Las Vegas DSA’s Very Good Statement on Electoral Strategy & Where I Differ
Las Vegas DSA recently put out a very good retrospective about their capture of the Democratic Party leadership in Nevada. In 2021, they ousted the established Harry Reid Nevada Democratic Party Political Machine. But since then, they've been heavily disappointed, and they're now extremely pessimistic about engaging in the Democratic Party.
There's also an article from Politico with some kinda tabloid-ey, rumor-feeding background on the situation. In my mind, Politico is basically a tabloid for people interested in US electoral politics. This article also annoyingly makes an equivalence between DSA and unnamed "progressives", as if their views are somewhat close to each other. The LVDSA statement is much better than the Politico article for giving a socialist analysis of the situation.
I'm a DSA member in Texas, and I am not as pessimistic about electoral engagement in the Democratic Party as Las Vegas DSA, but I think there are some necessary lessons to learn from their retrospective. Here’s what I got out of it:
1. Establishment Democrats are petty as hell, and will intentionally screw over socialists, regardless of the interests of their constituents.
We've known this, but it's good to have a reminder. When the establishment lost, instead of setting up a transition away from the establishment, they "effectively gutted the party infrastructure, transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars out of the party coffers, giving the entire staff parachutes that allowed them to quit en masse, and leaving countless bills unpaid and files unorganized." However, there is likely variation between different Democratic party machines—the Reid Machine was one of the more coordinated political machines in the nation.
2. The LVDSA heavily emphasizes that a lot of their electoral strategy's failure came down to lack of communication and coordination between their elected Progressive Slate and the DSA chapter.
Ready to be mobilized, we awaited instructions. The instructions never came. Nor, indeed, did any real communication. We openly acknowledge our part in allowing the relationship to fall flat. We deferred to the people who’d actually won these offices, naively expecting them to think of us as partners in organization and mobilization. After the election, Left Caucus also fell off in attendance and capacity; as is so often the case when a big campaign ends, all but a few major players scattered when a new project didn’t present itself.
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Even when leadership attempted strong reforms – for example, leadership’s national push for a formalized removal of dark money from Democratic Primary races via a DNC resolution – there was no communication, no ask of us as DSA members to mobilize our comrades around the country to lobby their local party officials; we learned about this empirically good (if futile) policy push only through the mainstream media, like everyone else.
3. While LVDSA celebrated bold "principled statements", they nevertheless saw their elected slate move more to the center in publicly-stated principle and policy.
Initially, despite our lack of communication, we watched with pride while the NV Dems made some bold statements: one arguing for Palestinian rights that drew the national ire of politicians and pundits, one demanding clemency for Indigenous political prisoner Leonard Peltier, and more. Still, the principled statements were just statements; we saw no significant organization toward these positions, no push on legislators themselves, and no call to action for community members who wanted to see these political viewpoints moving more than just reactionary newsmen to action.
As the term went on, we saw the ostensibly-progressive coalition move more and more to the center, making administrative and political choices that were more in line with the corporatists that we pledged to beat than the grassroots organizers who pushed the initial victory. As the Ghost of the Reid Machine played dirty trick after dirty trick, the ostensibly progressive leadership oscillated between playing respectability politics and making compromises to the center.
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The Party, however, took no stance when every single one of our elected State Representatives proudly voted to condemn “the horrors of socialism,” and indeed continued to do free messaging for the handful of so-called progressive Representatives who insisted that voting against socialism was necessary for passing a progressive agenda.
4. The Politico article says that the 2021 DSA-endorsed elected party chair, Judith Whitmer, “opted to work within political realities.”
“They really did not want to do electoral politics,” [Judith Whitmer] said. “They wanted to work outside of the current electoral system. As the state party chair, I can’t do that. I can’t work outside of the system itself. I represent the Democratic Party. I don’t represent the DSA."
I think this statement doesn’t reflect a particularly socialist analysis. I think socialist elected officials should represent the interests of their working class constituents, which often means advocating and organizing for things which their constituents will initially be superficially against, due to lack of analysis.
I think this requires organizing to show the unorganized working class how all our interests are ultimately aligned with socialist principles and policies; and to learn and incorporate constituents' working class interests which we might have previously overlooked. I think that is a more expanded view of electoral politics than what Whitmer seems to have had in mind.
I also think that elected socialist politicians often play it safer than necessary. Especially because they have DSA behind them, they should hopefully feel freer to take bolder actions. At the least, they could communicate to organizers what would make them feel safer in taking bolder actions.
