The Democratic Socialists of America launched a new platform on Tuesday night, part of which calls to “replace” the presidency and Supreme Court with “an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.”
“Whenever people are like, ‘Oh my God, they want to get rid of the president,’ I was like, ‘Well, I don’t know what we would call it in the future. We could call it the ‘head honcho’ or whatever,” Michaela Brangan, who helped draft the platform, said on a Tuesday evening webinar.
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The “Workers Deserve More!” platform’s launch comes on the heels of insurgent campaigns that have toppled incumbents and are poised to propel socialists to the halls of power. DSA upstarts Darializa Avila Chevalier, Claire Valdez, and Melat Kiros are all but certain to join New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) as prominent elected socialists.
That electoral momentum loomed large for the DSA as it released its new platform, which members hoped would thrust the organization into the mainstream.
“Obviously, the Democratic Party has a platform, the Republican Party has a platform,” Brangan said. “But for socialists and workers’ parties, historically, platforms have been extremely important in organizing, projecting the party vision outward with analysis and with demands, and organizing people into the party.”
The specifics of the DSA’s government overhaul, which would require a constitutional amendment, remain to be hashed out.
Yet Brangan said the DSA is “envisioning something more like a prime minister” than a president. She said “most other developed countries” have prime ministers, though she added that she does not use the term “developed country” in a “willy-nilly” manner.
Prime ministers are typically chosen from a country’s legislature rather than being elected through a national contest. The DSA platform also calls to abolish the Electoral College, which members criticized as anti-majoritarian.
In addition to their demands to gut the judiciary and executive branches, socialists also took aim at Congress.
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“Abolishing the Senate, letting it go by the way like the way the House of Lords did in the U.K. Look, I can get behind that for sure, baby,” socialist pundit Emma Vigeland quipped on the webinar.
The United Kingdom removed the last hereditary members from the House of Lords in April. Parliament remains bicameral, though the House of Lords now consists entirely of appointed members.
