The vestiges of Halloweekend were still strewn across the tents at Bohemian Garden Pub in Astoria when New York City’s chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) gathered to watch the midterms last night. Each time the screens around them bared blue, members shaked their fists in triumph as a tidal wave of Democratic wins broke over CNN’s coverage. The night belonged to Democrats at large, a glint of light at the end of a long Trumpian tunnel, and to this crowd in particular. “After tonight, we’re going to send the largest bloc of socialists to Congress in US history,” Gustavo Gordillo, the chapter’s co-chair, told partygoers in a speech.
Interviewing anyone was close to impossible, since every few minutes an MC seized the microphone to announce another blue win and the raucous celebrations drowned out any hope for linear conversation. Republicans had woken up on Tuesday controlling both chambers of Congress; by the small hours Democrats had won both back, taking the House by their widest margin in nearly two decades and flipping seven (!!!) Republican Senate seats, including traditionally conservative states like Iowa, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina and Kansas (which last elected a Democrat in 1932).
It was a landslide many are already calling a “blue tsunami” and which saw several historic milestones, including the election of the US’s first Muslim senator, the first openly gay senator, the first Black woman governor and the first woman Native American governor. Between announcements, partygoers returned to their chicken strips and giant pretzels. The room was loyal to a point, cheering when Kathy Hochul held on to the New York governorship, before breaking into a unanimous chant of “tax the rich”.
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With all its projected wins for the evening, the event felt like a kind of “coming out” party for the DSA, and the crowd dressed for the occasion. Keffiyehs were slung on shoulders, jackets were studded with Zohran pins and Palestine flags were flying proudly everywhere you looked. The organisation’s House caucus, which until yesterday consisted of just Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib, is set to more than triple in January as Melat Kiros (Colorado), Chris Rabb (Pennsylvania), Donavan McKinney (Michigan), Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier (New York) head to Washington. Valdez, the Queens Assembly member elected to succeed Nydia Velazquez in New York’s 7th District, made a brief appearance at the party. Progressives in the movement’s orbit, like Abdul El-Sayed, who declared victory in Michigan’s Senate race after 1:30am, are basking in a media glow the left has rarely enjoyed. “Our movement has hit a high point here today,” Gordillo said. “I think we are entering into the end of the Trump era.” The room responded with riotous applause.
On one of the picnic benches lay a gigantic map, onto which attendees were encouraged to press stickers of winners’ faces as each DSA candidate’s race was called. At a gathering of socialists in the largest city in America, now run by a democratic socialist mayor, it could be easy to believe the movement starts and ends here, and a national media given to fearmongering about Mamdani’s New York only fuels this narrative. But as the night went on and winning candidate’s stickers cropped up across the map, it’s clear the movement has seeped into America’s heartlands. Aidan Kohn-Murphy, 22, a DSA member, pointed to the map as proof that candidates running unapologetically on Medicare For All and an end to the genocide in Gaza can win, however much money is spent against them. “There’s an understanding that we’re entering the new Congress with a real influx of stalwart progressives who are willing to fight the establishment and fight for what’s right, even if it has a political cost.”
Our movement has hit a high point here today. think we are entering into the end of the Trump era
When Gordillo took the stage near the night’s end, he could barely get a sentence out before Texas, on two occasions, interjected with its massive wins. The state sent up James Talarico to the Senate and Gina Hinojosa to the governor’s office, its first Democrats to win statewide since 1994. As each call horn sounded, people clambered onto the tables, hugging each other, fists thrust into the air Breakfast Club style. “TALAFREAKOOO,” someone behind me hooted. “We’ve been told for so long that if we elect democratic socialists throughout the country, that we won’t be able to win races in Texas, in Florida,” Gordillo said. “Tonight, we actually elected a democratic socialist in Tampa, in a Republican, MAGA-held seat.” That was Ashley Herrman, who flipped Florida’s 69th House District, which Trump carried by more than eight points in 2024 (democratic socialist Angie Dixon, meanwhile, came shockingly close to unseating her Republican rival in the race for the Florida senate). Gordillo credited the room for making such a coup possible. “It is because of all the work that you here put to elect Zohran Mamdani [….] that people like James Talarico can run on an economic populist agenda and have some credibility. What comes next, it’s up to us, it’s up to all of you,” he said. “2028 is ours for the taking.”
The wins reached all the way down the ballot. Aber Kawas, elected to the State Senate in District 12, which takes in Astoria itself, made history tonight as the first Palestinian-American Muslim woman to sit in the New York State Legislature. She never imagined herself running, having watched her mother get kicked off a bus for wearing a hijab and her father spend more than three years in detention before he was deported. For years, Kawas went to politicians telling them the Israeli state was killing her people and implored them to stop using American money to fund occupation, apartheid, and genocide, and they all but shrugged at her. “Even though our political system has denied us, we have always understood that people deserve universal healthcare, fast and free buses, and free education,” she told the crowd. “We have always been able to imagine that world. And this year, folks, is the year where we get to get into the fore and build that world together.”
For many, like Elise Joshi, 24, the night revived a hope they had gone years without. “It’s energising, it makes me want to continue to organise and to build on the momentum that we’re seeing from the primaries to the general election tonight, just keep going,” Joshi said. Sofia Omg’ele, 26, joined the DSA in college, having grown up in one of the most conservative corners of LA County, where the done thing among Democrats was to vote blue no matter who. “I don’t think that I’ve felt this amount of hope about where the nation was going probably since like…” she began, racking her brain for an answer, before being drowned out by another round of cheers.
