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"Capitalism is a system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own benefit: we must replace it with democratic socialism, a system in which ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods and society."
That is the argument made on its website by the organization known as the Democratic Socialists of the USA (DSA), a left-wing movement that since 2018 has been gaining more and more relevance and political influence in the country that is considered the heart of capitalism.
Founded in the 1970s as a union of different smaller organizations with leftist ideas, the DSA was an almost marginal movement until the presidential campaign of independent candidate Bernie Sanders in 2016 changed the perspective of many in the US about what socialism represents.
Since then, recognition of the movement has been growing: in 2018, two of its members, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, won seats in the House of Representatives; and in 2025, the DSA confirmed this ability to win elections by ensuring that one of its candidates, Zohran Mamdani, triumphed in the campaign for the coveted mayor of New York City.
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In the midterm elections on November 3, when a third of the Senate and the entire House of Representatives are renewed, the DSA seek to take advantage of the momentum that this victory gave them to become a force that can influence the decisions and legislative guidelines of the Democratic Party, especially with regard to the way of facing Donald Trump's last two years in the presidency.
"We are living in a very scary moment in many ways in the US. Many people feel a real crisis regarding the direction the country is taking," the co-president of the DSA, Ashik Siddique, tells BBC Mundo.
"We are hopeful that, heading into the general election, there will be broad change in the country; in particular, the rise of democratic socialism as a distinct orientation and as a response to the crises facing the population. It is not enough to oppose Trump and the rise of the far right, as many Americans do."
But this rise is generating concern, even panic, in some sectors that see in the DSA a movement that could lead the Democratic Party to extreme leftist lines and lead to defeats at the polls at times when circumstances seem to be favoring them.
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"Some Democrats have reacted with panic to the nomination of DSA-backed candidates," said a report from the Brookings think tank that analyzed DSA victories in the 2026 primaries.
"Democratic control of the House of Representatives and the Senate appears to be within reach, given the economic situation and the low approval ratings of President Donald Trump; however, many centrists in the party fear that running candidates whose trajectories are not in tune with majority voters could cost Democrats control of the House and, above all, the Senate."
For others, the true reach that the DSA has gained is being inflated by the popularity of some of its candidates and, despite the victories they have won, they will remain a marginal group.
So how radical are the DSA's ideas and how "extremist" are the candidates it supports? How much influence could they acquire over the Democratic Party and the US electoral political landscape? And will they be an ally or a risk for Democrats during the last two years of the Trump presidency?
The idea of adopting democratic socialism in the US is not new: socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs ran for president in 1904, 1908, 1912 and 1920, obtaining almost a million votes in that last election.
But with the rise of the Soviet Union on the world stage, and later the Cold War, an intense rejection was generated in the United States against anything that could be related to communism and socialism that lasted largely until 2008.
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"Many Americans feel that capitalism is not working as well as we were led to believe for a long time: that idea, that expectation that, by making an effort - whether by getting a good job or starting a business, for example - you could live better than your parents has not really been fulfilled at all, especially since the economic crisis of 2008," the co-president of the DSA told BBC Mundo.
Siddique is from the generation that came of age during that time and says that it was then that he realized that it was going to be more difficult for him to find a good job, despite having a good education, than it was for previous generations.
"Seeing how the banks were rescued and how all the wars that started during the George W. Bush administration simply continued, a change arose."
"That's why when Bernie Sanders [in 2016] ran for president and pointed out many of these problems, a space opened up to show that another option was actually viable. A lot of the explanations that we had been given about why the political status quo is the way it is simply stopped holding up."
Although Sanders has never been an official member of the DSA, he declares himself a democratic socialist and much of his message has ended up influencing the movement's political platform.
Platform in which the influence of large corporations and billionaires in the world of politics is criticized and in which several of the projects that Sanders has promoted in the Senate are advocated.
"We want to collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation. We want a multiracial working class united in solidarity, rather than divided by fear," the DSA program says.
"We want to achieve 'radical' reforms - such as a single-payer universal health system ('Medicare for all'), defunding the police and reinvesting them in communities, the 'Green New Deal' and other measures - as part of a transition to a freer and fairer life," they add.
Other more controversial objectives include defunding the Department of Defense, ending the ICE immigration enforcement agency, ending economic sanctions on countries that are not aligned with US interests, and eliminating the Senate as an institution.
Furthermore, the DSA have embraced the Palestinian cause as their own, accusing Israel of carrying out a "genocide" in Gaza and the US of being a participant through financial and weapons aid to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, which has generated rejection in Jewish communities against the movement.
It is these types of controversial proposals that worry many moderate voters, and that have served as useful campaign material for both Republican candidates and President Trump himself, as Elaine Kamarck, a researcher at the Brookings think tank, told BBC Mundo.
"The problem, the reason Democrats get upset with them, is that Republicans are very skilled at associating the rest of the party — the vast majority — with their approaches. And those approaches are lethal [in elections]."
Although a large number of Democratic candidates have openly rejected the ideals of Democratic Socialists, most of them have been accused of being "extremists" and "socialists" in Republican campaign ads.
