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Not only did she win, she won by A LOT, 6%.
Melat Kiros, a Left-Wing Insurgent, Ousts a 15-Term Congresswoman in Colorado – The New York Times
Funny thing is…if the Socialists learn to refine their message, they’ll find a very receptive country. By that, I mean if they don’t fall into anti-Semitism, and if they keep a closed border — they will find a very willing voting population. You have a large number of low-education voters, and Socialism sounds great until you Google it for 20 minutes to see all of its excesses.
But you get the government you deserve.
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Colorado has gone pretty far left. Biden won it by 13.5% in 2020. CA is left, going Socialist in LA. Same with Seattle/Washington. Same with New York City/New York. Same with Colorado. Chris Rabb, D-primary in Philly. Janeese Lewis George in WashDC, D-primary, along with the Ward 1 city council member. Socialist candidates won primaries in Maryland, Georgia, Kentucky, Oregon, Arizona, North Carolina and Vermont. Blue states, so they’ll be likely wins in November.
Socialist wave coming just in time for artificial intelligence to eliminate 10 million American jobs. Life’s going to get interesting for the rich, techies, and especially rich techies.
There’s always been a tension between the ultra-rich and their party of choice, the Democrats. The three second-tier groups favoring the Dems are either comparatively poor (Big Academia, Big Labor and Big Media) or moderately well-off regardless of who wins elections, but make money when there’s litigation (Big Law). The three wealthy groups favoring the Dems either make their money in make-believe (Hollywood) or live make-believe lives (Wall Street) or are insular and insulated (Silicon Valley). All of those groups were supportive of Democrat/Leftist/Liberal/Progressive policies…just as long as they never touched the rich. So tax rates stayed relatively low, Obama bails out Wall Street and screws over Main Street.
And people don’t forget. And when the gap between rich and poor widens to unfathomable levels and millions of American citizens (and voters) lose their jobs, they want change. The challenge for Democratic societies is that you make changes with a scalpel so it doesn’t get done with a meat cleaver.
That isn’t to say the DSA won’t screw it up. It’s Socialism, so by definition it will screw up. If the DSA doesn’t focus on climate change and illegal immigration, then it should last a while longer than it otherwise would.
The cleaver isn’t here…yet. But it’s right over the horizon. Buckle up, folks. This is going to turn into a wild ride.
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Wisconsin and Michigan are next…
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My youngest son is 30. We had a real conversation about politics for the first time in maybe five years. He was a student body president in high school, on the conservative side. He worked a Hillary Clinton fundraiser in 2016 (25 people at $25k a plate, he was an intern in college for a PR firm) and he called me and said “I don’t think she’s going to win.” I said “she’s far ahead in the polls, why don’t you think she’ll win?” He said, “because she doesn’t look people in the eye. When she made her prepared remarks to 25 people, she stared at the back wall like she was presenting to a stadium. No eye contact.” Her husband was the king of eye contact.
At any rate, he spoke about today’s political environment with some real vitriol and anger at the status quo. He’s doing well, but he feels — as did the author — that the establishment elites on both the left and the right have hung his generation out to dry.
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I don’t think my kids feel betrayed by the Democrats . . . yet. I am trying to alert them to the dangers of socialism.
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I don’t think my kids feel betrayed by the Democrats . . . yet. I am trying to alert them to the dangers of socialism.
My sister, the Stanford PhD, is a dedicated, diehard Socialist. She and I were debating the merits of capitalism vs. socialism in front of my eight-year-old son. He asked “What’s the difference?”
I said, “Capital is money, and people use it to build products and services that people buy. In capitalism, people have a choice of which goods and services to buy. And how well you do is dependent on three things: your talent, a little bit of luck, but mainly how hard you work. The harder you work, the more money you make.”
Sis says “That’s all great, but…do you remember when you were in kindergarten, and everyone got an apple and everyone got a cookie and everyone got a juice box…remember when everyone got the same thing? That’s Socialism. Everyone works just as hard as they want to, and everyone gets the same thing. Isn’t that great?”
My son thought for a moment and asked, “So no matter how hard I worked, I would get paid the same?” My sister, not understanding his point, said “Yes! Isn’t that great?”
He then replied “then why would I work hard?”
She started to splutter about the joys of proletarian cooperation, and he shook his head and said “I’d rather just work hard and make a lot of money.”
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if I read this correctly, Arizona not so enamored with the progressive/socialist wing of the Dem party
Trump Picks Run the Table in Arizona, Biggs To Face Hobbs in November | RealClearPolitics
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The DSA can go considerably farther than “fringe movement” status—but under its current brand and coalition, it is unlikely to become America’s governing majority.
Its most plausible future is as a disciplined insurgent faction operating inside the Democratic Party: dominant in several major cities, influential in blue-state legislatures, capable of defeating congressional incumbents, and powerful enough to force mainstream Democrats leftward on economics. The DSA now claims more than 100,000 members. Its candidates or members have captured the New York City and Seattle mayoralties, won Washington, D.C.’s Democratic mayoral primary, reached the Los Angeles runoff, and scored a striking series of New York congressional-primary victories in June 2026. DSA counted almost 90 endorsed candidates at the beginning of this election cycle, including more than a dozen congressional candidates. That is no longer merely protest politics.
