policing. It's fascinating that millions of Americans who benefit from Social Security and Medicare fail to understand that these are massively popular social-democratic programs.

Closer to home, four Los Angeles City Council members either belong to the Democratic Socialists of America or embrace the DSA's philosophy, which, simply put, is that Los Angeles is not working for its average, working-class citizens — and it should be. That list includes city attorney candidate Marissa Roy, and Councilwoman Nithya Raman, who is running to unseat Mayor Karen Bass.

In a recent interview, New Yorker Editor David Remnick pressed Raman to define the "socialism" part of "Democratic socialism." Did that mean, he asked, that she is "anti-capitalist" or "anti-market"?

"What I am against is exploitation in the market," Raman replied. "What I believe in," she said, "is big government intervention" particularly when it comes to the city's homelessness crisis. Despite "huge amounts of skepticism about government spending on homelessness," Raman said, "we need it."

Indeed, the lack of affordable housing across Los Angeles has helped fuel a devastating homelessness crisis in a city where renters make up more than 60% of the population.

On Thursday, I chatted with Alejandra Quintero, 34, interim communications director for Organized Power in Numbers, a pro-labor advocacy group. Quintero's parents are immigrants from Mexico. Her father works as a school custodian, a union job, which ensured that her family always had medical insurance.

A graduate of UC Berkeley with a master's degree in labor relations from Cornell, Quintero is an elected member of DSA-LA's steering committee. Her experience organizing three workplaces (all nonprofits devoted to immigrant and workers' rights) taught her that "the power lies in what we do collectively."

The DSA, Quintero said, "is one of the few places where working people can feel and experience democracy." Its wins in elections across the country, she said, should not be surprising.

"With younger voters, we were told this American dream of 'work hard and you can live a life of dignity.' And we know that's not true," Quintero told me. "It doesn't exist anymore. A lot of us are working and can't afford healthcare, housing, the basic necessities. It's valid for us to be upset and do something about it."

That something, for an increasing number of Americans, is to reimagine the Democratic Party as, once again, the party of the working class.

"I'm radically optimistic," Quintero told me. "I am also incredibly depressed. How could I not be?"

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