Social Democrats, USA (SDUSA) is a minor
social-democratic
Social democracy is a Political philosophy, political, Social philosophy, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports Democracy, political and economic democracy. As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocati ...
organization established in 1972 as the successor of the
Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America (SPA) was a socialist political party in the United States formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party of Ameri ...
(SPA). The SPA had stopped running independent presidential candidates and consequently the term "party" in its name had confused the public. Moreover, replacing the "socialist" label with "social democrats" was meant to disassociate the group from the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
.
SDUSA, which was fiercely
anti-communist
Anti-communism is Political movement, political and Ideology, ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, w ...
, pursued a strategy of
political realignment intended to organize labor unions, civil rights organizations and other constituencies into a coalition that would transform the
Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to:
*Democratic Party (United States)
Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to:
Active parties Africa
*Botswana Democratic Party
*Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea
*Gabonese Democratic Party
*Demo ...
into a social-democratic party. The realignment strategy emphasized working with unions and especially the
AFL–CIO, putting an emphasis on economic issues that would unite working class voters. SDUSA opposed the so-called senator
George McGovern
George Stanley McGovern (July 19, 1922 – October 21, 2012) was an American historian and South Dakota politician who was a U.S. representative and three-term U.S. senator, and the Democratic Party presidential nominee in the 1972 pres ...
's New Leftist approach, pointing to the rout suffered in the
19