Democratic socialists further advance

Paul Garver says the spectre of DSA is haunting American politics

A series of victories in Democratic primary elections by Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) members and other candidates endorsed by DSA is setting off alarm bells across the rightist and centrist political spectra in the USA.  The chief trigger was the recent victory of three insurgent Congressional candidates in the New York City area, Brad Lander, Claire Valdez and Darializa Chevalier, endorsed by Mayor Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders, and by the New York City DSA canvass that had helped elect Mamdani last year.

Trump and MAGA exaggerate the DSA threat for their own political ends.  Even before June 30, when a 29-year-old DSA candidate named Melet Kiros (an Ethiopian immigrant) easily rousted a 30-year Democratic incumbent from the US congressional seat centred in Denver, Colorado, President Trump made a rambling speech denouncing DSA as Communist, and more dangerous to America than Pearl Harbor or 9/11.  Speaker of the House Mike Johnson staged a hushed reading on his Instagram account of a leaked and unfinished draft of an upcoming Workers Deserve More 2026 DSA national program calling, among other horrors, for abolishing the Electoral College, establishing ranked-choice voting, and limiting the power of billionaires to buy elections.  Comments from many subscribers to Johnson’s post indicate that they had not previously realised how much they already agree with DSA.  DSA’s communications staff is already planning to use Johnson’s post as a recruitment tool for DSA by adding the recruiting link to the DSA website.

If MAGA senses an opportunity, the leadership of the Democratic Party and their associated pundits are panicking.  Former Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison threatened to withhold party resources and support from democratic socialists who criticise the Democratic Party leadership.  James Carville, a former advisor to Bill Clinton and a frequently quoted Democratic politics guru, advises the Democratic Congressional Caucus to abandon its big tent approach and exclude the Left from its membership.

The debates within the Democratic Party over general political strategy might sound overly familiar to members of the Labour Party.   Since the Clinton/Blair era, “Centre-Left” politicians have tried to “triangulate” to attempt to win a majority by appealing to the (mythical?) average voter.   Over time, electoral participation has tended to decline, especially in the traditional constituencies for a social democratic politics.  With the capture of the Republican Party by MAGA, and the ongoing failure of the Democratic Party to present a coherent alternative at the national level, space has opened up for advocates of a forthright embrace of consistently pro working class based, democratic socialist and/or populist political demands.

DSA Is becoming recognized as a leading element of that politics in the USA.   It is an imperfect vehicle in many ways.  DSA membership is still mainly drawn from relatively young and inexperienced university graduates congregated in larger urban centers and university towns.   Recent immigrants are better represented among DSAs cohort of democratic socialist elected officials (like Zohran Mamdani, Rashida Tlaib or Melet Kiros) but African-Americans less so.  DSA members are more likely to work in health, education, information technology or public service than in blue-collar jobs, though many are active in forming and reforming unions in those sectors.

The large-scale electoral canvassing operations run by DSA in New York City, and spreading to other metro areas, are not only effective politically, but are educating many participants and enriching DSA cadre ranks. It is not well known that Zohran Mamdani had run two (unsuccessful) campaigns for other DSA candidates before his own successful campaign was launched.

Kiros’s victory in Colorado suggests that democratic socialism is not an exclusive product of New York City or its DSA.  The current mayor of Seattle is a (non-DSA) democratic socialist, while the incoming mayor of Washington DC is a DSA member.  African-American DSA member Chris Rabb will become the congressperson from Philadelphia.  More challenging tests of the electability of avowed democratic socialists outside strongly progressive districts will come later this year.  DSA member Francesca Hong is running for governor of the state of Wisconsin, as are DSA members Abdul el-Sayed for the US Senate from Michigan, Nithya Raman for mayor of Los Angeles, and Donavan McKinney for a Congressional seat in Detroit.

The respective DSA chapters in those areas may not yet have the capacity and will to run massive electoral canvases like those that helped elect Zohran Mamdani and the three congressional candidates in New York City.  But the Kiros victory was based on some 100,000 door-to-door canvases and 500,000 phonebank contacts, many organised by the smaller DSA chapter there.

Under current leadership, many DSA chapters are not interested in or capable of such electoral efforts. The ultra-left caucuses have been sniping from the sidelines, pursuing the improbable dream of creating a pristine new communist party without the impure admixture of running candidates in Democratic Party primaries.  But their most recent effort to censure or expel Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) for alleged lack of fervour for Palestine fell flat.

National DSA has launched a three-month-long consultation with DSA members on political strategy for 2028.  The “mass politics” caucuses (Groundwork, Socialist Majority) are exploring a campaign to persuade AOC to run for President in 2028.   Consulting DSA members on electoral strategy rather than simply voting down DSA involvement in the 2028 election represents a welcome advance for a divided National Political Committee that still contains a slender majority from the ultra-left caucuses.

Meanwhile the struggle for control of the Democratic Party apparatus is being joined in earnest. Party leaders Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and Sen. Charles Schumer are still supported by major donors and many union leaders because raising vast amounts of money appears to be essential to winning general elections.  But the insurgent Left (which includes Bernie Sanders, Zohran Mamdani, Congressional members of the Squad and Justice Democrats) are convinced that the Democratic Party has to break more decisively with the oligarchic corporate elites to champion the interests of the broader working class.

Several Democratic primary elections in the first half of August will largely determine how deeply rooted the DSA challenge to the Democratic Party leadership is. Watch St Louis, Missouri, where DSA member Cori Bush is trying to unseat the AIPAC-backed incumbent Wesley Bell, Michigan, where DSA member Abdul el-Sayed has a slight polling lead in the US Senate race, and Francesca Hong’s gubernatorial race in Wisconsin. This is more difficult terrain for DSA than New York.  Success in even two of the three elections would bode well for the “democratic socialist party”.