Last month in June, DSA-endorsed candidates enjoyed what can only be described as a total victory in the Democratic Party primaries. Important state legislature seats all across the city went red, and two new socialists will soon be taking their seats in Congress. The establishment is scrambling to explain this as a New York City-only phenomenon, but DSA candidates and other left populists with similar platforms are winning all over the country. Membership is climbing fast, reaching into the tens of thousands. The media profile of democratic socialism is even bigger, as Zohran Mamdani makes good on his affordable housing promises while living rent-free in Fox News hosts’ heads. The moment is electrifying; the rebirth of American democratic socialism started in 2016, and now, ten years later, we are seeing it emerge as a serious political force. The number one goal post is in sight: the White House. Full circle from the original Sanders Presidential run, we may be ready for another swing at the big chair in 2028. The only logical conclusion of the strategy currently being pursued is the Presidency, and we are closer to that goal than ever before. Currently, DSA has a single qualified politician with the necessary public profile to take on a Presidential run, and that is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Right now it is only an idea being thrown around, but in the wake of these victories it is clear that if we pool our resources and launch a serious campaign in 2027, we have a decent shot at electing AOC President, thus completely destroying our own movement almost overnight.

What’s Wrong with “President AOC?”

This may sound harsh, especially in a moment of positivity in the midst of an epoch defined by horror, but now might be our last chance to grapple with the Democratic entryism strategy before we take the plunge. While the die-hard capitalists and Zionists shriek with indignation, some establishment politicians are choosing to play it cool. A critical mass of establishment Dems may soon "bend the knee” and allow us to move forward. However, our class enemies give us nothing for free, and the cost will be steep. To put it bluntly, a President AOC would enact their policies while wearing our colors, thus neutralizing the threat of a social-democratic challenge. DSA would be de-radicalized as we try to support "our" President even while she severely moderates her position, the masses turning against socialism when the first socialist President sends their retirement to Israel yet again. Our ideas work, neoliberalism doesn't, so why on Earth would we want to take credit for neoliberal policies on a national scale?

It is tempting to brush this off, to say that we could hold her accountable to a socialist agenda, but thus far we have proven incapable of doing that. AOC has consistently failed to use her time as a legislator any differently than any other Democrat would, betraying her supposed principles to the point that she lost her National DSA endorsement. This feeble attempt at accountability went nowhere; NYC-DSA kept its endorsement; her behavior did not change, and she is still often and visibly associated with DSA in public events and the media. On the other hand, she has shown herself to be deeply sensitive to pressure from the Democratic Party, folding easily and often. There are certain issues which the Democratic leadership wants off the table while they are in power, like genocide in Gaza and caged migrants, and she totally complied with that directive during the Biden administration. AOC has never shown herself capable of standing up when under any pressure regarding these all-important issues, making her indistinguishable from the rest of the party at the end of the day.

AOC's deficiencies go from less than ideal to potentially fatal when we move from domestic to foreign policy, the area in which a socialist President would need to be the boldest and most transformative. At this point, the USA is clearly a declining empire, so every President for the foreseeable future will preside over at least one disaster that reveals the limits of American power, and these disasters will only get worse and worse. Biden had to bite the bullet and withdraw from Afghanistan, and was unable to deter a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Then, most infamously, he refused to even try to stop America's ally/proxy from committing the most well-documented genocide in history, despite its negative consequences for US strategy. Trump blundered into a war with Iran, and without going into excruciating detail, hopefully most readers will understand that the results have been incalculably awful from the perspective of American imperialism. Not only did Trump not win the war, but he has also been unable to lose it, as an increasingly rogue Israel repeatedly sabotages his attempts to sign the surrender papers. While Trump and Biden differ slightly, both of their foreign policies can be fairly described as "delusional liberal imperialism."

It seems quite likely that the next big geopolitical issue will be Taiwan. With US weakness now exposed, the PRC may actually make a move. A liberal imperialist perspective would then demand a US response, with predictably humiliating results. The only way a socialist President could ignore the taint of failure is to totally reject their predecessors and go on a radically different path. Weimar Germany comparisons may be tired by this point, but students of history may remember what happens after a social democratic government oversees a national humiliation against foreign powers. Anyone who claims to have the one right answer is lying, but it is hard to imagine a way out of this with our living standards intact that doesn't involve gutting the Pentagon, some kind of negotiated settlement with rising world powers, and a vast redistribution of wealth away from the oligarchs. When you factor in the ecological crisis, even that level of social transformation starts to look far too conservative. In short, a socialist executive would need to enact a reform package so unpalatable to American imperialism that it might actually provoke a military coup.

