Americans are heading into November with a choice that is more consequential than most political observers are willing to say plainly. If Democrats win the House in November and take over control of the House in the 120th Congress, voters should understand in clear terms what their first priorities will look like. The Left has already written the blueprint. It is called the “Workers Deserve More” plan, but it actually means less for all workers and the American people. It was written by the Democratic Socialists of America, and the group is now the ideological engine driving the House Democratic caucus’s most ambitious members.
This is not just a vision. It is a specific policy platform.
The DSA’s first-order priority is Medicare for All: the complete elimination of private (i.e., employer-based) health insurance and a government takeover of one-fifth of the American economy. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated similar proposals at $30 to $40 trillion over the next ten years. There is no credible funding mechanism, only the assurance that corporations and “the wealthy” will absorb the cost. Americans who have negotiated hard for their employer-provided coverage, or who have built careers around the healthcare sector, would see both erased by legislative fiat.
Climate policy follows in lockstep. The platform calls for a Green New Deal-style transformation of the energy economy. This includes phasing out fossil fuels, socializing energy production, and restructuring the transportation system. That would include your having to buy a new, expensive electric vehicle with an average price tag of about $52,000. The costs of prior Green New Deal proposals have been estimated in the tens of trillions of dollars. Furthermore, the timeline demanded by the Left’s most vocal members would strand hundreds of billions in existing energy infrastructure while pushing electricity costs onto families who cannot absorb them.
On housing, the DSA platform does not simply call for more construction. It treats housing as a public utility to be managed by the government, with rent controls nationalized and private landlords effectively marginalized. Economists across the ideological spectrum have documented that rent control reduces housing supply over time. None of that evidence appears to have influenced the platform.
Their immigration reforms call for open borders, abolishing ICE, and universal amnesty. The foreign policy plank is explicitly anti-defense, calling for major reductions in military spending at a moment when adversaries are growing bolder.
What may surprise average voters is the structural radicalism buried deeper in the document. The 2026 DSA platform endorses abolishing the United States Senate, the institution specifically designed by the founders to check majoritarian excess. It also endorses abolishing the police. These are not the positions of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party from five years ago. They are the governing ambitions of a movement that is actively winning primaries and shaping what the potential majority caucus could look like in January of next year.
The Left has learned from the Tea Party and the House Freedom Caucus–that organizational discipline at the primary level translates into leverage over the majority. A Speaker beholden to Members who have campaigned on this platform will face enormous pressure to move each of these items. Recent history tells us that Speakers rarely resist their most energized members for long.
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Conservative and moderate voters should resist the temptation to treat this election as a normal midterm with normal stakes. The policy agenda detailed above is not aspirational rhetoric. It is a legislative to-do list, written by people who are serious about passing it and who believe they will have the votes and the political wind at their backs to do so.
The question for the election season underway is whether American voters are paying attention.
Paul Teller is President of Teller Strategies. He worked all four years in the Trump-Pence White House, was Sen. Ted Cruz’s chief of staff, and spent nearly 13 years with House conservatives at the Republican Study Committee.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
