Ethiopian-born socialist Melat Kiros unseated Democrat incumbent Diana DeGette in a race for Colorado’s 1st Congressional District on Tuesday, her victory coming on the heels of a socialist sweep of a series of congressional primaries in New York.
The string of socialist victories across the country shows that the ideas many thought were once confined to the fringe of the Democrat Party are no longer fringe. Rather than rejecting candidates who openly embrace socialist and communist ideas, Democrat voters and party members are elevating them. In choosing socialists over “mainstream” Democrats, Democrats are proving that Third-World communism is the party now, writ large.
For years so-called “mainstream” Democrats insisted the party was not a socialist party. Joe Biden said in 2020, “I am not a socialist.” Two years later he doubled down on his rejection of a socialist label, saying: “I’m not Bernie Sanders. I’m not a socialist. I’m a mainstream Democrat.” Biden’s future vice president, Kamala Harris, said in 2019: “I am not a socialist.”
Maxine Waters declared in 2018: “The Democratic Party is not a socialist party.” Then Sen. Joe Manchin said the party is “absolutely not” the party of socialism, going so far as to accuse Republicans of using “scare tactics” when they pointed to Democrat-backed socialist policies.
Yet while Democrat leaders publicly rejected the socialist label, the party kept embracing many of the same positions and policies of socialists that made the distinction between the party’s mainstream and socialist wing blurred. And even as party leaders insisted Democrats were not socialists, the actions of the party said otherwise.
In fact, just a few years after all these “mainstream” Democrats were emphatically denouncing socialism, only 86 congressional Democrats were willing to sign onto a resolution decrying the “horrors of socialism.”
And now these latest primary victories for openly socialist candidates prove that Democrat voters don’t really see a need to keep hiding the ball. Candidates who openly campaign on being a socialist are the choice of Democrats across the country, and Colorado’s primary is only the latest example.
Kiros has campaigned on abolishing ICE and providing Medicare “for all.” She also said America was responsible for 9/11 — and yet she beat a 30-year-incumbent. Kiros is hardly alone in those positions. New York DSA congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier has said that “all deportations are wrong” even for those convicted of crimes. Chevalier also called for abolishing the police, saying, “A world without borders — just like a world without prisons or police — is possible, necessary, and the only moral way forward.” New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said, “I believe it should” when asked if he wanted ICE to be abolished. He reaffirmed his position while on The View in January of 2026 as well.
These positions would have been considered fringe even 20 years ago for both parties. But now, they are the positions of the Democrat Party, and the socialists are poised to keep winning.
