Should AOC Break Up With the DSA?

The DSA platform wants to abolish the military, the Supreme Court, and the presidency — and almost no one has actually read it. Washington Monthly politics editor Bill Scher joins Matt Robison to break down the document tearing the Democratic Party in half, and why the polls that keep telling us who's winning have been wrong about nearly everything.Bill published a column this morning on the new CBS News/YouGov poll, and its finding is the thread running through this whole conversation: liberals and moderates agree on far more than anyone admits. Majorities will raise their own taxes for healthcare, education, food assistance, even housing. They agree the wealthy don't pay their fair share. And then you say the word "socialism" and the coalition falls apart. The fight consuming the Democratic Party right now may be a fight over branding that both sides have an incentive to keep going.Then we get into polling — Graham Platner, Janet Mills, Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan, Maine, Hawaii, Wisconsin — and Bill's argument that the real story isn't bad methodology. It's that campaign internal polls are flooding a vacuum left by independent pollsters who can't afford to be there, and those numbers are driving out real candidates before a single vote is cast.⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 The seething summer: what's building under the surface 2:00 Bill Scher joins 2:20 The CBS/YouGov poll everyone misread 5:00 Why "socialism" is still a losing word — even when the policies win 6:30 Three swim lanes, not two: DSA, progressives, moderates 7:45 Why Democrats are boiling mad at their own establishment 9:20 The DSA platform lands — and the backlash begins 10:30 Megan Romer's Fox News interview: "a 30-second ad all by itself" 11:45 "Abolish the military": reading the platform out loud 13:45 Abolishing the Supreme Court, and the case for fixing Congress instead 18:00 The Israel litmus test 18:50 An open appeal to AOC: break up with the DSA 21:20 Does AOC need the DSA, or does the DSA need AOC? 23:00 Five more DSA members of Congress are coming 25:40 Mamdani's real test — and why he isn't governing like the platform 30:30 "Democratic elites": the anti-establishment rage, and whether it's earned 35:40 Did Democrats forget 2018? 38:40 The Biden story nobody wants to own 40:20 Where progressives and moderates actually agree — about 90% of it 42:20 Is polling over? Platner, Mills, and the internal-poll problem 45:40 Michigan: El-Sayed's double-digit leads 47:40 Why primary polling is uniquely broken (13-point confidence intervals) 49:40 Herding: when pollsters copy each other's homework 51:40 The most underappreciated thing in politics: nobody is paying attention 53:40 Markey vs. Moulton and the poll that was mathematically impossible 55:40 Maine, Michigan, Hawaii: the same pattern every time 57:40 El-Sayed trails Mike Rogers — the red flag nobody's flagging 59:40 The four kinds of polls, ranked by how much to trust them 1:01:40 What Biden's team hid from him — and who might be doing it now 1:03:30 77 days to the midterms💬 SOME OF WHAT COMES UP "They need you more than you need them. You have transcended them." — Matt's open appeal to AOC (18:50) "I don't even know anyone running for Congress, even if they're DSA-backed, who has said 'Yeah, I agree with this platform.'" — Bill (10:30) "It is shocking how little attention most people are paying." (51:40) "The math of it was so insane it would've required every single Republican primary voter in the district to show up and vote twice." (53:40)👤 ABOUT BILL SCHER Bill Scher is politics editor at the Washington Monthly, where he covers Democratic strategy, polling, and the fight over the party's direction, and writes a weekly midterm HQ tracker. Read him: https://washingtonmonthly.com/author/bill-scher/