AOC, however, has already conceded on this. It is unclear if she is afraid of standing up to the establishment or simply so uncreative that she cannot even imagine an alternative foreign policy, but at the Munich Security Conference she articulated a populism-themed version of Biden and Obama's liberal imperialist vision. She accused Trump of being too soft on "authoritarians," implying more intervention against states that do not cooperate with US hegemony. Obvious moral issues with American aggression aside, it is very concerning that AOC thinks that the US is still in any position to dictate terms. When the PRC attempts to re-unify with Taiwan, either President Cortes will show that she is bluffing, thus creating a new "stabbed in the back" narrative for the right to harass us with, or she will launch the most costly war in living memory at a time when Americans have no appetite for any foreign wars at all.

Why Aren’t We Ready for National Power?

The problem may begin with AOC's flaws; however, it does not end with her as an individual. The heart of the issue is with DSA as an institution. The unfortunate truth is that we have not yet built an organization that can produce a Presidential candidate better than AOC. For the sake of argument, we will imagine that Zohran Mamdani could legally run for President. Mamdani is the best we have had so far, a true cadre of DSA and incredibly talented as a politician. Yet it is hard to imagine him navigating the US's imperial collapse any better. Generally, Mamdani avoids foreign policy, but when pressed, he too can only vaguely discuss it in terms of "authoritarianism." He too compromises with Zionists and other enemies of the working class, often going against our agenda, and he too deserves criticism for it. However, we must admit that we have put him in a position where he feels that he must do these things, and he has no strategic reason not to. No matter how many members we gather, how well organized our campaigns are, or how many elected officials we have in office, we never see a united front advancing toward our goals. The result is co-option, betrayal, disappointment, lots of finger-pointing, and no organizational control over our own strategic assets.

The solution is simple: We need to learn to say no. We have no power because we have no boundaries. For a great lesson on the power of boundaries, we should look to the Democratic Party. When DSA took over a state’s Democratic Committee, the newcomers were not allowed to use any of their resources. When Mamdani won the primary, key establishment figures had no qualms about letting Cuomo split the vote. Then, no matter how oppositional a candidate is when they are getting elected, once they are actually in office, the Democratic establishment has power over them. A politician's place in key committees and caucuses, and thus their power, is dependent on their standing within their own party. This is the point of a political party; it is an institution designed to wield power by providing organization, structure, and discipline.

The DSA, meanwhile, is not yet a political party; we exert no pressure because we are an endorsement machine with only an "ON" button. Politicians know that even when they openly pursue policies that actually go against the organization's bylaws, the DSA will tacitly allow them to continue acting as a standard-bearer. We have and sometimes use mechanisms with which we can hold politicians to account and withhold our official endorsements, but the DSA does nothing to create distance in the eyes of the public or its own membership. Despite having internal processes to choose whether or not to endorse candidates, these processes have little to no effect, leaving private media concerns and celebrities to wield the real power over the “socialist” vote. If you ask the average person who they think of when they hear DSA, they will say Bernie Sanders and AOC, two politicians who are not part of the organization.

A perfect example of this problem is the Brad Lander situation. According to the internal democratic mechanisms of DSA, Lander was not endorsed because he does not adhere to the organization's core principles, namely anti-Zionism. As comptroller, Lander invested city funds in the Israeli defense industry, consciously choosing to make government employees complicit in genocide. He has never indicated that his position on this has changed, so he cannot be a socialist candidate. Whether you agree or disagree with this decision, that was the choice. In practice, though, was that choice allowed to have an impact? Our most prominent public figure endorsed Lander, so he was lumped in with the Democratic Socialist slate in almost all media coverage under the category of “Mamdani-backed candidates.” This meant that a Zionist was allowed to benefit from the energy and public profile of a DSA association, without the consent of the organization or any meaningful concession to its goals. Three wins sounds better than two, so DSA did not push back on any of this.

This phenomenon should concern all of us, even those who (like myself) see it as better to have Brad Lander in office than Dan Goldman. Despite his drawbacks, Brad Lander is the best-case scenario here, but more recent events have furnished us with a worst case: Graham Platner. Again, a progressive leftist who would never pass muster as an official DSA candidate was lumped in with our “insurgent” campaign against the Democratic Party. While Lander is a fairly standard left-of-center Democrat, even a former member of DSA, Platner is not any kind of anti-imperialist, and is, in fact, an enthusiastic war criminal mercenary and a prison guard at the notorious Abu Ghraib. He is also an alleged rapist. Allegations of sexual crimes were known well before this latest accusation, and would have almost certainly disqualified him from a DSA endorsement had he sought one. However, he is associated with American social-democracy with or without our approval, because he had the support of unaccountable DSA-adjacent influencers like Hasan Piker. Now that Platner is completely disgraced, he has exposed the entire democratic socialist movement to criticism despite the fact that he is not affiliated with its organization.

