It was inevitable that, at some stage, America’s populist Left would try to do to the Democratic Party what the populist Right has already done to the Republican Party: take it over.
Maybe now is the time their dreams will come true. Their chosen vehicle for the takeover bid is an organisation called Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
The DSA may have been around for almost 50 years, but throughout its existence it has been a political irrelevance. ‘Socialism’ has always been something of a dirty word in US politics, too akin to communism, too redolent of the old world (Europe).
Mainstream Democrats have always shunned it. Yet, remarkably, it is now part of the US political lexicon as never before.
The DSA has burgeoned since Donald Trump was re-elected in 2024. With more than 120,000 members – a majority of them new recruits – plus many tens of thousands more who regard themselves as ‘DSA adjacent’, it is now the largest explicitly socialist movement in American history. It’s not a third party. It contests Democratic primaries, which choose the party’s candidates, backing upstart radicals against old, complacent incumbents.
