I have to say I think you’re way off here. The scenario you’re describing here does not, to me, bear any resemblance to the American political landscape, especially when it comes to presidential politics. Respectfully, it’s very close to a kind of magical thinking, and the democratic socialist Left cannot afford to be doing any more of that.
Your scenario treats as a given that this Hypothetical DSA-Backed Union-Worker Candidate (HDBUWC for short) will be able to get enough political oxygen to influence the Democratic primary contest. But the HDBUWC can’t “pose a sharp question to the American public, the Democratic Party, and other 2028 contenders” unless/until they’ve got enough traction to make it necessary for opponents to respond. They won’t get it.
You seem to take traction/oxygen as automatic, that the mere presence of a person saying they’re running for president is enough to get them press coverage, presence at a debate, and so on. It isn’t, and that’s the fatal flaw with your whole argument and a wild misunderstanding of presidential politics.
There’s no evidence, historically, that outsider candidates with no personal wealth or pre-existing name recognition ever even get out of the gate in presidential races. The closest comparison to what you’re talking about is probably Richard Ojeda, a West Virginia state senator who tried to run as a pure working-class candidate in 2020. He dropped out in January of 2019 (!) and never had any influence on the outcome.
A candidate needs to reach a certain level of support (which is a loose term, the meaning of which is entirely contextual) before they are able to exercise influence over the Democratic primary debate. There’s no plausible path for a HDBUWC to garner that support.
No union of any real size has ever backed such a candidate when an even moderately-acceptable mainstream candidate was available, and DSA trying to get unions to support a HDBUWC over a more mainstream candidate will make us look unserious to potential union partners, who we will at some point need if we're going to build more power. Heck, there’s not even reason to believe the bulk of DSA’s own membership will back an HDBUWC over a Prtizker or a Warnock or whoever. Comparisons to other countries (that have real campaign finance laws and media-balance rules) or to congressional races aren’t relevant. The presidential race is a horse of a different color.
DSA has not proved it has electoral muscle outside of New York City, which is wholly irrelevant to the Democratic primary process as it begins in places other than New York City. The DSA-backed candidates who have won elsewhere have also had broad-based union support and support from other groups like Indivisible, and there’s no reason to believe any of those groups would back a HDBUWC in a presidential race.
I want to be clear. I’m not saying the odds are against us and so on balance it’s not worth the risk. I’m saying our odds are zero that an HDBUWC could become a viable-enough candidate for the Democratic nomination that they would be able to influence the debate (either in the broad sense of the term or in the sense of participating in actual debates).
It won’t happen. It doesn’t matter what message they have. No one will hear it. This isn’t like a Congressional race or a mayor’s race in a dense urban environment, where door knocking and house meetings and public rallies can attract a lot of attention even without a ton of upfront money. It doesn’t scale, especially when (as I’ve noted) the Democratic early primary calendar doesn’t at all look like a map of DSA strength.
A HDBUWC would need, at minimum, enough funding to open campaign offices in the early primary states – South Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Michigan, and Virginia. That’s office space and minimal staffing. They would need money to travel to these states and spend real time there and would need some kind of staffing to help with this. Yes, some of these costs could be offset by volunteers, but you’re not going to get any substantial number of volunteers for a candidate with no name recognition and no funding. We’re talking a million dollars just to set up a very basic infrastructure, before anything like literature or paid media or dedicated comms staff or anything else. And they’d need to be doing this months before any possible DNC debates.
Again, in a congressional race or something, it’s orders of magnitude easier for a candidate to meet potential volunteers firsthand and win them over as volunteers through their charisma and message. People aren't going to jump into a presidential race for a complete unknown HDBUWC from a single Zoom meeting or cool TikTok videos. A grassroots campaign will need real volunteer work in the field, and we won't be able to win people to such a candidate.
Running an HDBUWC and losing in such spectacular fashion would ruin DSA’s ability to make any demands at all on the eventual Democratic nominee.
DSA barely has the membership to fill a Big 10 football stadium. It’s long past time we accept that reality and scale our ambitions to our actual power, not the power we imagine we’ll have if we come up with some magical working-class-uniting message. A message means nothing if no one hears it and if the messenger is unknown.
Chris Van Hollen/ Ro Khanna ticket. I’d like to see AOC run for senate and El-Sayed be in the senate a couple terms. And maybe in 2036 we can have a AOC/ El-Sayed ticket. It is too bad Mandani can’t run. There will be books written on his political genius. I’ve never seen anything like him.
The left is in no position to seriously contest the American presidency; focus on winning mayoral and gubernatorial races first.
The fact that the U.S. has never had a single socialist governor in its entire history is a challenge that needs to be rectified and doing so would help break socialist electoral victories out of the demographic ghetto they are currently stuck in (low-turnout Democratic primaries in wealthy urban areas with high concentrations of college-educated voters where the Republican Party has ceased to exist exist).
