The political pendulum continues to swing, though its arc these days seems far more volatile and exaggerated.

While there have always been outliers and more extreme actors on the political spectrum, the pendulum for many years was more of a steady, often predictable metronome. The country would experience periods of ascendancy on the left, followed by years of dominance by the right.

In political terms, the bob of the pendulum is constantly in motion and never fully resets in the same point. Still, the historical swings were usually within a limited range. As life these days too often feels on overdrive, so it is with political mood swings.

In the early 2010s, in reaction to Obama’s young presidency, the Tea Party took flight within the Republican Party and yanked that center of gravity hard to the right. What we are now witnessing is something of the Democratic equivalent. Given that it is most prevalent among the urban young, maybe we should call it the Cappuccino Party.

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA, for short) has rather quickly gone from being a fringe element with traction largely limited to New York City and major locales on the West Coast (or Left Coast as some refer to it) to being a potent, growing force throughout the Democratic Party.

Before “democratic socialism” became part of the vernacular, many of its fans “felt the Bern” through the presidential candidacies of Vermont’s Bernie Sanders. Younger star power now belongs to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Those headliners are rapidly gaining plenty of support troops. Less than a month ago, DSA-affiliated or endorsed candidate Brad Lander and Darializa Avila Chevalier unseated incumbent Democratic congresspeople and Claire Valdez won an open seat all in New York. The sweep carried an unmistakable message.

A week later, here in Colorado, 29-year-old Melat Kiros, who full-throatedly touted her DSA endorsement, sent packing a 15-term incumbent who had taken office before Kiros was born. True, Diana DeGette had passed up one opportunity after another to retire with grace and pass the torch. No matter, Kiros’s was a victory of stunning proportions.

The most powerful statement may have come from a losing candidate. Julie Gonzales, who mounted what many considered only a symbolic challenge to perennial establishment pol, Sen. John Hickenlooper, never shied away from her ultraprogressive platform and came within 5.8 points of pulling off the upset of all upsets.

Clearly, something is going on that is more than a passing fad. A number of DSA-friendly sorts hold seats on Denver City Council. Ditto in Aurora. Most tellingly, a Colorado Polling Institute survey from last summer showed that more Denver residents identify as “socialist” (12%) than as a “Republican” (10%).

Just what is “Democratic socialism?” Clearly, not everyone connected to DSA embraces the full philosophy of Karl Marx (the author of “Das Kapital;” not Victor Marx’s dad) or American socialist icons such as Eugene Debs, Norman Thomas and Angela Davis.

The DSA website does not sugarcoat the platform. Single-payer healthcare, the Green New Deal and defunding the police are all included. Whatever the merits of each issue, an elemental understanding of branding is utterly lacking. The same genius who coined “democratic socialism” must have been the wordsmith behind the “defunding” silliness that nearly three-quarters of Americans reject.

Those who penned the issue stances got a full dose of the oppressor versus oppressed binary that overtook much of academia a decade back. A year ago, the organization adopted a resolution making support for Israel’s right to self-defense grounds for expulsion from membership. Kiros and others show no inclination to challenge that admonition.

Dating back to the Biden years, DSA decried any notion of a “crisis at the border” as “exclusionary” and “xenophobic.”

One gets the sense that DSA activists and ideologues buy much of the socialist agenda. However, that is not necessarily the case for the 53 percent of Denver primary voters who chose Kiros or the 47 percent of those across the state who picked Gonzales.

Political motivations and perceptions are multifaceted. For many sympathetic voters, DSA candidates provided an outlet for deep frustration with a stuck political system and a discredited establishment with ever more oligarchical traits. Beyond that, this was a response to punishing inflation, unaffordability and the disappearing American dream.

This is as much a reaction to perceived powerlessness on the left as it is a statement on specific platform planks. Though those newly in power will seek to enact policy while too many other Democrats will feel the breeze hard from the left and set their sail accordingly.

For most Americans, especially those outside big cities and progressive enclaves, socialism remains several bridges too far both as a concept and in its particulars. Its surge may provide Democrats with new energy but at a very steep cost.

New York’s Avila Chevalier has spoken of abolishing prisons and “seizing all properties from landlords” while expressing admiration for the likes of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara. She has referred to the United States as “occupied Native American land” and “a (expletive) disgrace.”

Good luck selling that across the vast heartland.

Eric Sondermann is a Colorado-based independent political commentator. He writes regularly for ColoradoPolitics and the Gazette newspapers. Reach him at EWS@EricSondermann.com; follow him at @EricSondermann