By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice
Cliff Connolly wanted his fellow socialists to understand why the fight was worth having.
“The whole point of having the Senate, the president, and the Supreme Court is so that, if popular legislation passes through the House of Representatives, the ruling class has these other levels they can pull to stop it from happening,” he said, according to City Journal, which reported from inside the meeting. He pointed to the Supreme Court striking down President Biden’s student debt plan as his example.
Connolly sits on the Democratic Socialists of America’s National Political Committee, the group’s highest governing body between conventions. He was arguing for language DSA has now adopted as official policy: a plan to take apart the basic structure of the federal government and build a different one.
The full program is called “Workers Deserve More.” RMV covered the platform and DSA’s rapid growth when it launched. This is a closer look at the part that would rewrite how the country is governed.
What the platform says
The document does not hide the goal. Its opening section commits DSA to “win the battle for democracy, draft a new constitution, and create a democratic socialist republic.”
From there it gets specific.
One plank calls to “abolish the Electoral College” and to “replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.” Another calls to “abolish the Senate,” expand the House, and move the country to proportional representation and ranked choice voting.
That is a plan to concentrate federal power in a single elected chamber. The presidency and the courts would answer to Congress. The Senate would cease to exist.
The language replacing the president and Supreme Court was the most contested piece, adopted on a 12-to-11 vote of the National Political Committee, according to City Journal’s account from inside the June meeting. The platform launched publicly on July 14.
Who wrote it
Connolly belongs to Marxist Unity Group, a caucus inside DSA that has made the Constitution its central target. Its essay collection is titled “Fight the Constitution: For a Democratic Socialist Republic.” The group’s stated aim, on its own website, is a new constitutional convention chosen by “universal, equal, and direct suffrage,” one that would replace the founding document rather than amend it.
Through Connolly, the caucus holds a seat on the National Political Committee, and one of its members argued for constitutional language the committee adopted.
Even Connolly granted the drafting was uneven. The committee that wrote the program, he said, “was not multi-tendency. There were several tendencies in DSA that were not represented there.”
This is not new
The position did not appear overnight. DSA’s 2021 platform called undemocratic institutions “like the Senate and the Electoral College” a barrier that makes it “impossible for the will of the majority to be expressed,” and called for a second constitutional convention.
The push runs through the group’s youth wing too.
At the Young Democratic Socialists of America’s 2023 convention, delegates passed a resolution committing YDSA to oppose the Constitution, which its backers called “an antidemocratic force in American politics” and “the greatest obstacle to socialism.”
The resolution was written by a Marxist Unity Group member, the same caucus Connolly belongs to and one that has long pushed the constitutional fight.
YDSA serves as DSA’s campus arm, recruiting students and connecting members with the wider organization and the labor movement. RMV has documented how that pipeline works, first in a look at what DSA teaches college students and again in a report on the union jobs it steers members toward.
What it would take
Abolishing the Senate is not something Congress can pass. It is written into the Constitution, which guards it more closely than almost anything else.
Article V, which sets out how the document can be amended, ends with a line that has never changed: “no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.”
The Constitution Annotated, the Library of Congress reference on the document, says that equal-suffrage restriction is the one Article V limitation still in effect. Removing the Senate would take the agreement of every affected state, or a route outside the amendment process entirely, which is what the constitutional convention idea contemplates.
DSA makes a democratic argument for all of it.
The Senate gives a small-state voter far more weight than a large-state one. Five presidents have taken office without winning the nationwide popular vote. Supreme Court justices serve for life and are not electorally accountable. The country “that holds itself out as the world’s premier democracy is no democracy at all,” the platform says.
Where the left splits
Not everyone on the left is on board, including its most prominent members.
Asked directly whether he would abolish the Senate, Sen. Bernie Sanders told NOTUS, “No.” Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona called it “not a serious recommendation.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said, “I don’t even know what they mean by that.”
On the Electoral College, Sanders and many Democrats agree with DSA. Sanders said in 2019 he backed abolishing it, and a national popular vote draws majority support in polling. It is the Senate and the courts where even the most prominent democratic socialist in office parts ways with the platform.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, long the face of the movement in Congress, stopped short of endorsing it. Pressed on abolishing the Senate, she said, “That is, of course, a constitutional question,” adding that she opposes the filibuster but sees Senate abolition as something “only resolved with a constitutional convention of everyday people.”
Even so, she rejoined DSA in August 2026 after a seven-year lapse, and the group now calls her a member in good standing, amid a push to draft her for a 2028 presidential run.
The endorsement question
The platform is not only a statement of belief. It now carries weight in who DSA backs.
Under the resolution adopting the program, published in DSA’s own magazine, endorsed candidates are “expected to accept and promote DSA’s program, and align their own campaign platforms with its contents to the best of their ability.”
That “to the best of their ability” leaves room, and candidates use it.
Some hold a DSA endorsement without campaigning on abolishing the Senate.
DSA co-chair Ashik Siddique told CNN organizers are not knocking on doors this year asking voters about it.
A Sanders-backed primary winner in Michigan let his membership lapse within a month of winning, and said he disagrees with abolishing the Senate, Supreme Court and presidency.
Still, the expectation is on paper, in DSA’s words, and it reaches into Colorado.
What it means here
In Denver, DSA endorsed Melat Kiros in the Democratic primary for the 1st Congressional District. Kiros, a DSA member, beat Rep. Diana DeGette in June, ending a hold on the seat that began in 1996.
Denver DSA’s own ballot guide shows the program working as a test.
The chapter graded candidates on whether they matched its positions. It marked down one legislative candidate because “she does not call for the abolition of ICE,” and moved another to neutral after he shifted from opposing ICE toward targeting “violent criminals.”
The guide draws a line worth noting. Kiros earned the chapter’s full endorsement.
Most of the other names, including candidates for U.S. Senate and statewide office, got only a “recommend yes,” a softer category the chapter keeps separate from endorsement. The expectation attaches to the endorsement, not the recommendation.
The other Colorado chapters held back further.
Boulder County DSA and Northern Colorado DSA both put out voter guides this year and declined to endorse anyone, offering recommendations only.
Colorado had a seat at the national table, too.
A Denver DSA member sat on the National Political Committee for the 2023 to 2025 term, representing the Socialist Majority Caucus, one of the group’s more moderate factions, rather than Marxist Unity Group.
What DSA is asking for is written down, in its own documents, under its own name.
A country without a Senate. A presidency and a Supreme Court that answer to Congress. A new constitution to replace the one written in 1787.
Whether any of it moves beyond a platform is a separate question. For now it is the stated program of the largest socialist organization in the country, and its endorsed candidates are expected to promote it.
DSA national, Denver DSA and the Kiros campaign did not respond to requests for comment.