Democratic Socialism’s Stars Try to Flee from Their Radicalism

By John Fund

Tuesday, August 11, 2026

 

The stars of the Democratic Socialists of America are attempting a cosmetic makeover.

 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the most famous DSA member of Congress, appeared on a Sunday news show over the weekend for the first time in over two years. Reporters noted that she refused to rule out running for president in 2028, which probably explains her decision to distance herself from the DSA.

 

She carefully explained that she is a member of its New York chapter, not the national organization, and didn’t embrace parts of its national platform. She even made it clear that some of her more extreme positions of the past were beyond the pale (“Woke 1 was crazy”).

 

But she nonetheless thought all that crazy talk served a purpose:

 

Especially during Covid — there was a huge opening of the Overton Window. . . . There was some of the highest unemployment rates that we have seen because of those shutdowns. And I think that the doors were really open in trying to entertain any and every policy that was going to get us to a better place. And I actually think that the discussions that were had in that time were quite fruitful. . . . During lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today.

 

No kidding. Back during Covid, Racket News columnist Mike Taibbi noted that AOC “was among the loudest shriekers of the period. Remember her saying that bail for Kyle Rittenhouse was part of the ‘protection of white supremacy,’ or that Republicans cared more about preserving the ‘mythology of whiteness’ than ‘the grandeur of democracy.’” She is desperately trying to get people to forget or move on from just how radical she was before she runs for president.

 

She has company. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan who shares most of the DSA’s positions, appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. He was questioned about his ties to extremist influencer Hasan Piker, the video personality who infamously said in his 2019 Twitch livestream that “America deserved 9/11, dude. F*** it, I’m saying it,” followed by remarks that “We f***ing totally brought it on ourselves.”

 

As recently as this spring, El-Sayed told Politico that it was “critical” that Democrats embrace Piker. He also refused to repudiate Piker’s statement. “I’m not here to disavow people’s views.”

 

Now he suddenly tells Meet the Press that the 9/11 line “was a dumb statement” but insists that other extremist views of Piker are taken “out of context.”

 

Then there is Francesca Hong, the DSA state legislator from Wisconsin who is the front-runner to become the Democratic Party’s candidate for governor in tonight’s primary. In 2020, she called for abolishing Thanksgiving, saying “Should have done this in 1621. . . . If it takes a worldwide pandemic for us to realize we should stop celebrating colonialism and the original superspreader event that killed Indigenous folx and women so be it.” She also said that “defunding the police is a first step towards abolishing the police.”

 

The controversy over that and other statements prompted Democratic Governor Tony Evers, who is campaigning for Hong’s remaining Democratic opponent, to sound the alarm, saying she “has spent her entire campaign dealing not with the issues, but what’s on the Twitter.”

 

Hong is now in full retreat, claiming in an interview she is no longer anti-police and saying to Politico that Thanksgiving is now her “favorite holiday. . . . I actually love it.”

 

Even New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is trying to characterize his revolutionary platform as part of the Democratic Party’s traditions. He told SiriusXM Radio this month:

 

We’re not running away from the Democratic Party. We’re going back to what the party used to be . . . FDR, (the late New York Mayor) La Guardia, the New Deal. That’s what it once was and what it could be again.

 

The problem with all of these rhetorical retreats is that over at the DSA mother ship, no one is retreating from the group’s national platform. It calls for defunding the Pentagon, abolishing police and prisons, giving asylum to illegal immigrants, and getting rid of the Senate and of public ownership of corporations.

 

Megan Romer, the national co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, stepped on the strategy of all of her movement’s stars to smooth over their views this week. She told the New Yorker that the October 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas were “in many ways, inevitable” due to Gaza’s harsh conditions, which she called an “open-air concentration camp.” She said she probably would have joined a pro-Hamas rally the next day in New York City if she had lived there and argued that Israel has no right to defend itself, framing the Gaza killings as a rebellion.

 

It is fascinating to see Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dismissing “Woke 1” as a time of aberration when her allies said crazy things, talked about defunding the police, abolishing border controls, and supported Covid lockdowns. Now that she and many of her DSA chums think they have a chance to take over the Democratic Party and bend it to their will, they are realizing the broader public isn’t on board with them. So they are pretending to be just a younger, hipper version of the old Democratic Party’s ideals.

 

Paul Begala and James Carville, the two strategists behind Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential victory, aren’t buying it. Carville argues that the far-left candidates should form their own separate movement rather than running under the Democratic banner. Begala told CNN this week that he despises and “can’t stand” socialists.

 

A major question for the upcoming midterm elections will be a simple one: Who will independents and non-leftist Democrats believe — moderate Democrats who warn that the DSA is a Trojan horse for radicalism, or the DSA’s star candidates, who claim there’s nothing dangerous to see here?