El-Sayed's extremely narrow win in Michigan by less than 1% of the vote is just the latest example of this phenomenon: "Among the nearly two dozen counties where at least 95 percent of expected ballots are in, El-Sayed is winning 58.4% of the vote in counties where at least 30% of adults have a bachelor’s degree, according to a POLITICO analysis of county-level results. On the flip side, Stevens is winning 51.4% of the vote in counties where less than 30% share of adults are college-educated. El-Sayed is similarly leading Stevens in counties with higher median incomes so far, while Stevens leads in lower-income counties."
I was interested to see you had links on general understanding of prison abolition... only to find one was a Manhattan Inst push poll with very leading questions and the other was a turgid paper that uh, well, bless the 3 people who enjoy that style.
I'd love non-biased, clear communication around the fundamental reasons we have law enforcement and how to make it work better for all.
Having the DSA as your campaign network guarantees failure, unless the backlash against Trump is as strong as the backlash against Dems/Harris in 2024, in which case any empty head will win. And the party machinery will guarantee that there are no truly popular candidates. (Ever hear of a guy names Platner?) AOC couldn't have found Iran on a map before Trump attacked, and still has no coherent position in opposition to the war.
The focus for a popular campaign in anti-trust, anti-monopoly, hold corporations accountable, including an intelligent campaign against unaccountable health care providers who are already working primarily on public money. Part of that is promoting union organizing (shop level demands for respect, not the public blustering of piecards like Shawn Fain.
I was a UAW member from 1974-85....always engaged in the union, in two strikes, one of which won extension of our new agreement to a newly opened shop in Tennessee. Second tier contract just a step behind the Big 3. I watched the International leadership destroy the union, demanding laws against imported cars, rather than organizing, telling workers including my local to accept major concessions to keep our job.....but with no guarantees.....we rejected the concessions in my Local, that's why I still collect a small pension, which was one of the things they wanted us to give up.
They made productivity agreements with the major manufacturers whereby the union supported speed-ups. Today, most UAW workers real wages are far below what mine were 40 years ago, and they can be fired at the drop of a hat, because of the "jointness" of the national union leadership and the companies. After all, don't GM's profits guarantee your job?
I've talked to shop floor workers recently. Shawn Fain has become a celebrity among liberals who have no clue what a union can or should be and he has had a few showcase wins in bargaining......but he's not organizing a ground level fight back.
I could go on about my own experience and credentials to make the case, but I'll pause here.
Abu El Sayed has said, and I believed him, that he doesn't want to be in D.C. he wants to stay in Michigan. I don't know that what DSA or whoever thinks would be decisive but the ones that come to mind are Ro Khanna who is obviously running, that guy in Md who went to Visit and save his constituent in El Salvador is good... if someone like the President of the airline union was more in the public eye, rather than only known generally by the Left, then i could see them as part of a team. just chatting..
The example of Mamdani staying on message is compelling, but I feel like he stuck to a principle (the universal political principle of 'affordability) more than 1-2 specific policies. (Please correct me if I am misremembering). Or if you disagree with the general thrust of my contribution.
So if a candidate were to replicate that framework they should rather find the throughline that underlies the issues they want to be laser focused on.
So if it's M4A and ending aid to Israel that would be... Humanity? I dunno. I'm spitballing at this point.
Before an extensive discussion of who might make a good socialist candidate, an agreement on a platform should be settled. The campaign slogan ‘Medicare for All— Not a Dime for Israel’ counts AOC out. Her track record includes voting for the Pentagon’s budget, support military funding for Israel, and the embarrassing display at the DNC providing “left” cover for Biden/Harris, both rabid Zionists, by asserting that they had been working tirelessly for a ceasefire.
As a side note, Lenin’s urging of electoral support for the British Labor Party was as a workers’ party, not a bourgeois party. V.I. was very clear that, at least in the first round of voting, the RSDLP should run its own candidates who were party members. These members, if elected to the Dumas, would be under the political direction of the Party, not this silly arrangement DSA has where elected members can vote however they please.
Wait, you don’t need any experience whatsoever in politics or government to run for president? Well then, I volunteer. Transit worker, HS teacher, Adjunct - that’s all the resume I apparently need.
Your point that it's important to run for President because that's the campaign that the public pays attention to is valid. But much of that importance lies in the coattails a presidential candidate provides to candidates for Congress, state legislatures and local offices. It's a mistake to run a candidate for President by herself. That campaign needs to be linked to workers' campaigns for as many offices as possible, from the local sewer district all the way up to Senator.
Eric,
I have to say I think you’re way off here. The scenario you’re describing here does not, to me, bear any resemblance to the American political landscape, especially when it comes to presidential politics. Respectfully, it’s very close to a kind of magical thinking, and the democratic socialist Left cannot afford to be doing any more of that.