"The Atlantic" magazine journalist Jonathan Chait has studied the DSA in depth and explains that the increase in their popularity is based on the discontent that Democratic voters have with the current situation in the United States.
"Democratic voters see Donald Trump acting without restraint, violating their values, the Constitution and the law. They blame Trump, but they also blame the Democrats — who are powerless — for having no power."
"The DSA have taken advantage of this discontent in many of these races. They are basically arguing that the Democratic establishment is doing nothing, so they are urging you to vote for them. They promise to take action, and that argument is effective in some of these races."
For Siddique, most of the conversations he has with people typically don't involve fear of socialism: "The most common thing is not so much the fear of socialism, but rather the approach of, 'Well, how are they going to pay for that?'"
"To this, our response is simple: we can finance these measures by taxing the richest people, who receive billions of dollars in tax breaks. We can also cut the military budget. We don't need it; it doesn't make us safer."
Democratic division
Just as there are people in the Democratic Party who view the movement with fear, there are others who believe it is likely that the positions of the DSA candidates will moderate as their approaches begin to have greater visibility.
Furthermore, they consider that their ability to attract the young vote is something that the Democratic Party needs today.
A clear example of this has been the campaign of Dominican-American political organizer Darializa Ávila Chevalier, who is a candidate for the House of Representatives for the 13th district of New York City (which includes northern Manhattan and parts of the Bronx).
"In my campaign, we knocked on more than 155,000 doors, and they were all volunteers," Ávila-Chevalier explains to BBC Mundo.
Thanks to the youth of their candidates and their management of social networks, the DSA have a base of young voters who are not passive, but rather participate in the political debate and help their candidates win. It was a key tool for Ávila-Chevalier to beat the veteran Democratic representative of his district, Adriano Espaillat.
But like Ocasio Cortez when he launched his campaign, Ávila Chevalier has become the target of attacks from the Republican Party, right-wing media and the president himself for positions he has held in the past.
In the particular case of Ávila, several publications that he made on social networks during his time as a political activist in New York and that he deleted when he closed his
As Ávila Chevalier explains to BBC Mundo, the times he has spoken with his voters about the issue, they have let him know that they understand that they were messages he wrote in his youth.
"They also understand that, at the end of the day, what I was trying to say, even though it was poorly said, said in a juvenile way or whatever, was consistent with the idea that every human being deserves dignity and that is what has always been the foundation of my political vision."
For the writer and journalist Jonathan Chait, statements like Ávila's are interesting because they do not necessarily constitute a change in ideals.
"They're not going to give up on them. They're just telling you, 'That's not what I advocate for in my campaign. It's a distraction. They want to talk about this instead of that.' This allows them to stay true to those principles and preserve some of their more radical alliances without harming their political future," Chait says.
"It is possible that over time they will move away from these positions; but it is also easy to interpret this rhetoric and suspect that they are employing a tactic - common among radicals at both ends of the political spectrum - which consists of trying to enter conventional politics, hiding their radical positions without actually abandoning them, waiting for the opportune moment to be able to put them into practice," he adds.
The panorama with the election
In this election on Tuesday, the DSA expects the number of representatives with the organization's endorsement to increase to seven, including the reelection of Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, who is a candidate in the Detroit metropolitan area.
Additionally, they almost certainly hope (because they are competing in districts that traditionally vote Democratic) to have the victory of Chris Rabb in Philadelphia, Melat Kiros in Denver, Donavan McKinney in Detroit and Claire Valdez and Darializa Ávila Chevalier in New York.
As Kamarck, a researcher at the Brookings think tank, explained to BBC Mundo, this number, in a Chamber with 220 seats, will not be representative enough to influence decisions. Particularly since DSA members have yet to acquire seats on congressional committees.
But Lamarck doubts the DSA's goals will gain support in Congress, "even if they win."
However, Democratic analysts, such as former Bill Clinton presidential campaign advisor James Carville, have warned that the group of socialist congressmen could make the Democratic majority "hostage" to their interests, if the margins by which the House is controlled are very narrow.
Chait explained to BBC Mundo: "If they win the House by a smaller margin than the one controlled by the bloc aligned with the DSA, that bloc could become strong enough to hold the Democratic majority hostage. They could propose: 'We will not vote in favor of your candidate for president of the House unless you accept this list of demands.' And that could cause a fracture within the parliamentary group."
"If the Democrats win by a larger margin than the DSA bloc, then they will not need their support to gain a majority in the House of Representatives; in that case, their influence would be much less during this term."
Chait also explained that DSA objectives are not necessarily short-term, but can be part of a strategy that, over time, begins to bear fruit.
It does not mean that they do not continue looking for their influence to grow in these years and for it to be reflected in a possible presidential candidacy.
Ávila-Chevalier told BBC Mundo what the ideal scenario would be in Congress in the coming years: "If we end the genocide [in Gaza], we ensure that the tenants of public housing here in New York have a decent home, we reduce the percentage of children who are living under poverty in this district, we abolish ICE and we have a socialist president, for me it would be a great achievement."
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