When a leader of the Democratic Socialists of America recently appeared on Fox News and enthusiastically affirmed the group’s platform — including goals such as eliminating the U.S. Senate and working toward abolishing prisons — Democratic strategists wrung their hands and Republicans licked their lips.

Acknowledging such aims, both parties predicted, could hinder progressive candidates and other Democrats painted with an extremist brush in the midterm elections.

At the D.S.A.’s national summit in Chicago over the weekend, many democratic socialists who had seen the Fox interview felt something different: pride.

“You’re going to have to constantly push and advocate for things that people don’t think, until they think it,” said Chanpreet Singh, a D.S.A. leader from Seattle.

Hundreds of members of the group, the country’s largest socialist organization, gathered here at a moment of surging political influence, some wearing bright red shirts, swapping labor-strike tips with their “comrades,” sharing voter turnout strategies and admiring far-left merchandise (guillotine earrings, “Land Lords Suck” pins and red roses, a symbol of the group). Many dismissed the notion that their positions could be a political problem and said they felt no need to moderate them. Electoral wins were proof, they reasoned, that Democratic voters were moving closer to them.

As an ardent socialist movement has encroached more deeply into the Democratic Party, with D.S.A.-backed candidates ousting incumbent Democrats from New York to Colorado and notching other victories this year, the challenges associated with that often-fraught cohabitation are coming into sharper focus. Those include questions on each side about the utility of working with the other.

“Toxic to a broad majority of the country” was how Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank, described aspirations such as prison abolition and doing away with the Senate. She predicted that Republicans would make socialist policies “one of their main attack lines.” Already, President Trump and other Republican leaders are going further, seeking to brand recent Democratic nominees, falsely, as “communists.”

The next big tests for democratic socialists will begin on Tuesday in Democratic primaries in Michigan and Missouri for the U.S. House. And Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive doctor who is not a democratic socialist but shares many of D.S.A.’s priorities, is running for the Senate in Michigan, a major battleground.

A week later is the Democratic governor’s primary in Wisconsin, where Francesca Hong, a state assemblywoman and D.S.A. member, is the front-runner. Unlike many of the left-leaning areas where democratic socialists have won primaries this year, Wisconsin is a perennial swing state.

Though she has embraced the D.S.A. label, Ms. Hong has backed away from her own past statements in favor of abolishing the police and the Senate. Last week, she said at a debate that she did “not support the full platform of the national D.S.A.” and was “not endorsed by D.S.A. national.”

In an interview, Ms. Hong said that it was “concerning to me when I’m pigeonholed as the D.S.A. candidate.”

“You can be a democratic socialist and be endorsed by your local chapter, and disagree on other decisions,” she added.

No one interviewed at the summit suggested the D.S.A. back away from its core ideas. But there were plenty of disagreements over whether the candidates supported by the organization should be required to be open about their socialist affiliation and strictly adhere to every priority in the group’s recently updated platform, or if the D.S.A. should allow them some distance as they as they try to appeal to skeptical voters.

“There’s no expectation that you have to fall in line and agree and parrot the party line on everything,” said Cliff Connolly, a D.S.A. member from Orlando who is on the organization’s governing council.

Some appeared to feel differently.

“I believe that if she had read the platform and actually knew what was in it, she wouldn’t disagree with any of it,” Michaela Brangan, a D.S.A. leader in New Jersey, said of Ms. Hong.

‘Wear their rose proudly’

The differing viewpoints on how ideologically rigid D.S.A. candidates should be reflected the spirit of disagreement in the socialist movement, whose members often join caucuses with diverging priorities.

Attendees said messy debates were a feature, not a bug, of a democratic organization.

On one side are two caucuses, Groundwork and Socialist Majority, considered more pragmatic (even right-leaning, by D.S.A. standards). Their members have focused on working within the system to get socialists elected on the Democratic ticket and are more tolerant of politicians making concessions as part of advancing a progressive agenda. They have a particularly strong presence in New York City, home to the D.S.A.’s two most famous members: Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Ashik Siddique, one of the group’s national chairs and a member of Groundwork, said he wished the organization more clearly detailed which of its priorities were urgent, like economic relief, and which were aspirational, like prison abolition. That could help the group’s candidates, Mr. Siddique reasoned, because he felt its opponents were often fixated on the most aspirational goals.

The other wing of the movement features caucuses such as Marxist Unity Group, Bread and Roses, and Red Star, that have more sway nationally and focus on enacting socialist policies by upending the system. They are have stronger ideological purity tests, with some members arguing D.S.A. should break away from Democrats entirely and form its own party.

Cerena Ermitanio, a more left-wing member from Houston who belongs to Bread and Roses, argued that the moderate caucuses were too comfortable with candidates who “hide the rose,” she said, and “don’t mention that they’re a democratic socialist.”

“We believe that our candidates need to wear their rose proudly,” she said.

Equally concerning, in the eyes of some activists, are candidates perceived to have drifted away from the movement on important policies.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, for example, who has made inroads with mainstream Democrats and is seen as a potential presidential candidate, remains a contentious topic among left-wing members of D.S.A., who said they still resented some of her past positions over the war in Gaza.

Though the congresswoman is one of the most outspoken critics of Israel in Congress, some on the left argue that she has not been strong enough in voicing support for Palestinians. In 2024, the national D.S.A. withdrew its conditional endorsement of her.

In Chicago, strong support for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was mostly confined to a party at a nearby bar hosted by Groundwork, where members chanted her nickname, A.O.C., and vowed to convert skeptics to support her for president. She has not said if she will run.

“I don’t subscribe to letting perfection becoming the enemy of the good,” said Dieter Lehmann Morales, a Groundwork member and supporter of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.

In an apparent effort to project unity, summit organizers asked that the news media speak only to the roughly 40 members who appeared on a list, many of them holding leadership roles. But outside the summit and at parties such as the Ocasio-Cortez gathering, others spoke openly.

Will Democrats ‘kick us out’?

Sitting in a dimly lit bar across from a taxidermy deer head wearing a D.S.A. hat (“Deer Leader,” as some called it), Johanna Von Maack wondered how much longer the Democratic Party would put up with the socialists in its ranks.

“I kind of wonder if what will end up happening is the Democrats kick us out,” said Ms. Von Maack, a New York D.S.A. member. She didn’t sound too unhappy about that prospect, reasoning that Democrats needed the socialists more than D.S.A. needed them.

For now, the group has been content to run its candidates on the Democratic ballot line, but some in Chicago mulled over the idea of forming a new party or running as independents.

Many in D.S.A. are also considering which Democratic incumbents they could unseat in the future. As early as the night of the New York primary victories in June, Hasan Piker, the provocative socialist influencer, was already taunting Representative Ritchie Torres of New York, a pro-Israel Democrat.

“You better act right, Ritchie,” Mr. Piker said on his livestream, threatening to find a primary challenger in 2028. “You got two more years.”

That kind of swagger permeated the summit, where members speculated about toppling high-profile New York Democrats such as Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader, and challenging Gov. Kathy Hochul and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in 2030.

“We’re thinking about all of those things,” said Olivia Gonzalez Killingsworth, a New York D.S.A. leader. “We would be fools not to.”