The Denver Gazette reports that Democratic socialist-aligned candidates are gaining real ground in Colorado, with Melat Kiros’ primary victory over longtime U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette serving as the cleanest symbol of the shift. DeGette, the dean of Colorado’s congressional delegation, lost to a younger candidate backed by a movement that has been growing for years in metro Denver.
That is not just “socialists win races.” It is the Colorado Democratic machine getting eaten by the monster it spent years feeding.
Metro Denver’s ruling left-wing ecosystem, the activists, nonprofits, tenant groups, campus radicals, union-adjacent organizers, climate outfits, and consultants who thought they could harness this energy for turnout, has now produced candidates who are coming for the old guard’s chairs. The Democratic establishment built the political wood chipper, fed it every norm it could find, and now looks shocked that its own pant leg is disappearing.
The Bullet Point Brief
- The Denver Gazette says Kiros’ win over DeGette punctuates years of socialist organizing in metro Denver. Translation: this did not fall out of the sky. The old guard watered the plant, praised the plant, fundraised off the plant, and now the plant wants the office keys.
- The Denver DSA chapter reportedly launched in 2017 and has grown to about 1,800 members, while national DSA reports more than 100,000 members. That is not a fringe coffee klatch anymore. That is an organized pressure machine with clipboards, endorsements, and patience.
- The movement has already touched Denver and Aurora politics, with DSA endorsements for Denver councilmembers Sarah Parady and Shontel Lewis, plus other local candidates and organizations. The socialist brand is not waiting outside the building. It has committee access and a parking pass.
- The article quotes DSA’s national platform calling for collective ownership of “key economic drivers” such as energy production and transportation, plus “radical” reforms like single-payer Medicare for All, defunding police and refunding communities, and the Green New Deal. That is not just “worker-focused.” That is who pays, who controls, and who gets to tell everyone else how to live.
- Kiros’ victory speech hit the activist checklist: abolish ICE, pass Medicare for All, reject corporate PACs and AIPAC, and end what she called genocide in Palestine. DeGette spent 30 years as a progressive Democrat and still got politically mugged by the next ideological escalation of the party she helped normalize.
My Bottom Line
Regular Coloradans are watching Denver politics move from expensive progressive incompetence into full socialist branding, and they are being told this is some brave answer to inequality.
Let’s be honest. These candidates are exploiting real pain. Housing is expensive. Groceries are expensive. Wages feel thin. Families are insecure. Young voters are angry. A lot of people look around Colorado and see a state that got wealthier, shinier, more regulated, and somehow harder to afford. That anger is real.
But here is the scam: break affordability, choke supply, regulate everything, tax everything, make government bigger, make life harder, then point at the wreckage and say, “See? Capitalism failed.” Cute trick, comrades.
The Democratic establishment created the permission structure. They rewarded activism, demonized moderation, treated taxpayers like an ATM with a moral obligation, and used softer words to launder harder ideas. Now the harder ideas are winning primaries, and the old Denver Democrats are blinking like they just discovered consequences.
This is not Red Scare cosplay. It is a Colorado warning. One-party dominance breeds arrogance. Arrogance breeds ideological escalation. And when every failure of government becomes an argument for even more government, eventually the people who built the machine get shoved aside by the people who want to run it faster.
Source: The Denver Gazette
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