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The socialist left’s curious problems with women - Daily Kos 39%
By kos74%
7/12/2026, 6:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 37 faulty reasoning types, including Hasty Generalization, Biased Writer Voice, and Quote-first Misdirection, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 32.2% saturation with 500 hits. Analysis detected 3,547 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,551 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 44.3% and a BS Rank of 39% (13,515 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 61.70% of the article peer group.
The socialist left’s curious problems with women
July 12, 2026 at 6:00 AM
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Sen.
Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., left, greets Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., as they speak during a stop of their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour that filled Civic Center Park, on March 21, 2025, in Denver.
Political movements usually celebrate their greatest successes.
They build on them.
They elevate them.
Which is why the Democratic Socialists of America’s treatment of some of the party’s most successful women, including some of their own, has always been so bizarre.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was never acceptable.
Sen.
Elizabeth Warren became “the snake.”
Former Vice President Kamala Harris inspired a “Abandon Harris” movement.
Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, elected with DSA’s backing and once viewed as the movement’s future, was eventually cast aside as well.
At some point, it’s reasonable to stop viewing these episodes in isolation and ask whether they reflect a broader pattern.
Former U.S.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during the Clinton Global Initiative, Sept. 24, 2025, in New York.
AP
The Democratic Party’s left flank had a serious problem with Hillary Clinton.
But that was at least understandable—she was considerably more moderate than Sen.
Bernie Sanders, and there was plenty of bad blood from their bruising primary battle.
But soon afterward, the left had a new champion in Ocasio-Cortez, the Bronx lawmaker who has spent the past seven years emerging as one of the Democratic Party’s biggest stars, with far more staying power than the rest of progressive House members known as “the Squad” elected alongside her.
She won office with the explicit backing of the Democratic Socialists of America.
She was everything they could have wanted.
Yet two years ago, DSA effectively excommunicated Ocasio-Cortez from the movement, deciding she was no longer sufficiently pure.
As City & State New York reported , DSA’s “Red Star” caucus—describing itself as a “revolutionary Marxist caucus within the DSA”—published a post titled “ Endorsing AOC is a Bridge to Nowhere .”
The post accused Ocasio-Cortez of abandoning the organization by encouraging DSA members to support President Joe Biden’s reelection despite Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza.
It was an extraordinary act of political self-sabotage.
Successful political movements don’t eject their most successful leaders—particularly one who could plausibly become president someday.
But this wasn’t a movement particularly interested in winning elections.
It was furious that AOC supported Biden, and later Harris, in an election where the choice was ultimately binary.
There were only two options, and if they opposed the Democrats, it necessarily meant they were okay with Trump winning.
And how did that work out for Gaza?
Vice President Kamala Harris arrives to speak to students and recent graduates at Prince George’s Community College, in Largo, Md., on Dec.
17, 2024.
AP
The same dynamic resurfaced after Biden stepped aside.
Rather than rally around Harris in a race that would determine not just the future of Gaza but of American democracy itself, parts of the activist left launched “Abandon Harris” campaigns and urged Democrats to withhold their votes.
Once again, defeating a Democratic woman seemed to take precedence over defeating Donald Trump.
Even now, it’s striking how much of that faction’s energy remains focused on condemning Democrats who no longer control U.S. foreign policy rather than the administration actually prosecuting it.
For people who insisted Harris, as vice president, bore responsibility for Gaza, it’s remarkable how little comparable attention they’ve paid to Vice President JD Vance.
Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t the only ideologically aligned woman to draw the movement’s wrath.
Warren became the target during the 2020 Democratic primary, when large numbers of Sanders supporters branded her “the snake” after a dispute over whether a woman could defeat Trump.
Nothing but a snake emoji when it comes to Elizabeth Warren. screenshot from Twitter
As Amanda Marcotte wrote in Salon at the time, Warren’s campaign said Sanders had told her “he disagreed” with her belief that a female Democrat could win, while Sanders insisted he merely argued that Trump would weaponize sexism against any woman who became the nominee.
The reality is that both were expressing different aspects of the same political reality.
Sanders was right that sexism remained a formidable electoral obstacle and that Trump would exploit it relentlessly.
