Instead of a working-class reckoning, Democrats got the DSA | Opinion - USA Today

Democrats' catastrophic 2024 defeat exposed a yawning gap between the cultural and policy priorities of a party dominated by liberal professionals and the priorities of the median working-class voter. The logical response was to close that gap and bring the party back toward the voters it was losing.

There was a brief moment right after the 2024 election when a real reckoning seemed possible. That didn't last. #Resistance fever gripped the party, the usual suspects fought off any revision of party positions, and momentum shifted to the energized progressive left instead.

The trend has only accelerated. Zohran Mamdani's 2025 New York City mayoral win kicked off a surge of Democratic Socialists of America primary victories that continued through the 2026 midterm primaries. Most notably, Mamdani and the DSA backed three Democratic candidates for New York City House seats – Darializa Avila Chevalier, Brad Lander and Claire Valdez – and all three won, including Chevalier's ouster of Adriano Espaillat, the sitting chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Given how deep-blue these districts are, all three are all but certain to win in November.

The wave kept building. Chris Rabb won the Democratic nomination for a Philadelphia House seat, Melat Kiros ousted a 30-year incumbent for a Denver seat, and Donavan McKinney knocked off a sitting Michigan congressman for a Detroit-area seat. All three districts are safe blue seats. Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan's Democratic Senate nomination, and Janeese Lewis George won the Democratic nomination for DC mayor – all but guaranteeing she becomes the city's first democratic socialist mayor.

These are remarkable developments. But do they mean DSA is about to "take over" the Democratic Party? I don't think so. What they do mean is a serious hit to Democrats' ability to rehabilitate their image and win back working-class voters.

Start with the takeover question. DSA just hit 120,000 members, making it the largest socialist organization in American history. But it's a big country. To match the Debs-era Socialist Party's membership on a per capita basis, DSA would need closer to 400,000.

DSA's successes have also been concentrated in deep-blue, urban areas, where winning the Democratic nomination is winning the seat. Most Democratic politicians and voters don't come from those places, and they're far less likely to fall for DSA's pitch – as Francesca Hong's defeat in Wisconsin's Democratic gubernatorial primary suggests.

A better way to think about DSA isn't as a hostile takeover, but as the vanguard of a radicalized professional class. It's a continuation of a trend already reshaping the Democratic Party: professionals increasingly run it, and those same professionals have grown more radical, especially in the Trump era.

So when 66% of Democrats say they view socialism favorably, versus just 42% for capitalism, that doesn't mean two-thirds of Democrats are about to join DSA, or that they even agree on what "socialism" means. It means professionals, radicalized by their opposition to President Donald Trump, are picking the brand that signals maximum opposition. That radicalization is fertile ground for DSA recruiting, even if most people professing a liking for socialism just mean something vague, like "be kind" or "government should do more."

But Democrats warming to socialism isn't shared by the country as a whole, especially the working class. Only 39% of Americans views socialism positively, according to Gallup. YouGov has the share at just 31%. In a June Economist/YouGov poll, just 29% of Americans said they'd ever consider voting for a self-identified democratic socialist. Among those without a college degree, just 23% said they'd ever consider voting for a democratic socialist; among the college-educated, 40% would consider it.

A July Washington Post/Ipsos poll found similar results: Americans rejected the idea of a democratic socialist presidential candidate by 16 percentage points. Among those with just a high school degree, the rejection widened to 28 percentage points. Once again, the college-educated were far more receptive, splitting roughly down the middle.

That's a steep hill to climb, especially with working-class voters. You'd think, with DSA becoming a real electoral force, they'd soften their radical stances to broaden their appeal. Nah. They're getting more radical. Their updated national platform, released July 14, calls for abolishing the U.S. Senate and replacing the president and Supreme Court with "an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress." It calls for defunding police departments on the way to fully abolishing police and prisons. It calls for amnesty for all immigrants regardless of status and the abolition of ICE.

And it doesn't stop there: reparations for slavery, a Green New Deal, universal rent control, defunding the Pentagon, a 32-hour workweek, unrestricted "gender-affirming care" and public ownership of the largest corporations. It's hard to find a radical, impractical, unpopular idea this platform left out.

Put it together, and it's remarkable: a party desperate to win back working-class voters has instead let its brand become associated with DSA and socialism. This deepens rather than solves the party’s image problem.

Even more remarkable: as the DSA association has grown, Democrats have barely tried to distance themselves from it. Most have framed the socialism connection as part of being a "big tent" and passed on chances to draw a line. Rep. Tom Suozzi and a handful of moderates tried, circulating a modest pledge called "Promise to America" that included lines like "We are capitalist, not socialist" and "We want safety, not lawlessness." Only 10 sitting House Democrats out of 212 were willing to sign the pledge.

Just eight House Democrats voted with Republicans on a September resolution condemning socialism and the DSA. Most bizarrely, some progressive Democrats have taken the opposite approach: embracing the label outright. Octogenarian Sen. Ed Markey, campaigning for reelection in Massachusetts, declared "Give us more of that socialism" at a rally. Great strategy, Ed – that'll really bring working-class voters streaming back.

That's the real problem with DSA: not that it will "take over," but that it's dragging Democrats away from the brand reinvention they need to win back working-class voters. Radicalized professionals, with DSA at the front, will keep tightening their grip on the party, and traditional Democrats seem unable or unwilling to stop them. The result will be deeper dependence on college-educated voters, and no answer to the working-class exodus that produced 2024.

Ruy Teixeira is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he focuses on the transformation of party coalitions and the future of American electoral politics.