Two days before the Tuesday primary in Colorado, 15-term Rep. Diana DeGette told Colorado Public Radio, “I know my constituents. My constituents know me, and I feel pretty good about how things are going.”
She didn’t know them as well as she thought.
In another stunning upset victory for the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), political neophyte Melat Kiros defeated DeGette in the 1st Congressional District primary. Kiros was leading by 10% when the Associated Press called it for the DSA candidate.
The turnout was amazing. In 2024, only 79,000 votes were cast in the primary. At 10 p.m., when AP called it, more than 136,000 votes had been counted.
Matt Greer, 43, told CPR he’d never seen anything like it.
“This is all kids. I feel incredibly old here. And this is rad (expletive). This is really awesome. It’s amazing seeing Gen Z, this engaged and this enthusiastic and this organized, which, as millennials, we never did,” Greer said. “And I’m very, very happy to see all of this. I am just trying to ride the wave of all this.”
The DSA victory in Colorado follows the shocking results in New York City from last week, when three avowed DSA members won primaries.
Kiros is shockingly and unapologetically antisemitic.
She was fired from her New York law firm after writing that “pro-Palestinian student protesters calling for the elimination of Israel were not antisemitic and appearing to defend Hamas,” according to Fox News.
She also blamed the U.S. for 9/11.
“Inevitable in the sense that we destabilized a lot of the Middle East that forced people to believe that another act of violence was the only response,” Kiros told 9News when asked if she thought the terror attack was “the inevitable consequence of American foreign policy.”
“And again, just like I said before, our responsibility is to get rid of those conditions that lead to violence in the first place,” Kiros continued.
Democrats complaining that Kiros is an “extremist” doesn’t work. The Democratic establishment normalized antisemitic behavior and rhetoric for the last decade. Kiros and other DSA members are the inevitable result of that.
DeGette wanted to get rid of ICE, supported Medicare-for-all, and was an impeachment manager for Donald Trump’s second impeachment. She was not a moderate, nor even a “progressive,” as the term has come to be defined. She was a radical Democrat, defeated because she supported Israel.
“One more case in the growing dynamic of performative politics,” one House Democrat told Axios.
“Diana was an excellent representative with seniority — but the style of someone younger and more outspoken has become more attractive to that cohort of motivated urban left voters,” the member added.
“I told everyone that would listen in 2024, that Trump winning was like manna from heaven to DSA,” said another member.
“That DSA is… winning some safe seat primaries with these young white college educated voters is just no shock. It’s literally their entire playbook.”
It’s a playbook that Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries knows will include plans to replace him.
For much of the last week, Jeffries has found himself staring transfixed at perhaps the most difficult political challenge of his career — immobilized not because he does not know what he thinks, but because he knows exactly what he thinks.
He believes Democrats need to look mainstream to win swing districts. He believes affordability is a stronger message than ideology. He believes most Americans don’t want a political revolution. And he surely believes that Republicans — from President Donald Trump on down — cannot wait to compel every rival candidate to answer for the most controversial voices inside the Democratic Party.
That has always been the danger of ideological movements. They rarely stay quaintly confined to the neighborhoods where they first emerge. They spread. They redefine brands. They force everyone wearing the same jersey to bear responsibility for the teammates they did not recruit.
Most DSA members, including Kiros, are running in deep-blue districts and are assured of winning the general election. This doesn’t just mean that the Democratic Party is moving left — in truth, if they get much further left, they’ll fall off the edge of the world. Jeffries’ biggest problem is that the DSA is becoming mainstream. And to tap into the money, the energy, and the enthusiasm of the extremists, other Democrats must at least pay lip service to their agenda.
This is about voter perception. And given the Republicans’ dysfunctional condition, the momentum of the radicals may make 2026 a watershed election that will change U.S. politics, and not for the better.
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