A Fox Business commentary argued that the recent electoral success of socialist and openly Marxist candidates in the United States reflects what it described as a “perfect storm” of man-made and natural disasters, beginning with the COVID-19 pandemic. The phenomenon builds on a trend visible since Senator Bernie Sanders' 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, which brought democratic socialism into the Democratic Party mainstream and helped elect self-described socialists to local offices in major cities.

The article said the pandemic reshaped public life for three years, disrupting supply lines, restricting movement and limiting the ability of people to worship together. It cited a statement from Rahm Emanuel, the former chief of staff to President Barack Obama, who once said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

According to the commentary, government agencies expanded significantly during the pandemic through nearly $5 trillion in what it described as temporary COVID-19 spending, enacted across both the Trump and Biden administrations through multiple relief packages. The article said much of that funding later became permanent.

“We created a program with great danger when we allowed expansion of Medicaid,” said Dr. Mehmet Oz, identified in the article as the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The commentary also stated that the U.S. government now spends more per capita each year on Medicare and Medicaid than the British government spends on its socialist medical system.

It linked the expansion of government spending to economic pressure on Middle America, pointing to inflation that peaked at 9.1% in 2022, the highest annual rate in approximately four decades. The article further argued that spending on millions of new migrants during former President Joe Biden’s border policies intensified the shift it described, citing estimated taxpayer costs ranging from $150 billion to more than $450 billion annually.

The commentary also focused on education, saying that young voters have been shaped by what it called a woke education system that prioritizes indoctrination over basic academic skills. It cited a recent report from an education watchdog claiming that teachers unions have contributed more than $1 billion to political activism and left-wing social causes since 2015.

The article quoted Jeffery Freitas, president of the California Federation of Teachers, as saying: “To fight back against this fascist regime, we need to be in the streets, wisely using our wallets, battling in the courts and winning at the ballot box.”

The commentary concluded that the political left had been preparing for this moment for years and that socialists were waiting for conditions it characterized as the perfect storm.