The News
MILWAUKEE — Democratic Socialists of America revamped its platform ahead of a national summit this weekend in Chicago, shifting some official positions on immigration and democracy, as Republicans try to cast the entire Democratic Party in its mold ahead of the midterms.
“We’re getting a lot of attention lately,” said Ashik Siddique, a DSA co-chair, on the call that announced the new version of its “Workers Deserve More” agenda. “And a lot of that attention is about our program.”
The 2024 version of DSA’s agenda endorsed “freedom of movement,” which allows immigrants to cross borders to live and work, and a call to “end all immigrant detention and deportations.”
Now, “Workers Deserve More” includes calls to “abolish ICE,” “legalize migration,” and grant “amnesty” to immigrants already here. It does not call for an end to all deportation.
On democracy reform, DSA moved to the left, calling for the Senate to be abolished, as they see it as undemocratic because each state is given equal representation regardless of population. The 2024 platform called only to end the filibuster.
The subtle changes to DSA’s agenda come as the organization, which has surged to more than 120,000 members, faces a brighter spotlight than ever. The largest socialist organization in American history is attempting to leverage new media attention to spread its message – even as it allows DSA members running for office to distance themself from it, benefitting from local DSA organization while keeping some flexibility.
“I can’t tell you what any endorsing organization’s full platform is,” said Pennsylvania state Rep. Chris Rabb, a DSA member who will represent a Philadelphia-area district in Congress next year and will speak at the Socialists Summit.
“Because of this extraordinary progressive movement that’s impacting these elections, corporate and right-wing interests are trying to dig deeper to disparage us. They’re trying to identify the most controversial-slash-radical aspects of these platforms, and then use that to split Democrats and distract from the things that most voters care about far more.”
DSA has credentialed 15 media outlets for its event this weekend, the Socialists Summit, where reporters are allowed to cover 10 programming blocks, restricted from doing ambush interviews with attendees, and required to show a negative COVID test before attending.
They’ll cover an organization that’s become central to the Republican Party’s election message —a choice between “God Bless the USA” and “L’Internationale.” Democrats who’ve joined DSA are quizzed about its agenda, including “public ownership of the largest corporations,” reparations for the victims of “slavery and colonialism,” and phasing out the use of fossil fuels.
So are left-wing Democrats who have DSA organizers knocking on doors for them. Center-left Democrats, panicked about the attention that socialist critics of Israel now command, are denouncing DSA, calling it a hostile force outside the real Democratic Party.
In Wisconsin, where state legislator Francesca Hong could become the first DSA member to become the Democratic Party’s nominee for governor in any state, she’s faced batteries of questions on both her own tweets from 2020 – when she endorsed defunding police and canceling Thanksgiving – and on the DSA platform. It is not, she said, her platform.
“I’m not interested in expanding the brand; I’m interested in making sure that government delivers,” Hong told Semafor. “I’m all in on Wisconsin, and so the platform that came out from DSA national is less of a concern for me.”
Some candidates were more comfortable with DSA’s output. Oliver Larkin, who joined DSA in 2020 and is challenging Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., in next month’s House primary, said that the platform was a “fair representation” of the organization.
Larkin hadn’t sought its national endorsement, focusing on support in South Florida chapters instead. But he believed that the GOP and mainstream media were underrating the appeal of unapologetic socialism and major constitutional change.
“There’s a more receptive audience among your kind of status quo MSNow viewer,” Larkin said. “I think there’s more receptiveness to DSA than there was maybe five or six years ago, or even in 2024, frankly. I think Trump winning again just threw a lot of the status quo positions out the window.“The radicalism of DSA’s agenda has given DSA-aligned candidates two kinds of media boost. They’ve sat for unapologetic interviews with the rising progressive media that, for some Democrats, has replaced the mainstream media that lost them after Trump’s 2024 win – helping them grab attention. And they’ve been captivating for Fox News and other conservative media. There, interviews play out like mini-HUAC hearings, with DSA-endorsed candidates being asked point-by-point about the organization’s agenda.
They’ve been selective about what parts of that agenda they support. On Friday, when Fox News host Dana Perino asked Hong what parts of the DSA platform “you disagree with,” she cited abolishing the Senate — though in 2021, she tweeted “abolish the Senate.” (She was reacting to the acquittal of Trump after his second impeachment, and told Semafor that “this isn’t a position that I have anymore.“)
One day earlier, Larkin appeared on Fox News to discuss his DSA-compliant immigration views, including the abolition of ICE. “How many children can be raped, and it’s fine, if you’re in relation to the immigration community?” asked host Trace Gallagher.“If we’re going to talk about children being raped, then we need to hold this pedophile president accountable,” said Larkin, who put the interview on his campaign’s YouTube channel.
But other DSA candidates have distanced from the platform, instead of pivoting. On Monday, the DSA Fund brought several elected DSA members together for a call with reporters, to explain how their ideas worked in practice. Asked if they agreed with Workers Deserve More, Illinois state Sen. Rachel Ventura clarified that she didn’t want to cut funding from police.
“I would say that defunding the police is the opposite of democratic socialism,” she said. “We want government services to work for everybody. We don’t want abuse of power, right? So just defunding a government service is not the thing that stops abuse of power.”
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David’s view
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who ran as a Democrat but is a member of DSA, didn’t just boost DSA’s image and membership with his victory. It showed candidates one way to navigate questions about the DSA agenda – just say that it is not your agenda. And in office, Mamdani has been condemned by DSA for not enacting the “transformative approach to public safety” that it believed he was running on.
Obviously, that has yet to harm Mamdani’s popularity or impede the growth of DSA. Polling has shown that voters recoil from the “democratic socialist” brand – though the Democratic Party itself is not much more popular.
Is that tenable? Mamdani’s win in an overwhelmingly Democratic city might have led to some overrating of how easy this is. But DSA is very aware of what’s going on outside of its meetings. It’s been a pinata for conservative media for a decade; the guidelines for coverage of its weekend summit read, to me, like an organization knowing that conservative influencers or networks might want to show up and embarrass people on camera.
Notable
A four-reporter team at the Wall Street Journal profiled DSA at length, starting with national co-chairwoman Megan Romer, whose yes-or-no interview with Fox News about DSA’s agenda shaped a lot of coverage.
In Vox, Andrew Prokop talked with Peter Sterne to explain exactly how DSA, as a “multi-tendency” organization, actually works.