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The audio-only version of this episode is here and wherever you listen to podcasts.
Today, we’re talking about socialism. Democrats are heading into the 2026 midterms after a “hot socialist summer,” in which Democratic Socialists and DSA-aligned candidates had their best primary season since Bernie Sanders popularized the organization in 2016.
There are two DSA members in the House today: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib. At the start of the next Congress, there could be seven.
They’ve also won state and local primaries. And there are roughly a dozen other candidates — including Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, Troy Jackson in Maine, and Brad Lander in New York — who are not Democratic Socialists in name but are strongly aligned with the movement.
It’s not quite the 45 Tea Party-backed congressional candidates who won in the 2010 midterms, but the dynamic isn’t so different: An insurgent ideological movement, fed up with the status quo, is challenging the powers that be in one of America’s two major parties.
So where did the movement come from? What does it want? And can it coexist with the rest of the Democratic Party, or is it seeking a MAGA-style takeover?
In this episode, I dig into these questions and more with Charles Homans, a national politics reporter for The New York Times Magazine. He recently reported the article “Moderates See Socialists as a Threat to the Democratic Party. Socialists Agree,” for which he spoke with DSA candidates, organizers, and members in New York, Chicago, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