But sexism was no less a hindrance to electability than being a socialist or as polarizing as Sanders is.
I was the biggest Warren supporter in 2020, but seeing the final election results, I can admit that she wouldn’t have won.
But neither would have Bernie.
In the end, it took Biden—a boring, white male moderate—to narrowly defeat Trump.
It’s difficult to imagine either Sanders or Warren assembling a broader coalition than the one Biden ultimately needed to win, given the realities of both the 2020-era political climate, and Trump’s extraordinary political talents.
Marcotte also observed something that many Democrats had already noticed: “Bernie has a flock of stalwart fans who are super-duper-don’t-bother-denying-it sexist, and who enjoy trolling and demonizing feminists online and then turning around and condescending to women in real life.”
Examples of that dynamic abound , but it wasn’t merely anecdotal.
Political scientists Meri T.
Long, Ryan Dawe, and Elizabeth Suhay reached a similar conclusion in Politics & Gende r, writing, “We find that among Democrats, hostile sexists were drawn to Bernie Sanders, but gender traditionalists preferred Hillary Clinton.”
That doesn’t mean Sanders or his general supporters were sexist.
It does mean his movement attracted more hostile sexists than Clinton’s did.
Hillary Clinton.
Elizabeth Warren.
Kamala Harris.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Individually, each episode can be explained away.
Collectively, they raise an uncomfortable question.
And then came this week.
Graham Platner, former Democratic candidate for U.S.
Senate, speaks at a news conference April 30, in Lewiston, Maine.
AP
“A top adviser to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani pushed hard for Maine Democrat Graham Platner in the 2026 Senate race with an eye on a Democratic presidential ticket by 2032,” the New York Post reported .
“Morris Katz hyped up Platner as a Bernie Sanders successor who could captivate the progressive base of the Democratic Party—much better than Squad darling Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who he saw as a losing nominee.”
“You make this guy senator, and then you make this guy president because, in large part, Morris and this whole sector of the left do not believe that AOC can win because she’s a woman,” their Democratic source told the Post.
What kind of Democrat is already plotting for 2032, when Democrats should be hoping to renominate a Democratic incumbent for a second term?
And why would a movement that supposedly shares Ocasio-Cortez’s politics spend so much effort trying to block her path to the White House instead of clearing it (or at the least, sharing it)?
To be clear, we shouldn’t take the Post‘s reporting as gospel, and Katz has denied the allegations.
Standing alone, anonymous sourcing wouldn’t be enough to draw any conclusions.
But it doesn’t stand alone.
Katz has made no secret of his expansive ambitions.
“Mr.
Katz has helped to select and mold the campaigns of the next generation of hard-left Democratic candidates across the U.S. who want to shake up the party,” The Telegraph reported .
“His ambitions do not stop there.
He sees his work as a global mission to fundamentally change who holds power.”
Good.
Democrats desperately need young leaders pushing for systemic change.
We need ambitious organizers building the next generation of the party.
I don’t agree with everything Katz advocates, but I certainly respect the ambition.
What I don’t understand is why so much of that energy is so often invested in flawed or untested men while equally accomplished—or far more accomplished—women are dismissed as impure, unelectable, or compromised.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks at a news conference at Gracie Mansion, March 9, in New York.
AP
Sanders could lose two presidential primaries and remain the movement’s undisputed standard-bearer.
Mamdani has won a single citywide election and is already being discussed as a future president.
Platner hasn’t even won statewide office, yet influential voices had already made him the next great progressive hope.
Meanwhile, Clinton was never acceptable.
Warren became “the snake.”
Harris was abandoned.
Ocasio-Cortez, arguably the most successful progressive politician of her generation, was eventually cast aside by the very people that helped elect her.
The women the movement is quickest to dismiss also happen to be the women who have come closest to leading it nationally.
That’s the pattern.
Individually, every episode has an explanation.
Together, they suggest something harder to ignore.
Political movements should demand high standards from their leaders.
They should also demand them equally.
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We continue to be paywall-free.
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#Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez #Bernie Sanders #Democratic Socialists of America #Hillary Clinton #Kamala Harris #Morris Katz
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