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The Democrat Socialists of America’s Rise: Jim Pfaff on The Russ Clark Show | Aug 6, 2026

Published: August 6, 2026
Network: The Russ Clark Show
Analysis: Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff

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The Democrat Socialists of America are winning primaries, gaining press, and pulling the Democrat Party visibly toward their agenda — and on the August 6 edition of The Russ Clark Show, Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff explained why that rise is neither a secret nor a surprise. Pfaff traced the DSA’s ground game through El-Sayed’s Democrat Senate primary win in Michigan and Mamdani’s New York, where non-citizen and newcomer voting blocs put the mayor over the top. That, he argued, is exactly why the Save America Act is existential — and why John Thune’s claim that it takes 60 votes to pass legislation does not hold up against the Senate’s actual rules. The hour closed with the midterm math: gas prices, the $2 trillion deficit, and Andy Biggs’ toss-up race against Katie Hobbs in Arizona.

Topics Covered

• Why the DSA Is Gaining Ground in the Democrat Party
• El-Sayed’s Michigan Win and the Coming Black Revolt
• Mamdani’s New York: Operating Like a Communist
• The Save America Act and the Reconciliation Path
• The Zombie Filibuster and the 60-Vote Myth
• The Midterm Math: Gas Prices, the Deficit, and Andy Biggs
• Key Takeaways

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Why the DSA Is Gaining Ground in the Democrat Party

Asked whether the socialists are gaining ground, Pfaff gave two reasons. The first is organization: they are well organized inside the Democrat Party, and they are grabbing the energy of younger people who are hitting a very real economic brick wall in the current economy and culture. Pfaff pointed to decades of groundwork behind that appeal:

“We’ve got about 20 or 30 years of socialism and communism being taught in public, in the monopoly of public schools”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

The second reason is more uncomfortable for Democrats. The DSA is not hijacking a party that disagrees with it:

“the Democrat Party stands for what they stand for. They just haven’t been as explicit about it”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Yes, there are schisms — James Carville and Bill Maher have made clear they will have nothing to do with it — but Pfaff’s warning was that Democrats are never going to kick these people out. The members expressing discontent with the DSA have no power to oppose it, because all the energy in the party sits with the movement that began with the Squad and with the influence Bernie Sanders built through his presidential runs. The movement did not organize secretly, Pfaff told the hosts; it found a path and worked it with persistent effort. Rashida Tlaib has been a vocal DSA member for years, and the same is true of Ilhan Omar.

El-Sayed’s Michigan Win and the Coming Black Revolt

The test case is Michigan, where El-Sayed just won the Democrat nomination in the Senate race. Pfaff is watching for what he calls an ick factor among the American people — and he noted that El-Sayed himself sees it coming, distancing himself from the DSA wherever he can because he knows voters are negatively reacting. Pfaff cautioned Republicans celebrating the result:

“here’s the other problem: Republicans suck at elections. I mean, they really suck.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

He wants Mike Rogers to win the general — El-Sayed, in his view, is dangerous — even while calling Rogers as much of a deep state hack and a RINO hack as you will find in the Republican Party. But the more telling dynamic in the primary returns was demographic: El-Sayed won areas with large Islamic populations like Dearborn pretty sizably, and did not win areas with large Black populations.

“I think you’re going to see a Black revolt against this kind of socialism”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Churchgoing Black church members, Pfaff argued, do not accept socialism as these candidates lay it out, and they notice — because they live it in places like Dearborn — that the Islamic population doesn’t like them. He expects the November result to combine some expansion of Black voting for Republicans with a potential lowering of Black voter turnout, which Democrats cannot afford. These are the signs, he said, that make him wonder if Republicans can win in spite of themselves.

Mamdani’s New York: Operating Like a Communist

If El-Sayed is the newest DSA success, Mamdani is the poster child. Pfaff pointed to news from just this week: the New York mayor removed local business leaders — including key Democrat-aligned business people — from a mayoral charitable committee, every one of them. He relayed a line he saw posted about it: they replaced the kulaks with the apparatchiks. It is, he said, a very communist idealism playing out aggressively. His framing of last year’s mayoral race was just as direct:

“Pick it, pick your side, Cuomo or Mamdani. One’s gonna sound communist, one’s gonna be communist”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Cuomo lost for a second reason that Pfaff says remains a key factor in our politics. Long-time New Yorkers voted strongly for Cuomo; Mamdani won heartily among an influx of people who frankly aren’t citizens, plus newcomers and immigrants who hadn’t lived there. That, in his telling, is what brought Mamdani over the top — and it connects to a warning Pfaff has been issuing for years:

“I’ve been saying for a long time that the Democrat Party is trying to overthrow the American Republic”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

The Save America Act and the Reconciliation Path

The New York dynamic is precisely why the Save America Act matters, Pfaff argued: municipal elections in New York City, California, and other blue states allow non-citizens to vote. Asked whether the bill can still get through, he said the concept is not dead — if Republicans keep Congress, the pressure will remain to pass it in the next Congress, though he acknowledged the headwind that somewhere on the order of 80 to 90% of midterm elections go against the party in the White House. Momentum is building now: Mike Lee, Jim Banks, and more than a dozen others have lined up to say they want to forego the August break to get this done — a pressure campaign we covered in our analysis of the Save America Act pressure on John Thune.

