CHICAGO — For leaders of the country’s democratic socialist movement, 2026 has been a year of successes beyond anything they had dared to hope.
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“I never thought this would be possible in my lifetime,” Ashik Siddique, co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, said in an interview during a three-day meeting over the weekend that drew 600 members here. “It definitely has been a shock to some of us to see the gains we are making, but it doesn’t come from nowhere.”
So young is the organization’s dues-paying membership, Siddique said, that “I’m an elder in DSA terms. I’m in my 30s.”
At the DSA gathering, billed as a summit, attendees were addressed as “comrades.” Evidence of what brought them here were the “Abolish ICE” T-shirts on sale, along with buttons declaring “Land Lords Suck” and posters with the 19th-century slogan “Labor is entitled to all it creates.” Manning one exhibit hall table was “Deer Leader” — the taxidermy head of a buck with a red DSA ball cap tucked between its antlers.
But a serious and strategic question hung over the celebratory mood: What now?
Since last year’s election of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani as New York mayor, candidates formally endorsed by the DSA’s national governing body or supported by its local chapters have swept dozens of primaries, from city council contests to congressional races, in some cases defeating veteran Democratic incumbents.
DSA membership has exploded, to nearly 120,000 nationally, more than double what it was when Donald Trump won a second term as president in 2024. A CNN poll released last week found that one-third of Democrats and Democratic-leaning adults identify as democratic socialists.
Those numbers are the reason the Democratic Party establishment is so worried about what it sees as a political death wish. In a Washington Post-Ipsos survey conducted last month, 3 out of 4 Democrats said they would be open to supporting a democratic socialist for president — but fewer than half of all Americans felt that way.
DSA members acknowledge that is a conundrum, and not only on the presidential level. Many of their platform’s long-term goals, such as abolishing the prison system, opening the borders, defunding the Pentagon and getting rid of the U.S. Senate, are far outside the mainstream.
But they insist this should not deter them from putting forward democratic socialist candidates outside deep-blue enclaves like New York City. Among those contenders is Francesca Hong, who appears to be ahead in the messy Aug. 11 Democratic gubernatorial primary in the crucial swing state of Wisconsin.
“It would be a disaster if a leftist won the primary and lost the general election, but it was a disaster in 2016 when a centrist won the primary and lost the general,” said Jeremy Cohan, a former co-chair of the DSA’s 15,000-member New York City chapter, referring to the hard-fought battle between Hillary Clinton, dynastic standard bearer for the establishment, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), who elevated the democratic socialist brand to the national level.
“We have to take these risks to win,” Cohan said.
DSA members belong to largely autonomous chapters, and many also group themselves into more than a dozen fractious caucuses. Looking forward, a central question is whether they should seek to jolt the Democratic Party to the left or make what they refer to as a “dirty break.”
Cerena Ermitanio, a registered nurse from the Houston chapter, is a member of the 27-person National Political Committee, which functions as the DSA’s board of directors. She also counts herself as part of its Marxist, labor-oriented Bread & Roses caucus.
Ermitanio said a complete break from the Democratic Party “makes sense to me as a tactic,” because the DSA’s alternative is to relegate itself to being “a junior partner” in an establishment institution that does not speak to the concerns of working people.
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Taking the other side of the argument was Katie Sims, a member of the Ithaca, New York, chapter who chairs the DSA’s electoral operations and is part of the “reformist” Socialist Majority Caucus. (DSA members rankle at anyone who would describe them as centrist or moderate.)
“We’re trying to win the Democratic voter base,” Sims said. “So it wouldn’t make sense to stop what’s working.”
Another question is whether to continue to put its volunteer-driven field operations toward electing candidates who agree with the DSA on central tenets, such as government-run health care, but don’t embrace the democratic socialist label.
In Michigan’s crucial Democratic Senate primary on Tuesday, for example, DSA activists and ground troops are informally helping progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed, even though he insists he is not a socialist, “just a capitalist who understands how capitalism works.”
But DSA chapters have been less lenient elsewhere. The Orlando chapter recently told a county commission candidate seeking its endorsement that he would have to put the words “democratic socialist” on his website to receive it, chapter member Cliff Connolly recalled. Ten minutes later, Connolly said, the top of that website declared the candidate “A Democratic Socialist fighting for working families.”
To win the DSA’s high-profile national endorsement, officials said, a candidate must meet a list of criteria: identify as a full-throated democratic socialist, not merely a progressive; be running where the DSA has a strong chapter and can assist with a robust organizational infrastructure; decline to take money from the pro-Israel lobby; and support DSA positions that include abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and establishing a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
The national board also puts candidates seeking its endorsement through a rigorous interview process, one that leaders said has become more so since Mamdani’s victory.
One of the next things on the agenda is putting together the process to make a 2028 presidential endorsement, with a target of doing so as early as next March or April.
The odds-on favorite for winning it, should she decide to run, is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York). But any endorsement would be part of a longer-horizon strategy for the DSA, said Alex Pellitteri, chair of the DSA’s presidential exploratory committee.
DSA leaders recognize an imperative to expand the reach of their organization — and their movement — beyond the young, urban and college-educated who constitute a disproportionate share of it. They say a national presidential effort would help do that.
“What attracts us to running a candidate is it would give us a platform to reach millions of people all across the country,” said Pellitteri, who got his start in politics as a high school student knocking on doors for Sanders in 2016.
But they vow 2028 would be only the beginning of a long journey. “We see it as a means to help grow the socialist movement and the DSA,” he added. “Our goal is to have the transition from capitalism to socialism, and that will not be achieved in one campaign.”
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