As DSA Racks Wins, Pundits Clutch Pearls

FEATURING OLIVER LARKIN - Political candidates affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are winning elections in a wave that the left could only have dreamt of some years ago. 

Naturally, there’s backlash. 

From New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, to Congressional candidates like Melat Kiros and Darializa Avila Chevalier, who successfully challenged centrist Democrats in primaries, DSA-endorsed wins are prompting pearl clutching in the liberal corporate press. The Atlantic magazine in particular, published a screed headlined, “The DSA Is a Parasite.”

Oliver Larkin is a Democratic candidate for Congress in Florida’s 25th District, a native of Fort Lauderdale and a longtime progressive organizer and active member of Broward DSA. He spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about the backlash to DSA's wins.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:  

Sonali Kolhatkar: So first, let's talk about "The Atlantic." And it's not just "The Atlantic," it's "The New York Times," it is a lot of media outlets. It's a lot of political pundits. But "The Atlantic" in particular, gave the impression that you have this hardworking party of Democrats doing their best, and this insurgent wing comes in and takes advantage of existing networks and throws the infrastructure that's been laid for many, many decades into disarray, and is taking advantage of the party's structures, the things that its members have invested in. How did you respond to that when you read it? 

Oliver Larkin: What immediately came to mind for me is this is not a parasitic relationship. This should be a symbiotic relationship where it's mutually beneficial for the elevation of Democratic Socialist candidates to succeed in higher office by running on the Democratic Party ballot line. 

And Democratic socialists are bringing the new life into the party that it so desperately needs after seven million fewer people turned out to vote for Kamala Harris relative to Joe Biden four years earlier. So, my reaction is electoralism is a game of addition, not subtraction, and it is really foolhardy on the part of the corporate establishment wing of the Democratic Party that they would be willing to blunt the momentum that would ultimately benefit the greater party's success just to protect their own little fiefdoms in the currently downward declining Democratic Party. So we really need this new energy, and I think that's really what the Democratic Socialists of America is bringing.