Democrats: Will socialists take over the party?

So it isn’t just a New York thing, said Eliza Collins in The Wall Street Journal. Last week in Colorado, Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), defeated 15-term incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette, 68, in a Democratic primary to represent the deep-blue Denver area. The win by Kiros, who most recently worked as a barista while studying for a Ph.D., is “the latest advance for a socialist groundswell that is forcing a reckoning for Democrats.” DSA candidates swept primary races in New York City last month, and insurgent leftists are now eyeing wins in the upcoming Michigan Senate primary, where progressive Abdul El-Sayed leads the polls, and the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary. The Democratic establishment fears this Tea Party–like rebellion could cost them the midterms, because DSA policies—rent freezes, abolishing ICE, ending U.S. aid to Israel—could repel moderates in November. For now, centrist Democrats are talking tough, said Andrew Howard in Politico. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has downplayed the significance of “a handful of primaries,” while 15 moderate House Democrats and candidates signed a letter reaffirming their commitment to “growth, competition, and broad prosperity.’” But in private they’re “freaking out” that “the Left’s winning streak is potentially just starting.”

Republicans can’t believe their luck, said Jonah Goldberg in The Dispatch. They’ve long caricatured Democrats as anti-American communists. But in a truly “crazy” figure like Darializa Avila Chevalier, one of the New York DSA-ers now headed to Congress, they’ve been gifted that “caricature made flesh.” Avila Chevalier has denounced relationships between minority men and “ugly [white] colonizer women”; attended a pro-Hamas rally the day after Palestinian terrorists massacred Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023; and wants to abolish prisons, preferring to send murderers back to their “community.” Kiros is similarly extreme: She refuses to describe last year’s deadly firebomb attack on pro-Israel protesters in Boulder, Colo., as antisemitic. To call the DSA a “hate group” is not hyperbole, said Noah Rothman in National Review. And while its venom is right now focused on Jews—or “Zionists,” in members’ preferred euphemism—ultimately “what it hates is America.”

Focusing on the DSA misses what’s really going on with Democrats, said Nia-Malika Henderson in Bloomberg. Yes, the party’s voters are “fed up” with its graying leaders, whom they blame for not blocking Trump’s second-term agenda. But that doesn’t mean they want “socialism.” Voters’ overriding hunger is for young, authentic “anti-candidates” willing to fight Trump head-on. In progressive areas like New York City, that translates to wins for the DSA. But in deep-red Texas, voters rejected a progressive and chose young moderate James Talarico as their Senate candidate. The DSA’s rise shows Democrats need to embrace a “bolder, less cautious approach” to politics, not necessarily “move further left.”

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Voters aren’t electing socialists because they dislike President Trump, said Harold Meyerson in Prospect. They’re electing socialists because working Americans are being ground down by the cost of gas, housing, and health care, and because they’re tired of watching the “Barons of Silicon Valley” game politics to expand their fortunes and lower their tax bills. Democrats shouldn’t embrace every radical policy of every DSA firebrand. But you’d think a party that’s been fretting for a decade about how to win back the votes of working people would recognize the DSA’s rise as a sign of what needs to happen for Democrats to “return to power and hold it.”