Democratic Socialists of America Platform: Policy Agenda and Goals

The Democratic Socialists of America (“DSA”) have achieved an unprecedented tally of victories in Democratic primaries, and their candidates are appearing on ballots in a growing number of jurisdictions. Even Democrats who do not identify as members tend to adopt substantial portions of their platform, reflecting the demands of activists within the party. DSA affiliates could very well select the next Speaker of the House, who would stand second in line to the presidency.

Among the Democratic Socialists of America who have been nominated for congressional seats in this year’s midterm elections are:

U.S. Senate Nominations

• Angie Nixon (Florida): A state legislator who pulled off a striking upset to secure the Democratic nomination for the Senate in Florida, marking a meaningful statewide milestone for a democratic socialist candidate.

U.S. House Nominations

• Claire Valdez (New York, NY-7): Secured the nomination in the district of retiring Rep. Nidia Velázquez.
• Darializa Avila Chevalier (New York, NY-13): Defeated the sitting incumbent and Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Adriano Espaillat.
• Brad Lander (New York, NY-10): Won the nomination over incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman (though note that Lander left the DSA following its response to the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks).
• Melat Kiros (Colorado, CO-1): Ousted long‑time incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette in the Denver area.
• Chris Rabb (Pennsylvania): Won the Democratic nomination for a Philadelphia‑area congressional seat.
• Donavan McKinney (Michigan): Secured the nomination in a Detroit‑area district.
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York, NY-14): Won renomination in her district (with an endorsement from her local DSA chapter).

Driven by the DSA’s rise to prominence, I sought to understand what they advocate. I located their platform, headlined “Workers Deserve More,” and will quote selected portions in bold while commenting in plain text. Much of what I quote comes from a portion of the Platform describing “What We Fight For.” Here are a few central elements of the DSA platform.

[1.] Demilitarize police departments … and redirect funding toward public services as steps toward fully abolishing the police and prison systems that shield the wealthy and incarcerate the poor. Treat drug addiction and mental illness as health issues, not crimes.

Last year, the FBI reported approximately 14,000 murders in the United States, along with well over one million other violent crimes, hundreds of thousands of robberies, and millions of property offenses. And this was the case even without dismantling police and prisons. One can imagine the potential rise in murders, violent crimes, robberies, and property offenses if the police and prison systems were abolished.

Legalizing all drug use and treating it strictly as a health matter would likely lead to a surge in dangerous drug use, placing many lives and families at risk.

The DSA’s fixation on erasing police and prisons represents a disproportionate reaction to the misconduct some officers have shown. The issue is serious, and like many Americans, I have been deeply troubled by incidents of police brutality during arrests, especially involving Black men. Yet the remedy should be to weaken police unions that shield misconduct from accountability, along with enacting legislation—federal and state—that would curtail judicial immunities against civil suits arising from police and prosecutorial misdeeds.

We do need police and prison reform. Abolishment, as the DSA proposes, would be misguided.

[2.] End ICE detentions and deportations …. Legalize migration, grant amnesty for all immigrants regardless of status, create a pathway to citizenship for all permanent residents, and end visa caps and quotas.

As with police misconduct, reform—not abolition—appears to be the appropriate route here.ICE has often apprehended and deported people in ways that have disgusted many Americans, including me. This must stop. I would back removing and prosecuting ICE agents who commit wrongdoing, followed by hiring new agents who understand the humanity of migrants and who deport people with dignity and fairness. We should also avoid deporting people to third countries unless those countries will accept them back. I would support reforming ICE through law, if needed.

Nevertheless, I cannot support the Democratic Socialists’ call to abolish ICE entirely. Open borders would flood the country with low-income migrants from Latin America who could compete for jobs with Americans at the bottom of the wage scale, burdening Black Americans and legally resident Latinos alike. Such a move could permanently alter American culture, threaten English as the national language, and risk transforming the United States into a less prosperous nation. There is a limit to how many immigrants the U.S. can absorb without eroding our core cultural framework.

