...The DSA has endorsed about 150 candidates this cycle, according to an analysis by the Washington Examiner, with 35 either winning primaries or advancing without opposition, in races stretching across Oregon, California, Georgia, Pennsylvania and New York.

Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor and White House chief of staff, offered a structural diagnosis. “What the socialist wing has decided to do is turn blue districts, dark blue,” he told CNN, arguing that Democrats had broadly “lost the plot” by becoming mired in niche concerns rather than mainstream US priorities.

Former New York governor David Paterson warned on 77 WABC radio that the party risked something more fundamental than an electoral setback. “We’d better get that message and turn it around before we become extinct,” he said.

On the organizational front, a group of House Democrats aligned with a new centrist initiative, launched in the immediate aftermath of the democratic socialist victories, framed the wins as a reputational liability. “They should not be the face of our party,” the group declared, positioning the effort explicitly as a corrective to the party’s direction...