There is no evidence that will happen. Everyone who I have looked at from the left wing Democrats has been a centre-left social democrat to democratic socialist. I don’t think that any form of communism will come from the current democrats. The Leninists/Stalinists/Maoists/Trotskyists don’t seem to be a major issue for 2018-20. There does seem to be a small communalist faction in the DSA, but that is so different to Marxism-Leninism that I don’t know what the right wing would think of it. Maybe the capital L Libertarians would try claiming it and say it isn’t really socialism, while the authoritarians will say it is worse than Stalin. It won’t matter, I don’t think that they will have much effect in 2018-20 either, as much as I want them too.
If you are worried that the Republicans will claim that they are communist, they will claim that with the most big business friendly candidate anyway. It may be best to ignore them and focus on provable results.
In the short term better (although being better than Trump is hardly an achievement)
In the medium to long term, I’d say just as bad as they are dragging their heels over fixing certain problems, like how millennials who aren’t in the 1% are expected to have a worse life than the generations before them. The party may think that they can’t rely on their votes today, but it will come back to haunt them in the next few decades. Let’s not forget that the oldest millennials are approaching 40 now.
