(Photo from DSA website)
- The socialists were patient for a decade. As the DSA put it in its July newsletter “Our gains are hitting the Democratic Party establishment like a leftist tidal wave, and our members are gearing up for much bigger plans toward 2028.”
For years, we were told socialism in the Democratic Party was a conservative fantasy. In 2026, it is running the largest city in America and winning Democratic primaries across the country.
For a long time, when conservatives warned that socialism was working its way into the bloodstream of the Democratic Party, we were waved off as alarmists who saw a Marxist behind every tree. Democrats, we were assured, remained the party of moderates and pragmatists who were concerned with the average American.
That assurance has expired.
The largest city in America now has a Democratic Socialist mayor. Zohran Mamdani, a dues-paying member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), was sworn in as mayor of New York City on January 1.
His administration includes figures with deep DSA ties, including his DSA-member chief of staff, and the former NYC-DSA leader as the director of a brand-new City Hall office built to organize the public, whatever that means.
New York is the financial capital of the world, and its government is now led by people affiliated with an organization that openly calls for public ownership of the country’s largest corporations and essential industries.
None of this fell from the sky. The DSA spent the better part of a decade building a political machine while the rest of us assumed the fever would break on its own.
The numbers tell the story.
In 2017, the Democratic Socialists of America counted roughly 24,000 members. Today the organization claims at least 120,000. That is a fivefold increase in less than a decade.
Even more telling, a recent CNN poll found that a full third of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents now identify as socialists. A bloc that large can no longer be dismissed as a fringe of the party.
Consider what happened in the 2026 primaries. More than 100 DSA-backed candidates won their primary races and are moving on to the general election.
In Colorado, 29-year-old Democratic Socialist Melat Kiros unseated Rep. Diana DeGette, a Democrat who had held her seat for 15 terms. In Wisconsin, Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong came within a hair of winning the Democrat gubernatorial primary.
Colorado and Wisconsin are a long way from the Brooklyn enclaves where this movement was supposed to stay contained. And this week, when the House put the question up for a vote — condemn socialism, including the DSA, or don’t — 192 House Democrats chose not to, Hakeem Jeffries among them.
Just last November, 86 Democrats supported a similar resolution. This time, 8 did.
Read what they actually want.
You do not have to guess at their intentions. They publish them.
The DSA’s own 2026 platform calls for public ownership of major corporations and essential industries, universal “free” state-run health care, “free” college tuition, universal rent control, reparations, and amnesty for those in the country illegally.
It goes further and calls for fully abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the police, and the prison system.
And then there are the institutions at the heart of our constitutional order.
The DSA calls for abolishing the United States Senate and replacing the Supreme Court with a judiciary subordinate to Congress. Yet the same coalition that wants fewer checks onCconcentrated power also champions “No Kings” rallies.
An organization that is now electing mayors, city council members, and members of Congress has stated in writing that it wants to dismantle or fundamentally remake two of the central institutions of our American constitutional government.
These institutions were deliberately designed to check concentrated political power and prevent temporary majorities from exercising unlimited authority. The DSA sees the existing checks and balances structure as an obstacle to its radical policy demands and aims to replace it.
The strategy is the point.
Here is what conservatives need to understand about how this movement operates.
The DSA is not primarily trying to build a separate third party. Its candidates clear an internal endorsement process and then compete inside Democratic primaries. Candidates are expected to identify publicly as socialists, support the DSA platform and view themselves as “socialist organizers first, and legislators second.”
When they win, they advance to November as Democratic nominees.
That distinction matters.
In many districts, the decisive contest over whether a DSA-backed candidate takes office happens in the Democratic primary, not the general election. By November, voters may simply see a Republican and a Democrat on the ballot, even though the Democratic nominee was recruited, endorsed, or organized by an explicitly socialist organization.
This is not speculation. It is a documented organizing strategy, and it is working from the school board up.
Why does this matter in Mississippi?
Some readers will say this is a New York problem, or a Colorado problem, and that Mississippi is safely conservative. I understand the instinct. I also remember that we were the ones who were told socialism could never reach City Hall in the first place.
And we know the DSA formally welcomed Mississippi’s first DSA chapter in Jackson in January of 2026, with additional organizing efforts underway in both North and South Mississippi.
In other words, they are already here and expanding.
Movements that intend to reshape a country start early in the places they cannot yet win. They organize on campuses and in the low-turnout local races most people never bother to show up for. They recruit candidates, build networks, and wait.
And you can already hear how the language is shifting inside the Mississippi Democratic Party.
Mississippi Democrat Party Chairman Cheikh Taylor recently told SuperTalk radio host Richard Cross that Americans need to rethink what counts as “socialistic.”
Medicare, public schools, farm aid, road and bridge funding — Taylor argued these are all socialistic programs Americans have simply stopped noticing. He warned that we “have to be very careful how we coin these phrases” when it comes to the bedrock of our society.
In my opinion, this is an argument for erasing the line between government’s core functions and government owning the means of production. Once “socialistic” means everything from public schools to road and bridge funding, it can no longer mean the DSA’s actual platform — and that confusion is the whole point.
The same blurring that got a DSA-backed mayor into Gracie Mansion in New York works just as well from a podium in Jackson.
And they count on complacency.
Because a conservative that assumes it is permanently safe is a conservative that has already begun to slip.
Vigilance is key.
Pay attention to the races you might have been ignoring. City council, county commission, school board, and district attorney seats shape your daily life far more than most people realize, and they are exactly where political movements build their bench.
Learn who is funding the candidates on your local ballot and where that money comes from.
Vote in the primaries, where many of these fights are settled long before November.
And talk to your neighbors before someone else does.
The socialists were patient for a decade. As the DSA put it in its July newsletter “Our gains are hitting the Democratic Party establishment like a leftist tidal wave, and our members are gearing up for much bigger plans toward 2028.”
We do not have the luxury of being complacent for even one more election.
Get engaged now.