The likely ceiling
Objective My estimate through the early 2030s Control politics in selected progressive cities Very plausible Become a major force in blue-state legislatures Plausible Build a 15–30-member House bloc Plausible, but not assured Control the Democratic Party nationally Possible only as part of a broader coalition Nominate a DSA-aligned presidential candidate Possible, but still unlikely Elect an openly DSA president Low probability Win durable congressional majorities for the full DSA program Very low probability Those are judgments, not polling forecasts. The distinction that matters is this:
DSA policies can travel substantially farther than the DSA label.
Labor unions have 68% national approval, and 58% of Americans favor raising tax rates on household income above $400,000. Programs involving childcare, healthcare, housing construction, prescription-drug costs and taxing concentrated wealth can attract voters who would never describe themselves as socialists.
Where the DSA is strongest
The DSA’s ideal battlefield is a low- or medium-turnout Democratic primary in a heavily Democratic urban district where:
- Housing and living costs are painfully high.
- The incumbent appears old, complacent, donor-driven or detached.
- Republicans are not a credible general-election threat.
- A young, charismatic candidate can mobilize renters, union members and highly educated progressives.
- The campaign emphasizes affordability rather than socialist theory.
That formula has now worked often enough to be replicated. Mamdani’s June 2026 endorsements helped three congressional candidates win Democratic primaries, including victories over two incumbents, while five of his preferred state-legislative candidates also won.
In other words, they can become the left-wing equivalent of the Republican Party’s insurgent factions: numerically smaller than the entire party, but organized enough to frighten incumbents and influence the agenda.
Their single biggest problem
The DSA does not yet possess the broad working-class constituency its name and rhetoric imply.
Among Democrats, only 32% say they like politicians who call themselves democratic socialists; 56% are neutral. Nationally, 17% like such politicians while 38% dislike them. More revealingly:
- 40% of White Democrats like democratic-socialist leaders, compared with 21% of Black Democrats and 20% of Hispanic Democrats.
- College-educated Democrats are more favorable than Democrats without degrees, 41% to 26%.
- Upper-income Democrats are more favorable than lower-income Democrats, 40% to 24%.
That is an awkward coalition for an organization presenting itself as the authentic political voice of working people. The DSA currently has greater appeal among young, White, educated and politically attentive Democrats than among many lower-income, noncollege and minority voters.
Pew’s broader political typology points to the same limitation. The most consistently progressive group constitutes only about 7% of Americans. A much larger Democratic-leaning group is economically liberal but more concerned about crime, immigration and public order than the progressive left.
Until the DSA can win those voters, its national ceiling remains fairly hard.
The Mamdani test
Zohran Mamdani is now the movement’s most consequential experiment.
His success already proves that a democratic socialist can win executive power in America’s largest city and use that office to help elect other candidates. But the decisive question is no longer whether DSA politicians can campaign. It is whether they can govern.
If Mamdani can materially improve housing, childcare, transit and basic municipal services while maintaining public safety and fiscal stability, he could normalize democratic socialism for millions of voters. If his major promises stall, taxes rise without visible results, city services deteriorate or ideological controversies consume the administration, he will furnish opponents with a national warning label. AP’s assessment after his first 100 days found considerable political energy and some early accomplishments, but noted that converting his fame into his larger policy program remained unresolved.
Municipal socialism lives or dies on extremely unromantic matters: permits, garbage collection, construction costs, police response times, school performance and balanced budgets. The revolution eventually encounters the pothole.
What would allow them to break through nationally
<p data-start=”5825″ data-end=”5877″>The DSA would have to make four substantial changes:</p>
<p data-start=”5879″ data-end=”6046″>Become an affordability movement first. Talk relentlessly about rent, wages, healthcare, childcare, utilities and corporate concentration—not ideological identity.</p>
<p data-start=”6048″ data-end=”6307″>Expand beyond the educated urban left. It must recruit noncollege workers, Black and Hispanic homeowners, suburban families and voters in smaller industrial cities, rather than assuming that “working class” automatically means anyone receiving a paycheck.</p>
<p data-start=”6309″ data-end=”6448″>Demonstrate administrative competence. Successful mayors and legislators would do more for socialism than another decade of manifestos.</p>
<p data-start=”6450″ data-end=”6846″>Permit political flexibility. The current DSA program includes broadly popular economic demands alongside positions such as abolishing ICE, expansive public ownership and an intensely confrontational foreign-policy agenda. Those positions may inspire activists but can prevent candidates from building the broader coalitions needed in competitive states.Bottom line
The DSA can plausibly capture the left flank of the Democratic Party, dominate politics in a collection of major cities, build a meaningful congressional bloc and cause much of its economic platform to become mainstream Democratic policy.
It probably cannot, in its present form:
- Replace the Democratic Party.
- Win a national majority under an explicitly socialist banner.
- Carry enough suburban, noncollege, Southern and swing-state voters to control the Senate or presidency.
- Enact its complete economic and foreign-policy program.
The organization’s realistic path to great influence is therefore slightly paradoxical: the farther its ideas travel into mainstream American politics, the less those ideas may be called DSA or socialism.
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In a recent YouGov poll, 25% of those who identified as very liberal said that violence is acceptable to achieve political goals.
Very similar to the percentage of everyday Muslims who also believe violence is acceptable.
The Muslim/Communist interface interests me. Communism is anti-religion. Muslim is anti-evrerything else. The Chinese imprison the Uighers. How can those two co-exist? They can’t. I imagine at some point the American right will take action.
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The Red-Green alliance.
https://purgatoryisnotaplace.substack.com/p/two-leftists-celebrated-the-ayatollahs
Two female Marxists celebrating the overthrow of the Shah and holding up a picture of the Ayatollah Khomeini. One executed, and the other had to flee to exile.
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