Your scenario treats as a given that this Hypothetical DSA-Backed Union-Worker Candidate (HDBUWC for short) will be able to get enough political oxygen to influence the Democratic primary contest. But the HDBUWC can’t “pose a sharp question to the American public, the Democratic Party, and other 2028 contenders” unless/until they’ve got enough traction to make it necessary for opponents to respond. They won’t get it.
You seem to take traction/oxygen as automatic, that the mere presence of a person saying they’re running for president is enough to get them press coverage, presence at a debate, and so on. It isn’t, and that’s the fatal flaw with your whole argument and a wild misunderstanding of presidential politics.
There’s no evidence, historically, that outsider candidates with no personal wealth or pre-existing name recognition ever even get out of the gate in presidential races. The closest comparison to what you’re talking about is probably Richard Ojeda, a West Virginia state senator who tried to run as a pure working-class candidate in 2020. He dropped out in January of 2019 (!) and never had any influence on the outcome.
A candidate needs to reach a certain level of support (which is a loose term, the meaning of which is entirely contextual) before they are able to exercise influence over the Democratic primary debate. There’s no plausible path for a HDBUWC to garner that support.
No union of any real size has ever backed such a candidate when an even moderately-acceptable mainstream candidate was available, and DSA trying to get unions to support a HDBUWC over a more mainstream candidate will make us look unserious to potential union partners, who we will at some point need if we're going to build more power. Heck, there’s not even reason to believe the bulk of DSA’s own membership will back an HDBUWC over a Prtizker or a Warnock or whoever. Comparisons to other countries (that have real campaign finance laws and media-balance rules) or to congressional races aren’t relevant. The presidential race is a horse of a different color.
DSA has not proved it has electoral muscle outside of New York City, which is wholly irrelevant to the Democratic primary process as it begins in places other than New York City. The DSA-backed candidates who have won elsewhere have also had broad-based union support and support from other groups like Indivisible, and there’s no reason to believe any of those groups would back a HDBUWC in a presidential race.
I want to be clear. I’m not saying the odds are against us and so on balance it’s not worth the risk. I’m saying our odds are zero that an HDBUWC could become a viable-enough candidate for the Democratic nomination that they would be able to influence the debate (either in the broad sense of the term or in the sense of participating in actual debates).
It won’t happen. It doesn’t matter what message they have. No one will hear it. This isn’t like a Congressional race or a mayor’s race in a dense urban environment, where door knocking and house meetings and public rallies can attract a lot of attention even without a ton of upfront money. It doesn’t scale, especially when (as I’ve noted) the Democratic early primary calendar doesn’t at all look like a map of DSA strength.
A HDBUWC would need, at minimum, enough funding to open campaign offices in the early primary states – South Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Michigan, and Virginia. That’s office space and minimal staffing. They would need money to travel to these states and spend real time there and would need some kind of staffing to help with this. Yes, some of these costs could be offset by volunteers, but you’re not going to get any substantial number of volunteers for a candidate with no name recognition and no funding. We’re talking a million dollars just to set up a very basic infrastructure, before anything like literature or paid media or dedicated comms staff or anything else. And they’d need to be doing this months before any possible DNC debates.
Again, in a congressional race or something, it’s orders of magnitude easier for a candidate to meet potential volunteers firsthand and win them over as volunteers through their charisma and message. People aren't going to jump into a presidential race for a complete unknown HDBUWC from a single Zoom meeting or cool TikTok videos. A grassroots campaign will need real volunteer work in the field, and we won't be able to win people to such a candidate.
Running an HDBUWC and losing in such spectacular fashion would ruin DSA’s ability to make any demands at all on the eventual Democratic nominee.
DSA barely has the membership to fill a Big 10 football stadium. It’s long past time we accept that reality and scale our ambitions to our actual power, not the power we imagine we’ll have if we come up with some magical working-class-uniting message. A message means nothing if no one hears it and if the messenger is unknown.
TL;DR
Chris Van Hollen/ Ro Khanna ticket. I’d like to see AOC run for senate and El-Sayed be in the senate a couple terms. And maybe in 2036 we can have a AOC/ El-Sayed ticket. It is too bad Mandani can’t run. There will be books written on his political genius. I’ve never seen anything like him.
I’ve been saying that same thing! @Senator Chris Van Hollen @Ro Khanna let’s go!!!
The left is in no position to seriously contest the American presidency; focus on winning mayoral and gubernatorial races first.
The fact that the U.S. has never had a single socialist governor in its entire history is a challenge that needs to be rectified and doing so would help break socialist electoral victories out of the demographic ghetto they are currently stuck in (low-turnout Democratic primaries in wealthy urban areas with high concentrations of college-educated voters where the Republican Party has ceased to exist exist).
