What the success of the DSA tells us
The success of the Democratic Socialists of America in the June primaries has prompted much speculation about what it means, not only for the Democratic establishment (the so-called “moderates” who are nowadays hardly that) but for US politics as a whole. The fact is that American politics as a process and a structure – the campaigns, the media coverage, the candidates’ basic strategies, the lies, the subterfuges – has barely changed. What has changed is the mentality of the winning candidates, which cannot be properly described as “political” at all in the word’s recognizable sense; it is simply a white-hot brain core of elemental rage. Rage at what, exactly, it is difficult to say, given its wildly unfocused and incoherent nature. Billionaires? MAGA?
