The DSA is a joke.
The DSA's right wing is poised to purge all that distracting "identity politics", like BDS, police abolitionism, BLM, disability rights, trans rights, criticism of western imperialism, and anything about 'minority' representation in politics generally or within the DSA itself.
The DSA now stands for Medicare for All and that's about it. In other words, they're Rockefeller Republicans.
Harrington drew his influence from middle-class white liberals unhappy with the pro-Vietnam-War, pro-big labor Democrats of the sixties and seventies. He wanted to capture that disaffection for the DSA, but stay linked to Democratic Party politics. And that's what the DSA was/is.
A lot of younger people came into the DSA since the mid 2000s wanting something more radical, and seeing the DSA as the most viable electoral party on the left. They are now being ejected from the DSA; the graft didn't take.
The DSA was never in the least radical. That was a misunderstanding of its founding, nature, and purpose. It was only minimally social democrat, much less "socialist" in any recognizable way.
I pretty much always thought the DSA was a waste of time.
Anyway, here we are.
(I don't know what isn't a waste of time, politically, though)
Yeah the DSA walked back on that idea, which originally wasn't getting rid of BDS but moving its responsibilities to the foreign policy committee.
DSA is as useless as electoral politics generally, but I think it still has a role in getting the more radical message out there. Literally who else had a good take on Russia-Ukraine?