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5 min readIn a 2026 Fox News interview, Megan Romer, the co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), was asked to run through the national organization's platform item by item. "Abolish the Senate," "Replace the Presidency and Supreme Court as we now know them," "Abolish borders," "Defund the Pentagon," "Abolish prisons." She answered "True," "Yep," "Absolutely," and "Yeah, again" to each one. As historian Jill Lepore tells Terry Gross on Fresh Air, the clip is "notorious" not just for the content but for the way Romer delivered it: "quite glib," with "a little bit of kind of an edge of laughter." It sounded extreme. But Lepore's point is that it also sounded historically familiar. She was "immediately struck" by how many of those items were on the 1912 platform of the Socialist Party of America. The abolition of the Senate, for instance, was a Progressive-era solution to a real problem: before the 17th Amendment, senators were elected by state legislatures, not by voters, and the chamber was famously called "the Millionaire's Lobby." It was an extreme answer, but it came from a real grievance. Lepore's article in The New Yorker asks whether American socialism can survive its own success, and the conversation explores what that success actually looks like—and what it has always looked like.
The gap between the national platform and the local reality
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:16) **Socialism’s Electoral Surge in 2026** - Terry Gross introduces the topic with the midterm results: six socialists elected to Congress and three elected mayor, including in New York and Los Angeles.
- 2 (02:34) **The DSA’s Official Platform Sounds Extreme** - Gross plays a clip of DSA co-chair Megan Romer affirming “true” to abolishing the Senate, ICE, borders, prisons, and replacing the presidency and Supreme Court.
- 3 (04:01) **Why “Abolish the Senate” Has a Long History** - Lepore explains that the Senate was originally not elected by the people but by state legislatures, earning it the nickname “the Millionaire’s Lobby” in the Gilded Age.
- 4 (07:43) **“Replace the Presidency and Supreme Court” as Recycled Antique Positions** - Lepore says these ideas were also in the 1912 platform, reflecting a commitment to radical direct democracy where only the House of Representatives would hold power.
- 5 (09:47) **Mamdani’s Pragmatic Socialism Is What’s Actually Catching On** - Gross plays a clip of NYC Mayor Mamdani on Fox News distancing himself from the national platform, saying “get rid of borders? No. Get rid of SCOTUS? No.”
- 6 (12:54) **The “Socialist” Label No Longer Kills a Candidate** - Lepore argues that two-thirds of Americans support Medicare for All, and the old tactic of tarring healthcare plans as “socialized medicine” (used against Truman, Clinton, and Obama) no longer works.
- 7 (14:06) **What Mamdani Is Actually Delivering in NYC** - Gross lists Mamdani’s incremental wins: universal daycare for some New Yorkers, a tax on expensive second homes (overturned in court), city-owned discount grocery stores (facing obstacles), and pothole filling.
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