The verdict was swift and unequivocal: Megan Romer’s interview with New Yorker editor David Remnick was a disaster for the Democratic Socialists of America, of which Romer is the national co-chair. And it wasn’t just the likes of the notoriously anti-DSA New York Post, which wrote that Romer “appeared clueless.” “What does the DSA actually want?” the Forward asked. “Its national co-chair can’t say.” The Independent wrote that Romer sounded “completely lost,” while Mediate said she “metaphorically stepped on a banana peel and tumbled into a thorny bush.”
Inside the DSA, opinions of Romer’s performance were more nuanced. Some said they were happy with how she portrayed socialism on camera. But the interview also concerned many inside a group desperate to keep itself unified amid explosive growth since 2024, when their own Zohran Mamdani launched his electrifying campaign for New York mayor. “I do think she’s caused damage,” one DSA member in a position of leadership said. “People from all across the political left have been messaging me and some others, begging us to take her off the air.”
It wasn’t Romer’s first media stumble. Just weeks earlier, she went on Fox News and went viral for her one-word affirmative answers—“yes,” “absolutely”—to rapid-fire questions about abolishing everything from the presidency to borders to prisons. That could be shrugged off as a right-wing trap. But the optics of the New Yorker interview weren’t much better, as Romer’s bubbly energy and bright-red eyeglasses clashed with Remnick’s calm, paternalistic tone. The editor spoke at times like a bored scholar holding office hours with a pupil. After the interview, Romer expressed annoyance with Remnick on X, calling him a “debate bro.”
“Listening to a lot of David’s questions, I don’t necessarily think they were bad,” said City & State reporter Peter Sterne, who covers the DSA and is a former member of the organization. “But I do think that they were hostile.”
Romer, who did not respond to my request for comment, certainly made some eyebrow-raising statements in the interview, such as saying she “probably would have” attended the controversial pro-Palestinian rally held in New York City on October 8, 2023, if she’d been able to. The DSA did not organize the rally—which was criticized by many as condoning Hamas’s attack on Israel the day prior—but promoted it on social media at the time before backpedaling with a statement apologizing for the “confusion” and calling for “peace, equality, and freedom for all Palestinians and Israelis.”
NYC-DSA member Eric Blanc said he was disappointed to hear Romer endorse the rally three years on. “We need to be really consistent about not giving any possible impression that fighting against the crimes of the Israeli government means in any way condoning what Hamas has done,” he said. “Megan, to her credit, at some points tried to push back a little bit against that, but then contradicted herself by saying, basically, we should still go to this rally.”
The DSA is not a monolith; differences in ideology are encouraged. The organization contains everyone from FDR-style social Democrats to revolutionary Maoists, and most DSA members join a smaller “caucus” that aligns with their beliefs. Romer is a member of Red Star, a Marxist-Leninist caucus on the left flank of the organization that’s even more committed to Palestine than she was willing to publicly admit; their post–October 7 statement was titled, “We Do Not Condemn Hamas, and Neither Should You.”
The differences between national DSA and the New York chapter are especially pronounced, as writer and professor Nathan Newman explained an admittedly biased Substack post last month titled “The Sane NYC DSA vs the Crazy National DSA—A Guide for the Perplexed.” “It’s almost hard to believe they’re the same organization,” he wrote. “They aren’t, really. The pragmatic politics of the New York City chapter, with its broad neighborhood alliances and its block-by-block canvassing and its willingness to back candidates who can actually win and then govern, is radically at odds with the national leadership of the DSA, which is dominated by sectarian ideologues and has at points actively worked to undermine the very approach that makes New York succeed.”
So it’s no wonder that opinions of Romer’s performance in the New Yorker interview, and of Romer herself, vary widely within the DSA. “Megan is a very important leader to many in DSA, particularly those on the more left-wing side, and they’re not going to critique her publicly, nor would I expect them to,” said a source in regional leadership. This source added that the “most vocal opposition” to the interview was coming from Socialist Majority Caucus and Groundwork, two large caucuses on the right flank of the DSA.
Romer has history with both. SMC and Groundwork each pushed for an unconditional endorsement of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s reelection campaign in 2024. After internal debate, the national chapter instead offered a conditional endorsement, then withdrew it days later, citing an insufficient commitment to the Palestinian cause. Caucuses like Red Star were key in the decision to distance the DSA from the most prominent democratic socialist in America.
The most common criticism of Romer’s interview that I heard from DSA members concerned her unpreparedness for certain questions. When Remnick asked whether she believed there should be millionaires in this country, she said (not unwisely) that she was more concerned about billionaires. But she ran into trouble when she said she supported “taxing the hell out of millionaires,” and Remnick tried to pin her down on a number.
