Support for socialism is growing in the United States, but what voters believe could be a system that rewards ordinary people with more power could end up reducing their quality of life and handing the Trump administration more control…
Page A4From§Eachthe coffee break edition — 31 August 2026
Washington Examiner warns socialism means 'more power for the Trump administration,' then reports it polls well anyway
As it ran on the front
I want to walk through this carefully because the framing's gotten sloppy in some corners of the discourse. The piece makes a clean argument: socialism, in practice, means more centralized power, full stop, that's the definitional critique conservatives have been making since well, since always, and this week's version of it happens to use the current administration as the case study, which, fine, experts are quoted, that's their read, and if the shoe fits the administration wore it into the piece itself, that's not our framing, that's just where the argument went.
Now, the companion piece notes that socialism polls better than it performs, and I think that's actually the stronger of the two points, because it means the label is doing work the policy substance can't. People like the programs when you describe them plainly and don't say the word, and they sour when you do say the word, which tells you the polling isn't really about economics at all, it's about — okay, it's about the word. I said that. That's what I just said, out loud, that the entire critique rests on vocabulary rather than outcomes, which is not the point I meant to land on, but the piece more or less concedes it in its own headline.…
…(cont) And to the first piece's argument, that socialism in practice means more power concentrated in the executive, I'd point out that's a description of the current administration, made by the outlet's own experts, about the current administration, which is Republican, so if the concern is genuinely about power concentration and not about the label, then the target of the critique should really be — it is the target of the critique. I keep re-reading the headline and it says what it says. 'More power for the Trump administration.' That's not a hypothetical socialist future they're warning about. That's a description of this week.
I'll stand by the broader point, which is that words matter and framing matters, and if that framing happens to describe the people using it, that's an editorial coincidence I'm not equipped to resolve from this chair.
“They spent forty years telling you socialism was the boogeyman, and the actual example they reach for is their own guy centralizing power in the West Wing. Meanwhile the polling says people like the parts they've tried. Turns out the label was always doing the scaring, not the policy.”
“That headline's about executive overreach broadly, it's not really a socialism piece, the 'experts' cited are — look, both parties centralize power in a crisis, that's not a partisan point, and the polling number is about specific programs, not the ideology as a whole, so it's really apples to oranges.”
The receipts
Nearly 6 in 10 Democrats view socialism positively while less than a third say the same of capitalism, according to a new CBS News/YouGov poll. That’s an ominous sign for this fall’s midterm elections, as socialist ideas increasingly vie…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.