“I’ve maintained I think that it’s existential that Save America Act pass, but it’s also existential in my mind that the effort be undertaken to do so”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Pfaff also walked the hosts through the reconciliation route. The Byrd Rule — in existence for about 50-plus years — lets the Senate reconcile fiscal issues by majority vote, bypassing the filibuster. The Save America Act provisions written into reconciliation are not policy changes but funding changes: the bill would not impose a voter ID requirement on elections; it would simply stop funding certain things the government funds in the states — which it shouldn’t fund anyway, Pfaff added — where voter ID isn’t implemented.

And if the parliamentarian rules the provisions out? Pfaff was blunt — he doesn’t give a damn what the parliamentarian says, because the parliamentarian’s only job is to say whether a bill aligns with the rules the members laid out:

“the parliamentarian does not run the Senate. The members run the Senate”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Democrats, he noted, do it all the time — parts of Obamacare that were actual policy changes were pressed through reconciliation anyway.

The Zombie Filibuster and the 60-Vote Myth

The deeper obstacle is the claim from Senate Majority Leader John Thune that it takes 60 votes to pass legislation. Pfaff calls that a misrepresentation, and frankly a lie:

“It takes, it takes 50 plus 1, and the 60-vote rule is only to stop debate”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

That has been Mike Lee’s point the whole time. What Lee calls the zombie filibuster lets senators filibuster over successive days instead of within the current legislative day — and a legislative day is not a calendar day; the Senate can recess in ways that keep the same legislative day going across successive calendar days. Under the Senate’s actual rules, each senator gets two chances to speak, and once every senator has exhausted or declined both chances, debate ends and the bill goes to an up or down vote — the mechanics we detailed in our breakdown of the Senate’s two-speech rule.

“the actual filibuster rules are not being followed in the Senate. John Thune is just totally misrepresenting this”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Running a real filibuster would mean senators actually speaking for 24 hours if they can keep it up, all-day debates, and working five days a week instead of a 3-day work week with roughly 4 to 6 hours of debate per day. The Senate simply concedes whenever 60 votes aren’t there. That unwillingness, not the rules, is fundamentally the problem.

The Midterm Math: Gas Prices, the Deficit, and Andy Biggs

When a host offered a midterm formula — end the Iranian war and get gas down to $2.50 a gallon — Pfaff largely agreed. Iran shows up second or third on voters’ issue lists; the economy remains on top. Prices don’t even need to hit $2.50, he said — they just need to stop threatening to go back up to 4. Americans wince once or twice a week filling up their tank at nearly twice what they were paying before, and that is the one economic indicator working against a generally positive picture. The one big beautiful bill didn’t go where Pfaff wanted, but its immediate expensing for capital expenditures is creating good jobs — including data center jobs now under attack from an anti-data-center effort funded by Chinese Communist-aligned business people like Shanghai-based billionaire Neville Roy Singham. The true negative, Pfaff said, is the deficit: $2 trillion a year of spending that inevitably increases inflation, which Trump has attacked in the executive branch but which Congress has been unwilling to fix. Even so, the polling tells him something about the socialist surge:

“that tells me the ick factor that I talk about with the DSA is entrenched in the American public”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Democrats are at the lowest popularity levels they have ever been — negative 45 to 50, against Republicans’ negative 25 to 35. The closing question was Arizona: is Katie Hobbs in enough trouble to pick a Republican lieutenant governor? She’s in trouble either way, Pfaff said — the race is rated a toss-up, and Hobbs has a real criminal probe hanging over her head from the Democrat Attorney General investigating her. A Republican running mate might draw a few McCain Republicans, but not enough:

“Andy Biggs, who I think is a hero, uh, is going to put together a good campaign. And I think that I actually, if I had to put money on it, I’d say he’s going to win that.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Biggs is raising money, well-liked, carries a good message from a key Republican congressional district, and Democrats aren’t motivated in Arizona. If that story reaches the national discussion, Pfaff said, it helps Republicans everywhere.

Key Takeaways

1. The DSA’s rise is organic, not a stealth takeover – They organize well, they harvested 20-30 years of socialism taught in monopoly public schools, and the Democrat Party already stands for what they stand for — it just hasn’t been as explicit.
2. Watch the Black vote in Michigan – El-Sayed won Islamic-population areas like Dearborn but lost areas with large Black populations; Pfaff expects a Black revolt against this kind of socialism and possible turnout drops Democrats cannot afford.
3. Mamdani’s New York is the warning – Business leaders purged from a mayoral charity committee, and a win built on non-citizen and newcomer voting blocs — the exact dynamic the Save America Act targets.
4. The Save America Act fits reconciliation – Its provisions are funding changes, not policy mandates: a sword of Damocles that defunds states which refuse voter ID, designed for the Byrd Rule’s majority-vote path.
5. It takes 50 plus 1, not 60 – The 60-vote rule only stops debate; the two-speech rule ends it. The zombie filibuster persists because senators won’t work more than a 3-day week — and the parliamentarian doesn’t run the Senate, the members do.
6. Arizona is winnable – The Hobbs-Biggs race is a toss-up, Hobbs has a criminal probe hanging over her, and Pfaff would put money on Biggs.

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About The Conservative Caucus:
The Conservative Caucus is a grassroots public policy action organization, formed in 1974. Headed by President Jim Pfaff, the Caucus is committed to advancing free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values.

Originally broadcast Aug 6, 2026 on The Russ Clark Show.