We should not reward those who entered illegally with a path to citizenship. The reality of border openings under the Biden administration highlighted the queue-jumping effect and created a backlog that hurt those who pursued legal channels for decades. While there is a need to reform ICE, abolishing it and opening borders would be a drastic overreach that would eventually alienate the American people, perhaps more than the electorate’s frustration with immigration enforcement in recent years.

To address misconduct by ICE, the solution is to dismiss and prosecute those agents who break the law, and to appoint new personnel who treat migrants with dignity. Even renaming ICE could be part of a broader cultural shift. But abolishing ICE and inviting open borders would be an overreaction that would prove politically unpopular in short order.

[3.] Defund the Department of War. End all foreign wars and close overseas military bases…. End immunity for U.S. war criminals and support the International Criminal Court’s mandate to prosecute war crimes.

With thousands of strategic missiles possessed by Russia and China, and North Korea’s arsenal as well, a proposal to strip the Department of War of funding could compellingly put us at risk of foreign aggression or coercion that would erode civil liberties. Our NATO allies might be overwhelmed by dictatorial regimes from the East, and regions like Japan, the Philippines, and Australia could face serious pressure. Such a move could jeopardize the worldwide march toward democracy that the United States helped ignite in 1776, a historical gift the world still depends on.

Most Americans want to live in freedom. They do not wish to be subjugated by Russia or China, nor do they want to endure nuclear threats or blackmail from those powers.

Regarding prosecuting Americans who defended the nation or Israelis before a largely Third World International Criminal Court (ICC), that would be deeply unjust. I have relatives and friends who support the ICC precisely because they want to see violent despots and criminals held to account, and I would support punishing them in American courts with professional, life-tenured judges and the right to trial by jury. Congress could criminalize international drug trafficking or human rights abuses by foreigners that significantly affect U.S. commerce. Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1 (2005).

The core idea is to ensure a fair trial before U.S. judges and juries, rather than show trials conducted by a cohort of international human rights lawyers who, among other issues, are prone to anti-Semitic bias and protective attitudes toward violent terrorists.

[4.] Recognize the rights of the Palestinian people, including the right of return, the right to resist military occupation, and the right to self-determination in a free Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital. End all military and economic aid to Israel. Prosecute U.S. and Israeli leaders responsible for the Gaza genocide.

Israel stands out as the sole democracy in the Middle East, as well as the only nation in the region that enshrines full equality for women and LGBTQ+ citizens. It is also the only Middle Eastern country with broad freedom of speech and religion. Americans share considerably more in common with the Israeli model of democracy than with the Palestinians.

President Bill Clinton—late in his second term—endorsed a two-state approach for Palestine, which is broadly viewed as the right course, and Israel agreed to it, though then-President Yasser Arafat of the PLO did not commit to endorsing it. Since the 1967 conflict, Israel has not annexed the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians should accept this land as their homeland, and some Israeli settlements in the West Bank should be removed. Jerusalem should serve as a jointly held capital for both Israel and Palestine.

In practice, it is the Palestinians, not the Israelis, who have obstructed a feasible two-state arrangement. U.S. policy should insist on such a solution (and we should hope that Benjamin Netanyahu, a political leader who tends to cling to power, loses the upcoming Israeli polls).

The Palestinians have, in fact, chosen a leadership that is widely viewed as a criminal, terrorist organization—Hamas—that has murdered innocent Israeli civilians. Why should the United States align with a terrorist faction against the Middle East’s only constitutional democracy?

[5.] Replace the two-party system with a multi‑party democracy. Expand the House of Representatives, implement proportional representation and ranked-choice voting in elections, and abolish the Senate.

These platform planks contain several radical reforms, and I will tackle them one by one, starting with the most foundational issues.