“Well, what does taxing the hell out of them mean?” he said with a huff. Romer dragged her feet. “Uh, yeah, you know, again,” she said, “I don’t have a solid—” Remnick cut her off. “But shouldn’t you?” he asked. “Um, that’s a good question,” she replied.
“If you’re the co-chair of DSA, shouldn’t you be more specific than just taxing the hell out of something?” Remnick asked. “What exactly do you mean?” Romer continued: “So, again, it’s democracy, right?...” She never got around to answering the question.
This response, one of several from the interview to go viral, did not sit well with some in the DSA. “She couldn’t really answer some of the basic policy questions about taxing the rich, which is really our bread and butter,” said the first DSA leader. “I think that’s quite damning.”
Blanc said Romer wasn’t convincing enough for those on the outside. The interview “didn’t articulate socialist politics in a way that I think would bring people closer to DSA if you weren’t already on board,” he said. “There were multiple times where … Megan said things that were obviously going to give the enemies of socialism in the Democratic Party and the Republicans a field day.”
Romer doubled down on a wholly socialist America (“We’re not fighting for a kinder, gentler capitalism”), defended abolishing the Senate (a position TNR editor Michael Tomasky agrees with), and said she opposed providing weapons to Ukraine in their war with Russia. “We should be sending huge teams of diplomats,” Romer said. Remnick’s response: “Russia would get off of Ukraine’s back by us sending diplomats?”
While Romer’s answers accurately reflect the DSA’s stances, they’re easily mocked by the establishment when put forth so directly. “The circles of DSA members that I talked to and were texting about this were pretty upset, because they understand the stakes right now,” Blanc said. “You’re not really speaking to Remnick there. You’re not speaking to Fox News people. You’re trying to speak to the people who are potentially going to watch that.”
Sterne was more sympathetic. “There’s a tension between wanting to appear reasonable and trying to win people over without moving away from what DSA actually believes,” he said. “I’m not sure that there’s that much Megan could have done differently, because she does have to represent this large and sometimes unwieldy coalition of DSA’s internal politics.”
Despite the criticism of Romer within the DSA, there’s little chance she will be replaced as co-chair before her term ends next summer. Ousting her prematurely would require a two-thirds majority vote from the DSA’s National Political Committee, or NPC, and the right branch of the organization knows that even suggesting the idea would enrage the left flank.
“She got by far the most votes during the co-chair elections last year,” Sterne said. “There is a lot of support for her. Even if people feel she’s not the strongest spokesperson, I think people are generally happy with her overall leadership of the organization.” Sidney Carlson White, an NPC member representing the left-wing Marxist Unity Group, confirmed as much. “There’s been no outcry from any of the caucuses,” he said, adding that he thought the interview was “generally viewed positively by membership.”
But that doesn’t mean others aren’t hoping for a sea change. “I think everyone thought she was doing a bad job, but it was sort of a ‘wait and see’ approach to assess the extent of the damage,” said the first DSA leader, who wants Romer gone. “As time has gone by, it does seem to be a serious issue.” Added the regional leader: “I don’t think she has a strong vision for what DSA should be. On top of that, she doesn’t seem like a strong spokesperson either. So I do support replacing her.” The same source said they expected Romer to “pull back” from public appearances.
Grace Mausser, the co-chair of NYC-DSA and a member of SMC, said she empathized with Romer. Mausser has also acted as a de facto spokeswoman for the DSA, recently making appearances on CBS and Fox & Friends. “Until the last two years, almost none of us had big media experience or did a lot of press,” she said. “I may disagree with Megan on some things, but Megan … like all of us in DSA, is adjusting to a very sudden spotlight on our movement.”
It is perhaps not a coincidence, then, that just four days after the New Yorker interview, the DSA announced it was hiring a national press coordinator for the first time. “People feel that the co-chairs, both Megan and Ashik [Siddique], are doing their best,” Sterne said. “But there is a concern that they need better media training. Some people have also said maybe the co-chairs should not be the spokespeople.”
The level of discontent within the DSA is hard to discern; most regional and national members are reluctant to speak to the press. Requests for comment from Red Star and NPC members other than White went unanswered. Even those who are critical of Romer, or of the national chapter in general, are wary of giving fodder to the DSA’s bad-faith critics at a time when the organization is more politically successful than ever before. “We want people to understand that DSA is a nuanced organization that has its own internal political discussions and battles,” the regional leader explained, “but we also don’t wish to continue a media cycle that is always looking for divisions in the left.”
