What is the DSA, or Democratic Socialists of America?

NINA MOINI: Minneapolis voters next week will see multiple candidates on their ballots who are endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America or DSA. The political group's profile has climbed over the last 10 years nationally and in parts of Minnesota. While the DSA is not a political party, it has members on the city councils of Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth, and representing those cities at the State Capitol.

State Senator Omar Fateh is one of the most notable members in Minnesota. He's challenging Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey in a race that includes 15 total candidates. Joining me now to explain more about what the DSA is and its role in this political moment is Dan Myers, Associate Professor Of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Thanks very much for your time this afternoon, Professor Myers.

DAN MYERS: Well, thanks for having me on, Nina.

NINA MOINI: So, yeah, this has been something that our team here has really been wanting to talk more about and educate people around. Can you tell us what is the DSA and when did it start really taking off here in the US?

DAN MYERS: So like you said, the DSA isn't a formal political party. It most often endorses candidates that are associated with the Democratic Party or in Minnesota, the DFL. But it's definitely a group that some Democrats are happy with the endorsement of, and some Democrats are worried about the influence within the party of this group.

We really see it exploding in the aftermath of the Bernie Sanders runs for president against Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020, and maybe dating back a little further, think about the Occupy Wall Street movement in the aftermath of the Great Recession. And that really energized cohort of younger people into politics, but into a particular understanding of why things didn't seem to be working in that period in the 2010s.

NINA MOINI: So if you had to say maybe just a few of the policies that DSA, affiliated candidates tend to be known for, what are they and have they changed over time?

DAN MYERS: Yeah. So I think the core thing that separates the DSA from more traditional mainstream Democrats is a baseline skepticism about capitalism, and it's right there in the title, Democratic Socialists of America. And I think we see that play out in policy areas where Democratic Socialists are much more skeptical of relying on markets to solve problems.

So if we think about something like health, we have the Affordable Care Act, which was championed by President Obama, sometimes called Obamacare. That's a very market-based solution to the problem of people not having health insurance. The government gives subsidies, but it's private companies in a marketplace where people are buying their own insurance from private companies.

We can contrast that with something like Medicare for all, where the government is the insurance company, or even something like Britain's National Health Service, where the government isn't just a health insurance company, it runs the hospitals and employs the doctors.

NINA MOINI: Just building kind of-- oh, I'm sorry. Keep going.

DAN MYERS: Oh, I was going to say that's the core difference, but I think more recently the DSA has been associated with a lot more left wing social issues or international issues. So most prominently recently support for the Palestinian cause and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but other left wing issues around things like gender and immigration.

NINA MOINI: You mentioned Britain for a moment, but I do wonder about just some of the differences between the DSA and the US and how it might differ from Democratic socialist parties in other countries.

DAN MYERS: So in a lot of other countries, there's a much more long-term established Democratic socialist or sometimes socialist political parties that go back decades. A lot of that has to do with our two party system, which is really a function of our electoral system, where we have single member districts where only one person can win. And so in a system like that, the gravitational force is to push the left and right into two different parties.

So in other countries where you might see a Democratic socialist party, that'd be a minority or even a majority party on the left coalition here, their route to influence is through the Democratic Party, much in the same way that Trump populist right wing movement, didn't start his own political party, it just took over the Republican Party.

NINA MOINI: So I wonder how important this DSA is to the divisions between the modern and the more leftist candidates. Just generally because I think many Democrats don't want to be associated, it sounds like, with the DSA or with socialism in general. So what does this mean for that division?

DAN MYERS: I think the discussion of the DSA is part of a broader conflict within the Democratic Party about whether it should respond to Trump by taking a more moderate tact or take a more left wing tact. And we can see this in the Minneapolis City Council, there is currently a majority on the city council that is on the more left side of the party that opposes the Mayor Frey on a lot of issues. Not all of them are DSAers, I think three of them are actually sought out and got the DSA endorsement.

But the DSA is the left of the left there of the group of the party who think that the way to respond to Trump is to embrace these more left wing stances on issues like immigration. But also, I think one way to characterize it is more populist approaches to economic issues around things like trade, for example.

NINA MOINI: And obviously, we're talking about Minneapolis here, but are there other parts of the state where they're more active or are there other parts of the country where DSA has gained more of a following?

DAN MYERS: Yeah. So obviously the most prominent DSAer in the news today is Mamdani in New York. And so, I think in that area, particularly among younger highly educated but maybe not high earners in New York, it's a very popular movement.

Within Minnesota, the Minneapolis DSA is definitely the most active, and I should say, it's actually the Twin Cities DSA, but mostly focused on Minneapolis. There are chapters of the DSA in Duluth, and I think currently two of the nine Duluth city councilors are DSA endorsed and two of the current St. Paul City councilors were DSA endorsed in their last election.

We don't see though in those two cities the same really almost two party system developing where there's the mainstream or centrist Democrats on the one hand, and then the left DSA Democrats on the other hand. That doesn't really show up in St. Paul or Duluth as much as it does in Minneapolis, where really if you look at how city council members vote, it's really two different voting blocs.

NINA MOINI: And then zooming out, obviously, to the entire country, how do you think the DSA fit into the debate over where Democrats need to go after losing the presidential election and control of the Senate in 2024?

DAN MYERS: So I think the DSA case is very much the case that Bernie Sanders was making in 2016 and 2020 that Democrats were missing out on issues that would energize younger voters and potentially some more populist economic stances, again, on issues like trade or unions that might rebuild support within working class voters.

And I think that's a case to be made, but Bernie Sanders lost twice. And so the case that, that was a broad mobilizing platform, I think does have to contend with that fact. And I think you do have to look at the DSA as a pretty urban-based movement. Those are areas where the Democrats are already doing pretty well.

And it's not clear if that kind of a message and that kind of an organizing strategy is going to work in the kind of states where we see swing Senate contests or in greater Minnesota, again, the DSA right now is mostly Minneapolis with some presence in, sorry, Duluth and St. Paul.

NINA MOINI: Dan, thanks so much for your time in breaking this down for us. Really appreciate it.

DAN MYERS: Thanks for having me on.

NINA MOINI: Dan Myers is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota.