Inside the DSA’s Dilemma: Grow the Democratic Party or Become It

News Analysis

The Democratic Socialists of America’s national leadership was split 14–13 in Chicago this summer. Not over whether to endorse Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) for president in 2028, but over whether the group’s own 120,000 members should even get to vote on the question.

The narrow margin, which blocked a nonbinding member poll, landed in the same season the DSA became, by its own count, the largest socialist organization in American history. It also exposed a fault line that the organization’s recent winning streak has mostly obscured. The DSA has not settled on what it wants to be.

Ocasio-Cortez has kept the door open for a potential run for White House. Asked on ABC’s “This Week” this month whether she would run for president or Senate in 2028, she said, “I haven’t ruled out the possibility, and I’m very humbled [by] the tremendous amount of support out there.” That leaves the DSA debating an endorsement for a candidacy she has neither confirmed nor denied.

The DSA was formed in 1982 through a merger of two earlier socialist organizations and describes its mission as replacing capitalism with democratic socialism, an economic system in which workers, not private owners, control production and resources. Its platform, called “Workers Deserve More,” calls for Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, universal rent control, and an end to mass incarceration. 

Some of the DSA’s positions have drawn particular scrutiny. The group’s platform calls for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and scaling back its deportation efforts, and its “defund the police” plank goes further, calling for eventually eliminating police and prisons altogether. 

Within the Party

Frank Llewellyn, the DSA’s national director from 2001 to 2011, told The Epoch Times the organization has no interest in becoming a third party, regardless of how the endorsement debate is resolved. Llewellyn is also treasurer for Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional campaign, a role he’s held since 2018. He said he was speaking in a personal capacity, not on her behalf.

“All the success DSA has had is within the Democratic system,” Llewellyn said. “We don’t really want a third party. It’s a complicated topic, but we are committed to this path, even though there are those who would disagree.”

Llewellyn attributed the movement’s momentum to shifting economic conditions rather than any single tactic.

“The conditions are driving the success,” he said, including “where power lies, changes in the economy, and running people who have that perspective and convincing people they will do their best to make those changes.” Voters, he said, simply “see the economy is not working for them.”

He also pointed to generational turnover inside the party.

“There’s generational change going on,” Llewellyn said. “Being around a long time is no longer an advantage.”

He was careful not to predict whether the DSA will ultimately back Ocasio-Cortez.

“AOC is a formidable candidate with strong support,” Llewellyn said. “I’m sure her future political aspirations will become more defined in due time.”

Miriam Bensman, a longtime DSA member in Queens who has organized for the group since the 1980s, told The Epoch Times that staying inside the Democratic Party was a founding principle, not a recent compromise. She traced the debate back to the Socialist Party in the 1960s, before the DSA’s 1982 founding, and recalled a New York City Council candidate, Jabari Brisport, who ran on the Green Party and Socialist Party lines and lost, then won a state Senate seat two years later running as a Democrat.

“Overcoming people’s loyalty to voting as Democrats was really hard,” Bensman said. “People had to learn it for themselves.”

Bensman acknowledged that running under the Green Party banner and only gaining 2 percent of the vote wasn’t worth the time or the expense. 

Bensman, who volunteered for Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral campaign, a state Assembly primary, and congressional campaigns in Michigan this year, also said the DSA’s momentum reflects economic conditions. She spent much of this year knocking on doors for Assembly candidate David Orkin, who defeated an incumbent in a Queens Democratic primary, and for Rep. Claire Valdez in an overlapping congressional district.

“The inequality of wealth and income has gotten so extreme over the last almost 50 years,” she said, pointing to tax cuts dating to President Ronald Reagan’s administration, weakened unions, and rising rents. “People are rightfully angry.”

She said the DSA sometimes works alongside the Working Families Party, which backs candidates who are not DSA members, including Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan. Bensman said she also campaigned this year for Donavan McKinney, a DSA-backed congressional candidate in Michigan.

Bensman’s support for the DSA is rooted in ideology, not just electoral tactics.

She said she is “moved by the ideals of democratic socialism,” arguing that people can’t live dignified lives amid extreme inequality and that democracy itself is compromised when government is shaped by corporate interests and concentrated wealth.

Bensman pointed to healthcare specifically, saying people “shouldn’t have to worry about not being able to eat in order to take care of their healthcare,” and compared it to services Americans already take for granted, like public schools, libraries, and toll-free roads.

“Even when we can’t get all of that,” she said, the DSA’s platform still “reshapes how we design public programs.”

This involves a belief, she said, that “government can help make life better.”

Establishment Democrats

State Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-N.Y.) told NY1’s Errol Louis that establishment Democrats should not try to block democratic socialist candidates following their recent wins.

“I keep trying to make this point to people who are anti-DSA or whatever it is. You’re not opposing these individuals who are running for office. You are opposing thousands of people who vote for them,” Gianaris said.

Llewellyn made a similar case in blunter terms, arguing that keeping the party’s current coalition intact is not the point.

“Those who can’t get on board with the DSA agenda need to leave and find another home,” Llewellyn said. “The Democratic corporate money people are at odds with DSA.”

That framing puts Llewellyn well to the left of Gianaris, who argues for coexistence rather than a clean break. Where Gianaris describes the DSA’s rise as an expansion of the Democratic coalition, Llewellyn frames it as a takeover already underway, one in which the party’s older, more moderate wing is expected to adapt or leave rather than the other way around.

The result is a party weighing two different versions of what “making room” for the DSA actually requires. A coalition broad enough to include democratic socialists, or one that eventually replaces its old guard with them.

Party Split

Not everyone views the DSA’s rise as a sign of durable strength. Ralph Rebandt, a Michigan pastor of 30 years who ran for governor there, told The Epoch Times the party’s leftward shift will cost Democrats votes in November. That kind of accommodation from elected Democrats, he said, is exactly what worries him: a party absorbing a movement it may not be able to control.

Rebandt pointed to Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate primary win in Michigan, which relied heavily on college towns, while Democratic voters in Detroit and other working-class areas favored Rep. Haley Stevens.

“There’s a huge split right now in the party,” Rebandt said. “The Democrats we’re talking to and working with in Detroit are telling us they don’t want anything to do with socialism or communism.”

Rebandt predicts El-Sayed will lose to Republican Mike Rogers in the general election. He also said he expects Generation Z voters, not older Democrats, to ultimately reject the socialist label.

“They know what socialism does. They know what socialism brings, and they don’t want that,” Rebandt said. “They want to be able to live the American dream.”

Asked whether the DSA intends to remain inside the Democratic Party or eventually break away, Rebandt predicted the opposite of a third-party strategy.

“At some point when they feel they’re large enough to take over the Democratic Party, they’re going to be the Democratic Party,” he said. “I don’t think they would do a third option.”

That prediction lines up with what Llewellyn and Bensman describe as DSA’s actual strategy. Growth through Democratic primaries, not a break from the party. Llewellyn pointed to a historical precedent he believes the DSA is emulating.

“The Republicans replaced the Whigs,” he said. “They were a third party.”

Whether that comparison holds may depend on what the DSA decides to do about Ocasio-Cortez. For now, the narrow vote in Chicago suggests the organization itself has not resolved the question, even as its membership and its influence within the Democratic Party continue to grow.

“People are afraid to argue with us because we are finding success,” Llewellyn said.