OMG--Socialism! by Robert Kuttner

[justaprogressive]

In the past week, candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) won nine out of the ten state and federal primaries contested in New York, including upsets in two congressional districts. Pennsylvania Democrats chose socialist Chris Rabb as the party’s candidate for the state’s Third Congressional District. Democratic socialist Janeese Lewis George will almost certainly become the next mayor of Washington, D.C. In Colorado, DSA-backed Melat Kiros won the primary for the First Congressional District, unseating 15-term incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette.

These and other gains have led to borderline hysterical commentaries from the center and right, many of them self-interested, all of them misleading.

According to a Wall Street Journal editorial, “Traditional Democrats are now facing a hostile takeover from the socialist left, and so far few are willing to put up a fight.” This is false. Corporate Democrats are fighting, with millions of dollars in super PAC ads; they’re just losing. They have only money. Democratic socialists have committed activists as ground troops.

Many commentators are also alarmed that the success of the economic left is often linked to a critique both of Israel’s policies of ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank and of the excessive influence of AIPAC in domestic policies, often in bed with the corporate right and dark-money PACs. These critiques invariably raise the specter of antisemitism.

The Jewish Insider newsletter warned, “The Colorado results suggest that, far from being contained to a few scattered congressional districts in New York City, the momentum for far-left, anti-Israel candidates is only growing within the Democratic Party, especially within urban population centers.” I have yet to read any such critique which candidly acknowledges that the backlash might have something to do with Israel’s appalling behavior.

https://prospect.org/2026/07/02/omg-socialism/