The DSA Has Lost Its Message, But Not Its Enthusiasm
The Democratic Socialists of America once had something important to offer America.
The DSA I first encountered years ago was not preaching communism. It was not calling for the destruction of the Constitution, the abolition of police departments, the closing of prisons, or the dismantling of every institution Americans rely upon. Nor was it promoting hatred.
It was making a practical argument.
A modern democracy can create a stronger, more prosperous society by combining social responsibility, livable wages, and a free-enterprise economy.
That idea made sense to me then, and it still does.
The free-enterprise system is extraordinary at rewarding innovation, creating wealth, and giving people an incentive to build, invent, compete, and take risks. But there are areas where the free market, left entirely on its own, does not serve Americans well enough.
Healthcare is the clearest example.
For generations, America has tried to distribute healthcare primarily through the marketplace and employer-sponsored coverage. The result is a system that leaves too many people insecure, drives up costs for employers, encourages some businesses to limit lower-wage workers to part-time hours, discourages workers from changing jobs, and makes entrepreneurship riskier than it needs to be.
The same is true of childcare, higher education, and wages that do not keep pace with the cost of building a stable life.
A sensible blend of public responsibility and free enterprise does not weaken capitalism. It can make capitalism more efficient, more innovative, and more entrepreneurial, raising the standard of living while encouraging more people to create businesses and expand the economy.
The DSA should return to that core message.
Instead, it has become distracted and thrown off message by an obsessive and false anti-Israel agenda.
You know the accusations: apartheid, colonialism, genocide, and warmongering. They are false. I have addressed them in earlier articles published on my Times of Israel and J.CA Blog pages.
Israel embraces peace, not war. “If you make peace with Israel, Israel makes peace back.” It has made peace, in some cases for decades, with every neighboring country and regional government willing to make peace with it. Egypt and Jordan made peace. The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan moved toward peace and normalization through the Abraham Accords.
What remains is Iran and its network of terrorist proxies directed against Israel: Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen. The Islamic Republic of Iran does not seek peace with Israel. Its ideology seeks Israel’s destruction.
Replace the Islamic regime in Iran with a democracy that ends its proxy network, and the prospects for peace throughout the Middle East become far more real.
Much of the Arab world is already moving toward peace, trade, investment, and technological cooperation with Israel because it sees what Israel can help build: water security, agriculture, energy, medical innovation, and prosperity.
The DSA’s obsession with Israel does not merely distract from its message. It prevents the movement from recognizing that Israel may be one of the best examples in the world of what its original domestic agenda could produce.
Israel is a capitalist democracy with universal healthcare, public education beginning at age three, publicly supported higher education, worker protections, government investment, private capital, and a powerful entrepreneurial culture.
That combination matters because social protections lower the personal penalty for taking a chance.
Imagine a young American couple with college degrees, rent or a mortgage, student loans, daycare expenses, and employer-based health insurance. They may have a brilliant business idea. They may have the entrepreneurial drive, talent, and determination to build something important.
But in America, walking away from a secure job can feel impossible.
The idea is there. The talent is there. The entrepreneurial instinct is there.
But the freedom to take the risk is not, so they do not.
Israel gives innovators more freedom to pursue their ideas.
When someone leaves a job to start a business, healthcare does not disappear. Early public education reduces a major part of the childcare burden. More affordable higher education means fewer young adults begin their working lives carrying crushing student loans.
And when a startup founder begins hiring, that founder does not have to compete with giant corporations primarily by offering expensive employer-funded healthcare benefits. A startup can offer a reasonable salary, meaningful work, and the chance to share in the success of a growing company.
That is the opposite of anti-capitalism.
It is capitalism working better.
That is one reason Israel has become a global center for technology, cybersecurity, medical innovation, agriculture, water technology, artificial intelligence, and venture-backed entrepreneurship.
Zohran Mamdani is not the leader of the DSA. But he has become its clearest national example, and he has a choice to make.
He can become a future leader of America, fighting for working people, affordable childcare, housing, transportation, healthcare, and an economy that gives more Americans the freedom to build a better life.
Or he can continue to make himself a leader of a political movement that gives cover, legitimacy, and moral space to jihadist ideology and to those who seek Israel’s destruction.
Mamdani can still choose a different path. History will judge him, and so will those who follow him.
Will he help lead America toward a more decent, secure, and prosperous future?
Or will he become a leader who allows hostility toward Israel, contempt for Zionism, and the minimization of antisemitism to become inseparable from his political identity?
That is not only Mamdani’s choice. It is the DSA’s choice.
The DSA can become a serious movement for a better America, with Israel as one of the examples inspiring it.
Or it can become a vehicle for forces that reject peace, demonize Israel, and turn domestic concerns into another excuse to attack the Jewish state.
Who do you want to follow?