Still, I think we need to seriously analyze things around what made Whitmer, who was close to the legislative work, feel a clear need to work within particular boundaries of electoral politics which caused discontent and lack of coordination with the LVDSA. Some questions I think about with regards to these practical limitations on legislative politics:
How do we judge what the practical political limitations are so that we can act boldly but not ruin the overall electoral strategy (whatever that is)?
How do we coordinate and organize to expand those practical political possibilities for DSA-endorsed elected officials?
How do we address those practical limitations while remaining principledly socialist, and without falling into inaccessible bureaucratic political games, to win things alongside an informed and increasingly class-conscious working class?
Even if DSA chapters are well-coordinated with their endorsed elected officials, how do they prevent themselves from deviating from principle in favor of unnecessarily "practical" politics—that is, how do DSA chapters avoid repeating the mistakes of the German Social Democratic Party in the early 1900s? We’re Democratic Socialists, not Social Democrats!
5. LVDSA does not put their disappointments on the moral failings of the elected officials.
They recognize there are significant structural limitations on leftist elected officials.
As socialists, we do not think the rightward shift is a moral failing of leadership; we have seen the same thing happen over and over when socialists enter Democratic Party politics. The corrupt, corporate-fueled machine (and its aide-de-camp, the mainstream media) is a moderating force, even for the proudest leftists.
6. LVDSA has become very pessimistic about engaging in the Democratic Party at all.
Because they experienced massive structural limitations on leftist elected officials, as discussed in (3) - (4), LVDSA becomes very pessimistic about engaging in the Democratic Party at all. They think the dirty bureaucratic tricks of the establishment are powerful and never-ending, and that it encourages elected socialists to engage in similar bureaucratic tricks to win legislatively, which is ultimately not beneficial for building an organized mass working class.
I think their analysis is good, but their conclusions do not follow. I personally think complete disengagement from the Dem Party is a mistake, but am genuinely interested in being proven wrong by DSA chapters who try out a variety of electoral strategies and see what is most effective for which conditions. I also think it's a mistake for LVDSA to imply that the lessons they learned for their situation can be simply applied to every other DSA electoral situation.
This is our lesson, and we hope socialists everywhere will pay close attention: the Democratic Party is a dead end. It is a “party” in name only; truly, it is simply a tangled web of dark money and mega-donors, cynical consultants, and lapdog politicians. The establishment is Lucy with the football: no matter how effectively socialists organize for power, the establishment will simply pull the football away, using dirtier and dirtier tricks. Enough falling for the tricks and even the most dedicated socialist can’t help but give up and play the ugly game. We don’t want milquetoast progressive reformist-reforms; we want socialism. We won’t get it by playing the DNC’s games, and we won’t get it by being a mildly obnoxious thorn in their side, either. Our task is to out-organize them entirely, and not merely within the confines of the voting booth.
7. I agree with the point they make about legislative bureaucratic maneuvers.
The Politico article gives some background on some internal party political maneuvering by Judith Whitmer. She used existing bureaucratic rules to remove some members from a party central committee, and was consequently accused of "election rigging" by the establishment Dems.
We would note that it is unfortunate that the party chair is receiving accusations of misdeeds related to the SCC membership list. We believe that it is more likely that the establishment democrats do not understand their own processes, which made it easy for us to win elections in 2021. That said, this kind of rules-lawyering and parliamentary sleight-of-hand makes it very difficult for regular working class people to engage with politics at this level, which has always been seen as a net positive by the ruling elite.
I think the point that they make about bureaucratic maneuvers is very useful. In my mind, it emphasizes how our electoral strategy should be focused on using the powers of elected positions to increase the effective organizing and class consciousness of the working class.
Harm-reducing policies are useful and necessary, but I think these need to be very explicitly and publicly linked to broader socialist goals and the organizing possibilities opened up by the passing of those policies. Otherwise, I think the unorganized working class are likely to start viewing socialist elected officials like service organizations who solve problems for a passive working class—instead of themselves becoming activated into an organized working class.
I also don't think that bureaucratic maneuvering is necessarily always off the table. LVDSA points out how it "makes it very difficult for regular working class people to engage with politics at this level". However, "very difficult" is not "impossible". So if enough work is done to talk with the working class constituency about how each case of bureaucratic maneuvering fits within a broader strategy of empowering a mass working class movement, then I think we can avoid most of the inaccessibility of the maneuvers.
8. Near the end, the LVDSA gives a kind of statement of principles.
I think it's useful to clearly state our principles out when we engage in legislative politics, so we know when a shift toward "practical politics" would go too far to reformism.
As socialists and abolitionists, we believe in something better: a politics of hope, where communities build themselves up, invest in their own democracy, and demand accountability and transparency from their community leaders, elected and unelected.