As quickly as American socialism has developed as a political movement, its development as a cultural movement has been far faster, meaning the media ecosystem around DSA currently has an outsized influence. An appetite for left-wing media is a good thing, and those satisfying that appetite have a role to play, but it is a sign of weakness that democratic socialism has a potential “kingmaker” completely outside of the actual organization. The issue here is not a matter of rivalry between potential leaders and mouthpieces, or even really about democratic principle, but about the dangers of investing too much power in private individuals. It would be counterproductive to try and prove that this or that individual has been “co-opted,” but the reality is that individual media figures are corruptible, they have interests that often go against those of the movement, and there is no mechanism to hold them accountable. To prevent another Platner, or a comparable disaster at the Presidential scale, DSA needs to make its own decisions loud and clear.

This lack of an organizational voice does not just elevate deeply problematic figures; it has toxic effects on all socialist electeds. If any politician is able to secure the equivalent of a DSA endorsement through bilateral deals with another politician or media figure, why would they care about meeting DSA standards? This culture of impunity does not just encourage bad behavior; it actually discourages radicalism. There are no consequences to "betraying" the socialist movement, so that course of action becomes the only logical choice. Think of it like a prisoner's dilemma: every DSA elected knows that their fellow comrades can benefit from cutting a side deal with capitalist leaders, so even well-meaning DSA politicians feel like they need to do their own horse trading first. When the DSA first elected to run Mamdani for mayor, multiple electeds broke discipline to denounce the attempt, while AOC, as usual, was afraid to offend anyone and sat on the fence for almost the entire primary campaign. Hopefully Mamdani will not give any new DSA candidates a similar cynical treatment, but the only thing stopping him is his own preference, not any institutional mechanism. No matter how much power we build, it will all mean nothing if we are afraid to really denounce electeds who undermine our goals.

How Can We Get Ready for 2028?

These issues are very serious, and any kind of "socialist majority" government will be an extremely high-risk low-reward prospect until they are resolved. Thankfully, our hard work has placed us in an excellent position to overcome this weakness. Recent successes have made further entrenchment in the Democratic Party very tempting, but they have also furnished us with the opportunity to break free of it. If we declared political independence at an ebb for DSA, the road would be rough. We would look like sore losers, and it would be hard to reclaim the relevance we have today, even if we could eventually become a successful socialist party. This year, the 250th anniversary of the USA's own independence, DSA is in its ascendancy. We are now, by number of dues-paying members, the largest American socialist organization in history. Meanwhile, both parties in the Epstein coalition have been fatally discredited like never before. The corporate media is buzzing nervously about a powerful "political machine" which ruthlessly crushes any capitalist establishment candidate, so let us set about making their fears a reality.

There are a range of options this could take depending on how urgently we want to proceed. All of them involve setting clear boundaries, and shifting the selection process for American “socialist” candidates away from the informal influence of particular figures and into official democratic channels. First of all, we need to have an official, open selection process including serious public debate before DSA endorses any candidate for President. Through this process we could both avoid a catastrophic AOC coronation and foster a serious public debate on what a sound Presidential strategy would look like. For a more long-term, general-purpose option, we could adopt something like the Mamdani-endorsed 1-2-3-4 Proposal to make DSA a functional surrogate party. With this, all of our politicians could start speaking together with DSA’s voice, hopefully making the organization’s preferences louder than those of the media figures we enjoy. Merely exerting some pressure on our politicians could turn DSA from an asset to be co-opted and discarded into a political actor, capable of actually making policy. Better yet, we could go from primary challenges to general election runs against Democrats. This would deplete the Democratic establishment's resources, forcing them to pour out money not just in primaries, but in general elections where they were once basically unopposed. As an added bonus, independent runs would separate us from the unpopular Democratic Party and establish us as our own entity in the public imagination. There is no substitute for the boldest step of all, however, the one we will need to make if we are serious about a Socialist America: reorganization as our own party. Change is coming, and if there is any kind of future for American civilization then the first socialist President has already been born. However, make no mistake, she is not a Democrat.