“I think a democratic socialist can get elected anywhere across the country for any position.” — Zohran Mamdani, June 28, 2026
These are heady days for the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Its leading lights, Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are on a winning streak—first winning office themselves and then helping propel successful congressional primary candidates in New York, Colorado, and Washington, D.C., with more potentially on the way. With more than 100,000 members, DSA is becoming a significant challenge to the Democratic Party establishment. James Carville is so alarmed that he has suggested corporate Democrats should leave the party and form one of their own rather than remain under the growing influence of democratic socialists. Good riddance.
Buoyed by these victories, DSA increasingly presents itself as the political voice of working people. But can it become a genuine working-class movement in red districts, where millions of working people live?
DSA’s own membership survey raises difficult questions.
- Only 8 percent of DSA members live in rural areas, compared with 57 percent in urban areas—a reasonable proxy for red versus blue America.
- Only 4 percent are blue-collar workers, and another 6 percent work in retail, food service, or similar occupations. Roughly 40 percent are teachers, academics, white-collar professionals, tech workers, or students.
Now, we can debate how to define the working class, and DSA can argue that its highly educated members represent the future of work. But whatever definition one adopts, it is difficult to describe DSA as a political organization of the working class when relatively few of its members come from blue-collar or service occupations.
Nor does DSA’s membership reflect the racial and ethnic composition of today’s workforce. Black and Hispanic workers together make up roughly one-third of the U.S. workforce, while only about 13 percent of DSA members identify as Black or Hispanic.
But couldn’t DSA’s current momentum carry it into the rest of America?
That is essentially what Mamdani is arguing: We are building. We are growing. We are winning. We have the energy. Now we can spread throughout the country.
Why not?
Recent polling suggests support for socialism has grown while support for capitalism has softened, particularly among Democrats. According to a 2025 Gallup poll, fewer than half of Democrats now view capitalism positively, while overall support for socialism stands at 39 percent. A New York Times/Siena poll shows that among Democrats, 49 percent have a favorable opinion of socialism, while 22 percent do not.
DSA supporters also point to a 2025 Data for Progress survey showing that large majorities of Democrats—and even a plurality of independents—identified more closely with “democratic socialism” than with “capitalism” when presented with favorable definitions of each.
Interesting findings—but I wouldn’t hang my hat on that survey. One-third of the respondents were retired, and only 22 percent were service, manual, or office workers. That is hardly a representative cross-section of today’s workforce.
Could DSA’s platform sell outside blue urban areas?
For the sake of argument, let’s assume the word socialist—and the definition offered in the survey, which largely resembles an updated New Deal—is not itself a barrier. What about the rest of DSA’s platform?
It contains many proposals that clearly benefit working people: Medicare for All, free higher education, paid family leave, universal child care, and rent control. It has also backed away from one of its most controversial earlier positions—defunding the police.
But its immigration platform would almost certainly be a harder sell. It calls for:
“Allow workers to freely migrate between countries to seek employment without restrictive immigration controls. Demilitarize the border, end all immigrant detention and deportations, provide immediate amnesty for all immigrants regardless of current immigration status, and provide access to jobs, labor rights, and social services to all immigrants.”
That proposal goes considerably further than the immigration policy of any current nation-state.
What DSA misses is the distinction many working people make between secure borders and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants already living and working in the United States. Support for stronger border enforcement remains high, yet nearly two-thirds of white working-class voters support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who have lived here for three years, paid taxes, and committed no felonies. (For more data please see A Party of Our Own.)
The problem, in my view, is not simply that DSA is too radical on border policy. Rather, it is not radical enough on the issue that most directly shapes working-class life: job security.
If we want to tame capitalism so working people get a fair shake, the most transformative change would be guaranteeing the right to a job at a living wage. If the private sector cannot provide one, the public sector should. Bernie Sanders championed that idea, and polling consistently shows it is popular with working people.
A guaranteed job fundamentally changes the balance of power between labor and capital. Workers can leave abusive employers. Families can survive layoffs. People can plan for the future instead of living from one economic crisis to the next.
How can there be economic democracy without the right to a job?
DSA gestures in this direction in its Green New Deal platform by calling for “massive infrastructure and jobs programs” and guaranteed support for fossil fuel workers.
But why stop there? Why not proclaim the right to a job for everyone?
The answer goes to the heart of the issue. DSA is not yet a working-class political organization. Its platform has not emerged from sustained debate among workers whose daily lives are shaped by chronic job insecurity. Instead, activists and policy experts have assembled a platform that includes many proposals with strong working-class support—but also others that do not.
Unless DSA becomes an organization of working people rather than simply for working people, it is difficult to see how it will expand much beyond blue cities and college towns. We may soon have an interesting test case in Wisconsin if Francesca Hong wins the Democratic gubernatorial primary. If she does, we’ll learn much more about how a DSA candidate fares beyond deep-blue territory.
A genuinely national working-class movement must grow out of the lived experience and political deliberation of workers themselves—not simply from the convictions of activists speaking on their behalf.
P.S. I’m off to Denmark for a little firsthand experience with social democracy.
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