OXON HILL, Md.—Young people are embracing socialism because they are drawn to candidates who offer concrete solutions, according to James Braid, former White House director of legislative affairs.
“So when you talk about like these people are revolting and embracing socialists, what they are revolting against is a system that they perceive,” he continued. “It is stacked against them, and they are seeking an alternative system.”
Braid spoke Wednesday at The Heritage Foundation’s “The Forum,” a conference just outside Washington, D.C., about the future of conservatism.
“The average American voter does not think in -isms,” Braid said at a panel on capitalism and socialism “The average American voter thinks in concretized solutions that can potentially make their life better. Whichever party is able to portray themselves as the United Party, that will ultimately be successful with that demographic.”
Almost half of young Americans now hold a favorable view of socialism, according to a recent Fox News poll. In the 2026 midterms, Democrats won Gen Z voters by nearly 50 points, according to exit polling.
Candidates endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America won eight House seats, as well as mayoral races in the nation’s capital and its two largest cities. In January, there will be at least 54 DSA-endorsed state lawmakers in 19 states.
Braid argued Republican solutions to unaffordable housing are better than those presented by socialists.
“One, we’re going to get the illegal aliens out, and we’re going to reduce demand,” he said. “And two, we’re going to sit there and go, Wall Street can’t buy single-family homes. That’s a solution. That’s not a socialist solution, but that is a solution that is colorful and people can understand.”
Appearing with Braid, Heritage Foundation distinguished fellow Will Ruger said that young people are worried about buying a house, affording health care, and living a better life than their parents.
“President Trump offered them a vision of that in 2024, and I think that a lot of those young people have been alienated, and therefore they were willing to switch over because of things like the high gas prices, because of the lack of affordability, and some of those things are really, honestly, outside of the hands of the federal government,” he said.
He said housing costs are not high because of the federal government, but because of state and local policies.
“But we need to also remember that in our federal system, we have to put pressure not just on the federal government but state and localities to give us more freedom that will allow for, I think, a more affordable lifestyle,” he said.
Grove City College professor Paul Kengor said socialists run in the Democratic Party in order to advance their democratic socialism.
“The Democratic Party is their chosen horse to get Democratic socialism, but now it’s not even a Trojan horse,” he said. “It’s right out of the open, and they’re taking they’re taking Senate seats, congressional seats, and even the mayorships of quite literally America’s biggest cities.”
They are turning to “socialism” because consumer goods & housing have become unaffordable, and the communists have told them that a government monopoly on everything will solve the problem. Ironically, the primary cause of these price increases are unrestricted mass migration and the overproduction of unconstitutional worthless currency, which the “Democratic socialists” have supported all along:
When you flood the market with fiat currency, you destroy the value of savings and increase the price of everything, but wages do not keep pace with inflation. To make matters worse, this new currency is being loaned to institutional investors who are buying up houses and turning them into rentals with unaffordable rates.
The Democrats and “socialists” are co-sponsors of the policies which created the problems that they are complaining about. This is the Hegelian dialectic: create a problem for which you have already prepared a “solution”. That solution will be a new ruling class of corrupt administrators who embezzle vast sums from the treasury, as uncovered by D.O.G.E. and Nick Shirley. Many of those who identify as socialist are actually pirates. Note how these Democratic socialists are not calling out insider-trading by congress and do not support the D.O.G.E. audits. They want you to get permission to train A.I. because it can be used to uncover welfare fraud.
Back in the days when you could buy medicine and medical diagnostics without permission, health care was not expensive. The cost of health care went to the moon because medical freedom was abolished and the practice of medicine was restricted to a privileged class in violation of the constitutional ban on titles of nobility. The radical left wants to discredit the authors of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence because those things stand in the way of their counterfeit socialist pirate state. Authentic socialism attempts to do what is genuinely best for society at large:
“ Housing is an essential need for both the individual and the family, and should not be owned by others. Living in another’s house, whether paying rent or not, compromises freedom. Attempts made by various countries to solve the housing problem did not provide a definitive solution because they did not address the fundamental issue – the necessity that people own their dwellings – but rather offered the reduction or standardization of rent, whether it went to a private or public enterprise. In a socialist society, no one, including society itself, has the right to control people’s needs. No one has the right to acquire a house additional to his own dwelling for the purpose of renting it, because this additional house is, in fact, a need of someone else. Acquiring it for such a purpose is the beginning of controlling the needs of others, and in need freedom is latent. ” — Muammar al-Qaddafi