Democrats, you can call yourselves capitalists. Really.

We already have a major political party whose leader thinks American capitalism has been failing for decades. Does the country really need a second one?

Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Beto ORourke.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Win McNamee/Getty Images, PAUL RATJE/AFP/Getty Images, Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, omendrive/iStock)

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a democratic socialist, but most Democrats aren't. Wanting higher taxes on the really rich and a more generous safety net is one thing. Heck, even some Republicans and conservatives favor those ideas. There's little evidence, though, that the folks who voted for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton want to weaken the capitalist system and work toward eliminating the private sector. Such are the explicit goals of democratic socialists, or at least, the Democratic Socialists of America, a group of which Ocasio-Cortez is a member.

It should be no surprise, then, that Democratic presidential contenders are rejecting AOC's "democratic socialist" label, even as they vaguely support her fantastical "Green New Deal" idea. In recent days, Kamala Harris flatly declared, "I am not a democratic socialist," while Beto O'Rourke said meeting the nation's "fundamental challenges" will require "harnessing the power of the market." Joe Biden said he was for a "moral capitalism." And Amy Klobuchar dismissed "Medicare for all," as a only a "possibility in the future." That universal health-care plan, of course, is the big policy idea of the one 2020 candidate who currently self-describes as a democratic socialist, Bernie Sanders.

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James Pethokoukis

James Pethokoukis is the DeWitt Wallace Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he runs the AEIdeas blog. He has also written for The New York Times, National Review, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, and other places.