Former Representative Cori Bush walked into Tuesday night's Missouri primary expecting a comeback story. She walked out with her second consecutive loss to the same guy. Representative Wesley Bell held off Bush's rematch bid in Missouri's 1st Congressional District, finishing the night with a comfortable margin after polls had shown him leading by four points heading into Election Day.
Turns out voters in St. Louis remembered why they replaced her the first time.
Bush's loss was the headline, but it wasn't the only socialist faceplant on Tuesday. Down in Florida's 4th Congressional District, DSA-endorsed candidate Brit Robinson pulled a staggering 4 percent of the vote. Four. LaShonda Holloway won the Democratic primary there with 41 percent while Robinson finished behind even Michael Kirwan's 11 percent. In Florida's 23rd District, DSA-backed Oliver Larkin trailed incumbent Jared Moskowitz by a commanding margin.
The pattern is clear enough that even the DSA's own math tells the story. Of roughly 150 candidates the organization has endorsed this cycle, 34 have now lost outright. Only 35 have advanced from their primaries or run unopposed. The rest are still waiting for their turn to find out whether "democratic socialism" polls better as a bumper sticker than a ballot line.
Bush's defeat stings the most for the movement because this was supposed to be the revenge tour. She lost to Bell in 2024 by a 51-46 margin and spent two years positioning for another shot. The DSA machinery lined up behind her. Progressive donors opened their wallets. And Missouri's 1st District voters looked at the whole package and said no — again.
The organization's defenders will point to bright spots elsewhere. Abdul El-Sayed, a DSA-backed candidate won in Michigan's Democratic Senate primary against moderate Haley Stevens, but he only beat her by 1 point and didn't get 50% of the vote. That's hardly a resounding victory, it's more like a lucky break.
Here's what makes Democrats results particularly awkward for the DSA: they landed the same week the organization's International Committee got caught with eleven members signing a pledge to "support and defend Chinese socialism." Hard to run as the party of the working class when your foreign policy committee is cozying up to Beijing.
The original Squad — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Bush — rode a wave in 2018 that convinced progressives the path to power ran through DSA endorsements and primary challenges. Eight years later, one of them just lost her second straight primary. The conveyor belt that was supposed to produce a permanent socialist caucus in Congress keeps spitting out candidates who can't clear a Democratic primary in a Democratic district.
The DSA's 120,000 members can still generate headlines, launch protests, and produce viral social media moments. What they can't do is win elections.
That's a distinction voters seem increasingly comfortable making for them.
