Can democrats win with a socialist agenda? The Democratic Socialists of America's rise and the party's future

While the Republican Party grapples with President Donald Trump's sagging popularity ahead of the November midterms, the Democrats have their own headache: a fierce ideological contest that is reshaping what the party stands for. At the heart of it lies a bitter struggle between the moderate establishment and a fast-growing, well-organised progressive left, led by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The DSA aims to fundamentally overhaul America's economic and political order by eschewing what it calls the cautious incrementalism of the Democratic Party.

The DSA and the left liberals believe that the establishment Democrats have surrendered completely to corporate interests and capitalism, while the establishment is certain that the radical policies would certainly lead to electoral defeat. The recent primaries have given the DSA a boost, with a handful of their candidates prevailing over long-serving incumbents. They believe that the Democratic voters are now more amenable to a radical shift towards socialism. 

The left's ideological core rests on dismantling capitalism and putting working-class populism ahead of corporate partnership. At its recent national summit in Chicago, the DSA set out a sweeping, anti-capitalist agenda aimed at remaking the American state, from a 32-hour working week and universal health care to reparations for slavery and concrete steps towards abolishing the police and prison systems entirely. The movement's ambitions stretch further still, calling for the abolition of the Senate and the replacement of the presidency and Supreme Court with an executive judiciary answerable to a greatly expanded House. 

Mainstream observers see this as radical territory, but the movement wears the label with pride, betting that loudly championing systemic change is the surest way to eventually make such ideas feel ordinary.

Polls suggest that roughly a third of Democratic or Democratic-leaning voters now identify with democratic socialist ideals, a notable shift in the party's grassroots base. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani have become the most recognisable faces of this faction, using their platforms to push at the party's boundaries.

Moderate Democrats, meanwhile, remain deeply unsettled by this leftward drift and have flatly rejected calls to embrace hard-left positions. Establishment strategists see the socialist agenda as a genuine threat to the party's hopes of holding and extending federal power. In response to a string of progressive primary wins, the centrist group Third Way has launched a $15 million campaign aimed at discrediting the DSA and its ideology ahead of the 2028 presidential race. These moderates argue that while left-wing candidates can mobilise younger voters in safely blue cities, their uncompromising platforms prove toxic to the wider electorate. 

The party, they warn, cannot allow itself to be defined by its radicals if it wants to win the battleground states that decide general elections.

This centrist pushback is driven partly by the knowledge that Republicans are delighted to exploit these maximalist positions. Trump has launched fierce attacks in the wake of progressive primary victories, seeking to brand the entire party as hardline, godless communists. His administration has gone so far as to release a lengthy report attempting to link American left-wing advocacy groups to Cuba on the basis of loosely shared ideology. The left's vulnerability is compounded by its uncompromising stance on social questions. Many of their candidates are clearly fringe elements who might find it really difficult to win a general election. 

For instance, Francesca Hong, running for governor in the swing state of Wisconsin, has faced intense scrutiny over her earlier support for defunding the police and scrapping national holidays such as Thanksgiving. Candidates such as Hong often find themselves awkwardly retreating once the general election arrives, insisting they do not endorse the full socialist platform, a manoeuvre that risks alienating the party's purist base without fully reassuring wary moderates. A recent poll points to that danger, finding that nearly half the country does not properly understand what the democratic socialist movement stands for, leaving space that hostile Republican messaging is only too happy to fill.

Caught between these forces sits the party's congressional leadership, tasked with holding the coalition together long enough to win majorities. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has settled on what might be called a strictly transactional approach to the progressive surge. Despite facing open hostility from newly elected socialist nominees, and despite personal approval ratings languishing at just 15 per cent, Schumer continues to reach across the divide to broker tactical truces. Working on the principle that ideological agreement matters less than electoral arithmetic, he has focused on widening the map. 

When progressive challenger Abdul El-Sayed defeated Schumer's preferred candidate, Representative Haley Stevens, in Michigan's Senate primary, Schumer offered his backing without hesitation, telling El-Sayed that personal warmth was not that important so long as they shared the goal of beating Republican nominee Mike Rogers and holding the Senate. A similar pattern unfolded in Maine, where Schumer's original recruit, two-term Governor Janet Mills, was pushed aside by a populist challenger who was in turn replaced by Troy Jackson, another figure openly critical of Schumer's leadership in the race against Republican Senator Susan Collins.

Such pragmatism forces the leadership to pour significant financial support behind any candidate who wins a primary, whatever their views on the establishment itself. Yet the approach has done little to shield party leaders from resentment; they remain deeply unpopular with the progressive base, which regularly dismisses them as weak and complicit in the country's inequalities. There is such animosity that talk of mounting primary challenges against senior figures, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, has become a regular feature of grassroots conversation.

The picture is complicated further by the socialist movement's growing geographic reach. The far left has traditionally relied on deep blue urban seats with favourable demographics, as Mamdani's rise in New York shows. Recent primary results, however, show the movement's growing ability to contest competitive statewide primaries and withstand heavy spending from well-resourced outside groups such as AIPAC and the cryptocurrency lobby. El-Sayed's victory in Michigan carried particular weight because it showed the left could build a winning coalition beyond its traditional urban base, energising younger voters and drawing Arab and Muslim voters back into the Democratic fold in a crucial swing state.

Even so, analysts caution that winning a primary is a far cry from surviving a general election. The real test for the insurgent left is whether it can assemble coalitions broad enough to beat Republicans on less favourable terrain. Moderates continue to point to the enduring popularity of centrist governors, among them Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan and Tony Evers in Wisconsin, as evidence that steady, poll-tested governance still carries more weight with voters than revolutionary rhetoric.

The broader rift is deepened by fractures within the socialist movement itself. The anti-establishment left is a fractious coalition spanning varying degrees of ideological purity. There are pragmatists within the movement who prefer to work within the system and get left-leaning candidates elected. This camp is more focused on bread-and-butter concerns, and argues that trying for radical changes like the abolition of the presidency and Senate would only lead to electoral setbacks. Ideological purists, on the other hand, are keen on strict adherence to the socialist cause, irrespective of electoral fortunes. Deeply suspicious of the Democratic Party apparatus, this wing regularly pushes for the movement to break away and form an independent political force altogether, arguing that the establishment needs the left's energy more than the left needs its infrastructure.

Such division is a key factor affecting the movement's relationship with its own most successful figures, as evident from the debate over Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a possible presidential bid in 2028. Despite being among the movement's greatest success stories, Ocasio-Cortez has repeatedly fallen foul of the DSA's strictest demands. When she diluted her position on Israel and Gaza, the national DSA withdrew its endorsement of her altogether. She has also publicly declined to back full abolition of the Senate, preferring more modest reforms such as ending the legislative filibuster.

Such differences exist between the maximalist positions of grassroots leaders and the more measured positions of senior progressives like Senator Bernie Sanders. While the base remains furious over the administration's foreign policy, Sanders has praised former president Joe Biden for delivering some of the most pro-labour, working-class economic policies in recent memory, pointing to his administration's tougher stance on corporate regulation and the American Rescue Plan. 

At its heart, this is a contest for the soul of the Democratic Party. The establishment continues to bet on broad appeal, cooperation with business and incremental progress as the surest route to durable majorities. The socialists, however, demand wholesale transformation, placing ideological purity above everything else. The November midterms would probably give an indication about the inroads the insurgents have made into the Democratic mainstream.