El-Sayed's extremely narrow win in Michigan by less than 1% of the vote is just the latest example of this phenomenon: "Among the nearly two dozen counties where at least 95 percent of expected ballots are in, El-Sayed is winning 58.4% of the vote in counties where at least 30% of adults have a bachelor’s degree, according to a POLITICO analysis of county-level results. On the flip side, Stevens is winning 51.4% of the vote in counties where less than 30% share of adults are college-educated. El-Sayed is similarly leading Stevens in counties with higher median incomes so far, while Stevens leads in lower-income counties."
My goodness… I see DSA is little more than shitlibbery. Not actually socialist in any way shape or form. Very disappointing
I was interested to see you had links on general understanding of prison abolition... only to find one was a Manhattan Inst push poll with very leading questions and the other was a turgid paper that uh, well, bless the 3 people who enjoy that style.
I'd love non-biased, clear communication around the fundamental reasons we have law enforcement and how to make it work better for all.
Having the DSA as your campaign network guarantees failure, unless the backlash against Trump is as strong as the backlash against Dems/Harris in 2024, in which case any empty head will win. And the party machinery will guarantee that there are no truly popular candidates. (Ever hear of a guy names Platner?) AOC couldn't have found Iran on a map before Trump attacked, and still has no coherent position in opposition to the war.
The focus for a popular campaign in anti-trust, anti-monopoly, hold corporations accountable, including an intelligent campaign against unaccountable health care providers who are already working primarily on public money. Part of that is promoting union organizing (shop level demands for respect, not the public blustering of piecards like Shawn Fain.
Agree on where focus should be, but is Shawn Fain really a piecard? Seems harsh.
I was a UAW member from 1974-85....always engaged in the union, in two strikes, one of which won extension of our new agreement to a newly opened shop in Tennessee. Second tier contract just a step behind the Big 3. I watched the International leadership destroy the union, demanding laws against imported cars, rather than organizing, telling workers including my local to accept major concessions to keep our job.....but with no guarantees.....we rejected the concessions in my Local, that's why I still collect a small pension, which was one of the things they wanted us to give up.
They made productivity agreements with the major manufacturers whereby the union supported speed-ups. Today, most UAW workers real wages are far below what mine were 40 years ago, and they can be fired at the drop of a hat, because of the "jointness" of the national union leadership and the companies. After all, don't GM's profits guarantee your job?
I've talked to shop floor workers recently. Shawn Fain has become a celebrity among liberals who have no clue what a union can or should be and he has had a few showcase wins in bargaining......but he's not organizing a ground level fight back.
I could go on about my own experience and credentials to make the case, but I'll pause here.
Abu El Sayed has said, and I believed him, that he doesn't want to be in D.C. he wants to stay in Michigan. I don't know that what DSA or whoever thinks would be decisive but the ones that come to mind are Ro Khanna who is obviously running, that guy in Md who went to Visit and save his constituent in El Salvador is good... if someone like the President of the airline union was more in the public eye, rather than only known generally by the Left, then i could see them as part of a team. just chatting..
No more Fight Agency lol
The example of Mamdani staying on message is compelling, but I feel like he stuck to a principle (the universal political principle of 'affordability) more than 1-2 specific policies. (Please correct me if I am misremembering). Or if you disagree with the general thrust of my contribution.
So if a candidate were to replicate that framework they should rather find the throughline that underlies the issues they want to be laser focused on.
So if it's M4A and ending aid to Israel that would be... Humanity? I dunno. I'm spitballing at this point.
It's always good to have a back up plan, comrade.
Before an extensive discussion of who might make a good socialist candidate, an agreement on a platform should be settled. The campaign slogan ‘Medicare for All— Not a Dime for Israel’ counts AOC out. Her track record includes voting for the Pentagon’s budget, support military funding for Israel, and the embarrassing display at the DNC providing “left” cover for Biden/Harris, both rabid Zionists, by asserting that they had been working tirelessly for a ceasefire.
As a side note, Lenin’s urging of electoral support for the British Labor Party was as a workers’ party, not a bourgeois party. V.I. was very clear that, at least in the first round of voting, the RSDLP should run its own candidates who were party members. These members, if elected to the Dumas, would be under the political direction of the Party, not this silly arrangement DSA has where elected members can vote however they please.
AOC? She seems to go whichever way the wind blows. Don’t see her as a strong presidential candidate.
Wait, you don’t need any experience whatsoever in politics or government to run for president? Well then, I volunteer. Transit worker, HS teacher, Adjunct - that’s all the resume I apparently need.
Your point that it's important to run for President because that's the campaign that the public pays attention to is valid. But much of that importance lies in the coattails a presidential candidate provides to candidates for Congress, state legislatures and local offices. It's a mistake to run a candidate for President by herself. That campaign needs to be linked to workers' campaigns for as many offices as possible, from the local sewer district all the way up to Senator.