Even when the DSA loses a primary, it wins. I think this is something establishment democrats don’t understand, just as they didn’t understand with the rise of the tea party or MAGA. DSA and leftist candidates across the US are having huge successes in primary elections, and even when they don’t win, they are often getting 30% - 49% of the vote. The result is that “centrist” and neoliberal democrats are feeling the heat, shifting their language, and proposing new policies that were outside the Overton window just 5 years ago. Even if socialist and leftist movements can’t take over the Democratic Party, there is a lot of influence and momentum that can shift things in a much better direction. FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society were efforts to counter the rise of socialism and leftism in the US, which had gained so much ground during the Great Depression and again during the civil rights movement. These had plenty of problems, but it saw leftist policies become normalized and forever reshape a government that has always favored the wealthy and colonialism. This is not only how we finally got social security and Medicare, but also the end of Jim Crow and segregation, the groundwork for disability rights, and at least some means for organized labor to exist and stopping the Pinkertons from just machine gunning down strikers. Not to mention publicly owned utilities like water and electricity, and other really important systems that couldn’t exist otherwise. This is also what the fascists have been working to tear down for 80 years. So, even though I want to see more than even the DSA is trying to or can accomplish, and I want to organize collectively outside electoral politics, this is a game changing moment where we can force the mainstream to the left and help people’s lives here and now. And it builds the practice of collective action and collaboration, which we can leverage for organizing outside the system.