Veteran Democratic strategists with ties to the Clinton and Obama administrations are sounding alarms that a wave of socialist-aligned candidates is eroding the party's midterm prospects, even as the DSA insists voters are choosing its candidates willingly.
Douglas Schoen and Carly Cooperman, partners at the polling firm Schoen Cooperman Research, published an op-ed in The Hill warning that the Democratic Party's leftward lurch is costing it the advantage it should hold heading into November. Schoen, a veteran of Bill Clinton's 1996 presidential campaign and Hillary Clinton's 2008 primary bid, argued alongside Cooperman that the party faces a branding problem it did not have to create.
"Republicans do not need every Democrat to be Democratic Socialists of America members to brand all Democrats as socialists. They simply need enough high-profile Democrats on the party's left-wing fringe to make the caricature stick."
The pair wrote that "emerging evidence" shows Democrats "are being harmed by perceptions that the party is drifting towards socialism," and that the heightened focus on socialist-progressive candidates "severely hurts Democrats' ability to capitalize on widespread anti-Trump sentiment." They described the party as "running bigger risks" by embracing these candidates.
Schoen and Cooperman are not alone. Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, who also served as President Obama's White House chief of staff and later as ambassador to Japan, made the same case in the Wall Street Journal last week.
"Ultimately, this is about policy. It was socialists who led the charge to defund the police, open the borders, abolish prisons, release violent criminals onto the streets and degrade the flag. We know those are electoral losers."
Emmanuel argued that radical candidates winning primaries in deep-blue districts make life harder for Democrats running in the swing seats the party needs to win the House. The math is straightforward: if the party's public face belongs to candidates who want to abolish prisons and defund the police, moderate voters in competitive districts will punish every Democrat on the ballot.
The alarm did not come from nowhere. Earlier this year, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, widely described as the face of the Democratic Socialist movement, backed three progressive, socialist-aligned candidates who won their races, unseating incumbents or defeating establishment-backed opponents. DSA-backed candidates Brad Lander, Darializa Avila Chevalier, and Claire Valdez won congressional primaries, with two of them defeating incumbent Democratic Reps. Dan Goldman and Adriano Espaillat. At least a dozen DSA-endorsed candidates won primary races across New York on that single night.
Sen. Bernie Sanders celebrated the results openly.
"When working people stand together, organize, and fight back, they can defeat establishment politicians and enormous amounts of money and political influence."
A DSA leader went further, declaring that "more than three million New Yorkers are now represented by socialists at multiple levels of government" and warning establishment politicians: "Don't even try it, we control these areas." On election night, supporters shouted "you're next" at House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
That threat is not idle. DSA allies of Mamdani are now plotting primary challenges against Jeffries himself and several other Democratic incumbents. One Jeffries senior adviser, André Richardson, responded bluntly: "Our response will be forceful and unrelenting. We will teach them and all of their incumbents a painful lesson on June 23, 2026."
Chevalier, one of the DSA winners, has drawn scrutiny over past social media posts expressing support for communism and Marxist ideology, including sympathy for Soviet figures. That kind of baggage is precisely what Schoen, Cooperman, and Emmanuel are warning about, material that writes Republican attack ads by itself.
The socialist surge is not confined to New York. In Maine, Graham Platner, a candidate closely tied to the Democratic Socialist infrastructure of Sanders and Mamdani, dropped out of the Senate race. The state party replaced him with Troy Jackson, who is not a DSA member but was previously endorsed by the DSA during an earlier, unsuccessful bid for governor. Jackson shares many of the organization's policy goals.
In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed entered the Democratic Senate primary as the frontrunner, backed by both Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. El-Sayed is not formally affiliated with the DSA but espouses similar policy positions. Democratic consultant Donna Brazile acknowledged on ABC's "This Week" that El-Sayed would struggle to win swing voters in purple-state Michigan, warning her own party not to "get caught in this socialist wave, which is, you know, popping up here, there and everywhere."
