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WEEK 43 The Socialists Are Winning. What Do They Actually Want?
We're in a fine Utah hotel for this one, and there's no guest — just the two of us and a stack of DSA's own documents.
Zohran Mamdani is the mayor of New York. National DSA called it the biggest socialist electoral win in this country in a century, and 2026 kept the streak going: Chris Rabb in Philadelphia, a citywide breakthrough in LA, Janeese Lewis George in DC, more seats in Albany, and Melat Kiros unseating a fifteen-term incumbent in Denver. So we stopped arguing about the label and went to the platform.
We start with definitions, because nobody keeps them straight. Socialism versus communism. Democratic socialism versus a bigger welfare state. Then decommodification — DSA wants housing, healthcare, energy, transit, food, and education pulled out of the market — and the question that follows: what exactly is left?
Then the part almost nobody talks about. DSA doesn't just want a different economy; its platform calls for a new constitution. Proportional representation, a single federal legislature, no House-Senate split. We take that seriously and ask why an economic movement needs to dismantle federalism to get what it wants.
We also get into whether Mamdani won on socialism or on rent, why national DSA pulled its endorsement of the most famous democratic socialist in Congress, whether "anti-imperialism" is a foreign policy or just a posture, and whether this is really a working-class movement or a movement of frustrated college graduates. Will pushes hard on federalism throughout. We disagree in a couple of places.
GIRL PROBLEMS rounds us out as always.
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00:00 Introduction
04:13 Some Basics About DSA
10:32 Our Responses to DSA
55:15 Girl Problems
