Socialism and Spam August 22, 2026 The main thing I got from this long, interesting piece in the Times . . . Moderates See Socialists as a Threat to the Democratic Party. Socialists Agree . . . is that the DSA — the Democratic Socialists of America — is a small membership organization, not a political party, and that Bernie Sanders does not belong to it. Many of its aims are wonderful — who doesn’t want a crime-free society that requires no police or prisons? — but no Democrats I know of advocate crazy stuff like that. It would be so much easier if Bernie, AOC, Zohran, et al, simply said, “because we don’t embrace all the platform planks of the Democratic Socialists of America, we will henceforth call ourselves Social Democrats to avoid confusion . . . while working hard to advance the many DSA aims, like universal health care and taxing billionaires, with which we do agree.” But now let’s talk about socialism for a minute — this dread word Republicans love to scare people with. Most Republicans are socialists! They support public roads and public schools and public police forces (though billionaires have private security) and public fire departments. They support Social Security! They support Medicare! (17 Years Later, ‘Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare’ Guy Still Wants Government Hands Off His Medicare.) All these things are socialist. Not to say that, as a practical matter, Democrats should embrace the label. It’s just too toxic. But c’mon: think about it. Political ideology is a continuum that runs all the way from pure communism on the left, which always leads to economic failure and tyranny (e.g., North Korea today, and China before it went largely capitalist and started minting billionaires) — no one wants that — to pure cruel unregulated untaxed Darwinian libertarian capitalism on the right (no one wants that, either; well, maybe Elon Musk when he’s on acid). Most Democrats want to nudge us a little further left — more like Canada and Europe and Australia and Japan, say; plus a pluralistic society that celebrates diversity, agrees with Ronald Reagan on immigration, values civility, competence , and compassion . . . while Trump and the Epstein class who currently control all three branches of our government want to nudge us more toward what I guess might be called the Putin model of oligarchy, nationalism, and intolerance. Note that economic growth under the socialist-style 90% percent top tax rate of Eisenhower — and under the only moderately less socialist-style 70% top tax rate of JFK, LBJ, Nixon and Ford — was significantly stronger than it has been since Reagan started cutting taxes on the rich. Those cuts, amplified by Bush 43 and Trump, have accompanied slower growth, weaker wage gains, and massively higher National Debt. Not to mention social-fabric-destroying inequality. So if you’re a MAGA Republican who wants to see our economy — and your personal economy — thrive, and our national finances gradually brought back from the brink, you just might want to vote Democrat. Which brings me to: SPAM PACS Yesterday’s I offered this piece about what underlies the swarm of texts and emails we all get — like a swarm of mosquitos — asking urgently for $15 by midnight. It may not be worth your time to read in full, but the highlights, I think, are important: “I’m a political scientist who studies money in politics,” writes Adam Bonica, “but I’m also a lifelong Democrat. I believe my party is doing itself a disservice by following Republicans down this dark path.” Spam PACs rarely operate in isolation. My analysis of FEC data shows that they cluster into networks linked by a small number of treasurers who oversee multiple committees at once. . . . [From 2011] through 2025, Harry Pascal’s network of eight PACs raised more than $390 million from individual donors. According to my analysis of FEC filings, roughly $20 million of that went directly to Democratic candidates, or funded independent expenditures supporting them. Another $100 million or so covered field and get-out-the-vote programs and the payroll to staff them, and roughly $20 million went to administrative costs. The rest — an estimated $249 million, or 64 cents of every dollar raised — went to fundraising itself. “Among the fundraising ads run by the largest spam PACs,” Bonica found, “between 70 and 85 percent of impressions are delivered to users 65 and older.” Whether or not those who operate this fundraising model recognize or intend it, fundraising spam runs on similar psychological levers to those that the FBI and AARP identify as hallmarks of elder financial exploitation: manufactured urgency, emotional appeals engineered to trigger guilt or fear, false exclusivity, fabricated account or profile statuses that look like official notices, and relentless pressure to give before there’s time to think. Why stamp “FINAL ATTEMPT” on a message and warn that “the deadline is just hours away” if not to manufacture urgency? Why claim that Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Hakeem Jeffries have emailed you, then demand an answer to their “desperate pleas” if not to trigger guilt? Why warn that Social Security checks will be “SLASHED by $500/month?!” — up from the $460 in the email sent two days earlier — if not to stoke fear? Why tell someone they are “the only Democrat in your city who hasn’t responded” if not to single them out? Why announce a recipient’s “appointment to the Social Security Advisory Board” above a picture of a Social Security card if not to dress a solicitation as official business? Why the midnight deadlines, the countdown timers, the “400% MATCH” that applies only if you give right now, if not to force a decision before reflection can intervene? Even someone with no moral objection to these tactics should mind their cost. They poison the entire Democratic ecosystem, warping incentives for organizations and candidates alike. For campaigns, the draw is fundraising without the traditional work of fundraising — no grueling hours dialing for dollars, no donor dinners, no need to build genuine grassroots enthusiasm. Simply hire a digital firm and let the consultants tap into the pipeline. It’s some comfort that . . . Only about 20 percent of Democratic congressional candidates hire the high-volume digital fundraising firms used by spam PACs. But those candidates raised a combined $570 million from captive spam donors. The remaining 80 percent of Democratic candidates who stayed outside the spam ecosystem raised just $37 million from these donors. And yet . . . This fundraising model is a parasite on the party, enriching outside consultants while steadily starving the host. Republicans succumbed to it first, watching their own grassroots donor base hollow out in real time. If Democrats don’t change course, they are headed into the exact same donor death spiral. Not great to read that . . . The party’s platform champions protecting the vulnerable. Its fundraising apparatus exploits them. The party’s official campaign committees, which should set the standard, are instead some of the worst offenders. Emails and texts from the DCCC and the DSCC feature similarly aggressive fundraising pleas and draw heavily from captive spam donors. (A lawyer for the DSCC and DCCC whom I admire pushed back that the committees do not target the elderly — which I believe. But Bonica responds: “This piece makes no claim that either committee targets donor solicitations by age; the finding concerns who responds, not whom they are aimed at.”) Note that Bonica did not include the DNC with its sister committees. The good news is that change is possible. After I published a series of articles on Substack last summer about deceptive fundraising practices, ActBlue leadership reached out to me to discuss the platform’s response. Soon after, ActBlue announced its most significant crackdown on deceptive fundraising to date. . . . There has been other movement in the right direction. The Democratic National Committee, led by Ken Martin, launched an effort to stop PACs from trading on the Democratic name without actually supporting Democratic candidates. But these reforms have not been enough. . . . More is needed. Beware spam PACs. Join Indivisible! Support the opposition!