Brazile noted that DSA-backed candidates had actually lost 11 of their primary races at the time of her interview, winning only seven. But the winners grab the headlines, and hand Republicans the footage they need.
Colorado has also seen a socialist-aligned surge, though specific races there remain less defined. In Missouri, Cori Bush, backed by Sanders and the DSA, is challenging incumbent Rep. Wesley Bell, trailing by five points in what could become another expensive primary fight. In Denver, socialist candidate Melat Kiros is taking on longtime incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette.
Kiros captured the insurgent mood plainly: "The any Democrat will do era is over." She added: "Until we have Democrats that aren't taking money from the same corporations and billionaires that don't want those things to pass, we will never see those policies come to fruition."
The New York Post reported that the DSA has at least nine more House races in its crosshairs across Missouri, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, and New Hampshire, including competitive general-election seats that could flip to Republicans if a socialist nominee repels moderate voters. Five high-profile House Democratic incumbents have already lost primaries. One House Democratic staffer put it with grim humor: "We are so cooked. Jeffries will have to start calling members comrade during caucus meetings come January."
If establishment Democrats hoped the socialist wing would soften its image for general-election consumption, DSA co-chair Megan Romer ended that hope on Fox News. Appearing with host Shannon Bream, Romer publicly embraced proposals including abolishing the Senate, the presidency, the Supreme Court, national borders, immigration enforcement, and prisons, plus defunding the U.S. military. The interview circulated widely on social media.
Romer was unapologetic about the DSA's strategy of running on the Democratic ballot line:
"We run on the Democratic ballot line where it makes sense. We run independents sometimes where that is a viable possibility, but it's a ballot line. What matters is what the voters think, and the voters are overwhelmingly choosing our candidates."
That framing, voters are choosing us, so the establishment should get out of the way, is exactly what worries strategists like Schoen and Emmanuel. Primary voters in safe blue districts may indeed prefer a socialist. But the candidate who wins a primary in Brooklyn or the Bronx becomes the face of the national party in a swing district outside Detroit or Milwaukee.
The numbers back up the establishment's fears. President Trump's approval rating has hovered under 40 percent since May, ordinarily a gift to the opposition party heading into a midterm year. But Democrats have failed to capitalize. The most recent YouGov/Economist poll from late July showed Democrats ahead by only four points on the generic congressional ballot.
Compare that to 2018, the last major blue-wave election. Ahead of that cycle, Democrats consistently polled seven to thirteen points ahead of Republicans on the same measure. A four-point lead against a president with sub-40-percent approval is not a wave. It is a warning.
Schoen and Cooperman pointed to this gap directly, arguing that the socialist-progressive spotlight has narrowed what should be a commanding Democratic advantage into something fragile and uncertain.
President Trump and the Republican Party have seized the opening. The GOP has launched a campaign arguing that the Democratic Party has been infiltrated by communist candidates, a message that gains credibility every time a DSA-backed nominee wins a primary or a DSA leader goes on national television to call for abolishing the presidency.
Senior Democrats have dodged questions about the socialist victories rather than confronting them. That evasion only reinforces the Republican argument: if party leaders cannot bring themselves to repudiate candidates who want to abolish the Senate and open the borders, voters will assume they agree.
Emmanuel's critique cuts to the operational problem. Socialist nominees in safe seats do not just represent those districts, they define the party brand in every district. A Republican running in a suburban swing seat does not need to prove that his Democratic opponent is a socialist. He just needs to play the Megan Romer clip.
Veteran Democratic voices have been warning about this dynamic for months. Brazile, Emmanuel, Schoen, these are not fringe figures. They are the architects and operatives of the party's last successful national campaigns. When they sound the alarm in unison, the party has a choice: listen, or learn the hard way in November.
Democrats have a president with underwater approval ratings, a generic ballot that should be running away from them, and a socialist wing that treats the party ballot line as a vehicle of convenience. The only people who cannot see the problem are the ones causing it.