Melat Kiros is 29 years old, Ethiopian-born, running for Colorado's 1st Congressional District as a Democratic Socialist, and she'd like you to know that the September 11th attacks were America's fault.
She'd also like to give you free healthcare, free housing, and a national high-speed rail system. Don't worry about the tab. It "pays for itself."
Kiros, who is seeking the Democratic nomination in this week's primary, sat for an interview that should be required viewing for anyone who still thinks the Democratic Socialists of America are just passionate kids who care about the poor. When asked about the 9/11 attacks, Kiros called them "inevitable" — her word — explaining that they were a consequence of American foreign policy.
"Inevitable in the sense that we destabilized a lot of the Middle East," Kiros said. "That forced people to believe..." She trailed off there, as people tend to do when they realize they're about to say the quiet part even louder.
Nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered that morning. Firefighters ran into collapsing towers. Families watched planes hit buildings on live television. And a 29-year-old congressional candidate just called it the predictable result of America being America.
But Kiros didn't stop at foreign policy revisionism. Her domestic platform reads like a wish list written by someone who has never had to balance a checking account. Medicare for All. Federally funded social housing. A national high-speed rail system. A revised federal tax code. And a federal minimum wage of approximately $21 per hour.
When pressed on how any of this gets funded, Kiros offered the kind of economic analysis that would get you laughed out of an introductory accounting class. "Single payer actually pays for itself," she said with a straight face. "You're just cutting out the middlemen that are frankly just making a profit off of people being sick."
She estimated Medicare for All would save $2 trillion over 10 years. Where that number comes from is anyone's guess, but it sounds very confident, which in Democratic Socialist circles is essentially the same as being correct.
"I sincerely believe that the last thing Democrats did to meaningfully help working families was Obamacare," Kiros said, which is a remarkable statement for two reasons. First, she's running as a Democrat. Second, she just admitted that the party she wants to represent hasn't done anything useful in over a decade. That's not an attack ad from a Republican. That's her campaign pitch.
"What I'm calling for is the same security that we have in those institutions to be in our healthcare," she continued, calling for programs that ensure "people's basic needs are protected."
The opposing argument here is straightforward: Kiros is young, idealistic, and running in a deep-blue district where these positions might actually play well. Colorado's 1st has been reliably progressive for years. The counterpoint to the sticker shock is that universal healthcare systems exist in other countries and function, at least on paper.
But other countries didn't have a candidate for federal office describe the worst terrorist attack in their nation's history as an inevitable consequence of their own behavior. That's not a healthcare policy disagreement. That's a fundamentally different understanding of what this country is.
The Democratic Socialists of America have placed members in city councils, state legislatures, and Congress over the past several election cycles. The pattern is consistent: run in safe blue districts, push the Overton window, normalize positions that would have been disqualifying a decade ago. Kiros fits the template precisely — young, media-savvy, armed with a platform that sounds generous until you ask who writes the check.
She's running for a seat in the United States Congress. The same Congress that authorized the response to the attacks she just called inevitable. The same government she wants to expand by trillions of dollars.
Single payer pays for itself. Housing pays for itself. Rail pays for itself. Everything pays for itself, right up until it doesn't, and then it's someone else's problem.
That's not a campaign platform. That's a credit card application.