The Democratic Socialists of America propose eliminating the Senate, a central feature of our 237-year-old Constitution. The Senate wields influence beyond the House by confirming or rejecting executive-branch and judicial nominees and by ratifying or withholding treaties. Its filibuster rule requires a supermajority—60 of 100 senators—to advance most legislation.

Most neutral observers of Washington politics over my lifetime have noted that the Senate functions better than the House in part because it has fewer members, longer six-year terms, and less frequent turnover (only about one‑third of seats up every two years). The DSA would discard this arrangement along with the advantages of a bicameral legislature, thereby destabilizing institutions that presently work fairly well.

I regard the Senate, as configured today, along with bicameralism, as essential to the Constitution because they slow the pace of lawmaking and reform, reducing investment risk, increasing American wealth and income, and expanding liberty. The enduring certainty fostered by the Senate, by bicameralism, and by the presidential veto helps explain why U.S. GDP per capita stands around $94,000, compared with roughly $51,000 for the European Union and about $15,000 for China, according to IMF data.

The Senate and the broader system of checks and balances and federalism sustain the United States as a wealthier nation—wealth that could fund improved health care, but which the DSA argues would be jeopardized by their proposed reforms that would heighten risk in investment.

One common objection to Senate reform is the concern that California has two votes despite a population of roughly 39 million, while Wyoming has two votes with fewer than 600,000 residents. The question is real, but not as severe as many think.

Among the low‑population states, several are politically aligned with California and have two Democratic senators: Vermont, Delaware, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire. Maine, liberal and represented by an Independent who votes with Democrats and a liberal‑leaning Republican, also complicates simple majority calculations.

Historically, in the last four decades, the party controlling the House has often aligned with the party controlling the Senate, even though this has not always been the case. Given this history, it is hard to claim that the two‑senator rule systematically harms Democrats.

My colleague Akhil Amar questions whether Vermont’s Democratic senators (including Bernie Sanders, if counted as a Democrat) truly represent California Democrats. He proposes drawing 100 evenly populated senatorial districts across state lines, but this would invite massive gerrymandering, destabilize American federalism, and ultimately require scrapping the Constitution’s guarantee of equal state representation in the Senate.

What about abolishing the filibuster? Not so fast. The moment a Republican president and a Republican Senate and House arrive, the Democrats’ changes could be reversed just as easily as Republicans would reverse the Democrats’ changes when the roles are reversed. Such a shift would create more instability rather than deeper democracy. The DSA should tread carefully before pursuing such changes.

I oppose abolishing the Senate under its current rules for all of these reasons.

And what about replacing our two‑party system with proportional representation in the House? Proportional representation and a multi‑party system are not inherently superior, and they can produce unintended consequences, as well. Proportional representation has, in some cases, enabled extremist groups to dominate governments (as observed in certain historical contexts). The DSA’s associating with proportional representation reflects an extremist inclination. In several nations using proportional systems, including some welfare‑state economies, legislatures have weakened, sometimes allowing a president to assert disproportionate control. The United States could face a similar result.

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Now turn to the Platform titled “Workers Deserve More,” which is where the DSA’s public program begins to take shape. It envisions a Leninist-Maoist order in which student loans and mortgages are cancelled; private housing is nationalized; private grocery stores and family farms are nationalized; energy companies are nationalized; airlines, buses, trains, and car factories—perhaps even private car ownership—are nationalized (though the platform remains vague about private ownership of cars). To avoid misreading, consider what the Democratic Socialists of America are proposing:

[6.] “You have no debt. You don’t need health insurance. You don’t pay a mortgage or have a landlord, because comfortable housing is a human right. Your retirement is publicly funded. Food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation aren’t for-profit ventures; they are common goods and utilities.”

What would be required to render a world without debts or mortgages? The obvious consequence would be the cancellation of all student loan and mortgage obligations, effectively penalizing those who have already paid their debts to benefit those who borrowed excessively without repayment. Such a system raises fundamental questions about fairness and justice. Education, health care, housing, food, energy, medicine, and transportation all incur costs to deliver, so if everyone is guaranteed a “right” to these things, the state would need to finance them.

