Democratic socialist candidate brushes off concerns over DSA 'communists' as GOP 'noise'

Melat Kiros wants you to know that pointing out communists in the Democratic Socialists of America is just "noise." Not a lie, not a smear, just noise. That's a curious way to describe an organization that has, at various points, openly debated its relationship to Marxist-Leninist factions and hosted members who use the word "comrade" without irony. If a Republican candidate belonged to a group with actual white nationalists in its ranks and brushed it off the same way, nobody would call that noise. They'd call it a scandal, and rightly so.

The bigger tell here is the shrug. Kiros isn't defending DSA's ideology or explaining why the label doesn't fit. She's just waving off the question as a partisan nuisance, which is what candidates do when the honest answer is inconvenient. Voters in Colorado deserve more than "pay no attention to that." They deserve to know whether their potential congresswoman thinks a group with actual communists in its coalition is a problem or just bad optics some consultant told her to manage.

None of this means every DSA-aligned candidate secretly wants a Soviet flag over the Capitol. Most probably just like the sound of "democratic socialism" and never think too hard about who else showed up to the meeting. But that's exactly the point. When you join a coalition, you inherit its baggage, and pretending the baggage doesn't exist isn't confidence. It's evasion dressed up as toughness.