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True to its roots, DSA seeks to increase its political influence not by establishing its own political party but rather by working closely with the Democratic Party to promote leftist agendas
“Like our friends and allies in the feminist, labor, civil rights, religious, and community organizing movements, many of us have been active in the Democratic Party,” says DSA.
“We work with those movements to strengthen the party’s left wing, represented by the Congressional Progressive Caucus…
....Maybe sometime in the future … an alternative national party will be viable. For now, we will continue to support progressives who have a real chance at winning elections, which usually means left-wing Democrats.”
DSA’s membership rolls grew with remarkable rapidity beginning in 2016 when the organization claimed some 8,000 members across the United States, and late 2017, by which time that figure had risen to more than 25,000, making DSA the largest organized socialist group in the nation
Those DSA members, wrote historian Ronald Radosh in November 2017, “play a large role within the Democratic Party, where they work with others from Bernie Sanders’ [failed 2016] presidential campaign to push the party further to the left.” pjmedia.com/ronradosh/dsas…
A major cause of DSA’s growth in 2016 and thereafter was the political ascendancy of Republican Donald Trump, which DSA sought to aggressively combat
From 2001 through 2016, the paid circulation of Democratic Left ranged between approximately 4,500 and 6,800 subscribers. Following the election of President Donald Trump in 2016, the figure skyrocketed to more than 28,000 in 2017, and more than 45,000 in 2018.
In 2018, 28-year-old DSA member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rose to prominence when, with no prior political experience, she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Another newcomer to Congress in 2018 was DSA member Rashida Tlaib.