The only viable method for the government to provide these services would be to nationalize education, health care, housing, food production and distribution, energy production and distribution, and the automobile sector. This would entail a dramatic increase in taxation to fund these nationalized sectors.

Even the notion of paying fair compensation for nationalized property would be problematic, making it likely that the state would confiscate assets from those who have earned them and redistribute wealth through revolutionary means. The DSA’s proposals resemble the socialist revolutions of 1917 in Russia and 1949 in Maoist China more than they resemble democratic reform.

The Democratic Socialists of America are not advocating for legitimate, constitutional change. They are advocating for broad, unconstitutional, revolutionary transformation on a scale that history warns against. History teaches that when sweeping, revolutionary changes occur, freedom of expression and religious liberty often suffer, privacy erodes, and political dissent is crushed under the weight of a repressive regime with widespread violence.

But suppose—an unlikely scenario—that the DSA could peacefully implement this redistribution of wealth from those who have worked hard to those who have not. What would life look like in a world without private universities or schools? Everything would become uniform and unchallenged. Education would be manipulated by the state, with research and innovation stifled by a lack of intellectual diversity and debate.

Consider the contemporary examples of nations that have pursued similar paths—Russia, North Korea, and Cuba—and reflect on the kind of technological advancement such regimes have produced in comparison with the United States. Even when socialist governments have managed to achieve some economic gains, those gains are often accompanied by declining birthrates, alienation among the youth, and mounting debt. In many cases, where a welfare‑state model exists alongside substantial private enterprise, nations such as those in Western Europe have fared better economically than pure socialist models, underscoring the resilience of market mechanisms when coupled with robust social programs.

What would life be like if the government owned all hospitals and employed all doctors? Look at health-care systems in the United Kingdom, Canada, Sweden, and Norway, where long waits for care are well known. In the United States, private university hospital ERs can often provide life‑saving treatment to those who cannot afford insurance. A system that treats health care as a universal public right could erase that option and lead to diminished service quality. The prospect of renationalizing the health sector is a step away from the current U.S. reality, where the balance of public and private provision has produced high‑quality care in many settings.

What would it mean to owe no rent and own nothing? There would be little incentive to maintain or improve housing stock, which would deteriorate rapidly. I have traveled through Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union and observed the decay that can accompany socialized housing when private ownership is removed. Similar patterns are evident today in Cuba and North Korea.

What about a state guarantee of food and publicly owned groceries? A 1991 visit to Moscow revealed empty shelves, with the lone private McDonald’s in the city drawing long lines for basic goods while state stores offered scarce items. At that time, the bulk of farmland was publicly owned, and private farms produced a minority of food. When the state owns land and food retail, shortages and inefficiencies often follow. These are the kinds of outcomes that deserve careful consideration before embracing a government-run food system.

And what is the DSA’s stance on gun ownership under the Second Amendment? They oppose it and would seek to abolish it. In their view, anyone desiring a firearm—even for hunting—counts as a threat.

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That, readers, constitutes the core of the Democratic Socialists of America’s platform. The DSA champions policies that have repeatedly failed in the twentieth century’s numerous communist and socialist experiments across the globe. This pattern has held true in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, and North Korea.

Indeed, two nations—Germany and Korea—that share comparable ethnic backgrounds, histories, and cultures were split in the twentieth century into a communist half and a free-market half. In both instances the communist halves fared disastrously while the capitalist halves prospered. Taiwan thrived as the People’s Republic of China moved away from strict socialism toward a more market-oriented economy, and even today Taiwan’s per‑capita income surpasses that of mainland China by a wide margin. When capitalism is coupled with a strong welfare state, some of these policies have existed, yet they have not proven successful in practice.

The Democratic Socialists of America, in short, appear to be rooted in a misunderstanding of policy outcomes from the last century. Voters would be wise to scrutinize proposals that are not grounded in proven results.