From xxxxxx <[email protected]>
Subject How Socialism Stopped Being a Dirty Word for Some Voters - And Started Winning Elections Across America
Date May 6, 2021 5:05 AM
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[ In Democratic primaries across the country, DSA candidates ran
to replace older, centrist, white incumbents with young leftists who
promised to fight for peoples needs.] [[link removed]]

HOW SOCIALISM STOPPED BEING A DIRTY WORD FOR SOME VOTERS - AND
STARTED WINNING ELECTIONS ACROSS AMERICA  
[[link removed]]


 

Joshua Kluever
May 5, 2021
The Conversation
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_ In Democratic primaries across the country, DSA candidates ran to
replace older, centrist, white incumbents with young leftists who
promised to fight for peoples' needs. _

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez nominates Bernie Sanders, Live5News.com

 

The leftist Democratic Socialists of America, which helped
congressional star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez get elected
[[link removed]] in 2018, looks to be a
big political player again in New York City’s 2021 municipal
elections.

The group has not yet endorsed anyone for mayor – the top prize in
New York’s June 22 Democratic primaries
[[link removed]].
But all 51 city council seats are up for grabs this year, and the DSA
has members running for six of them
[[link removed]] –
including Queens public defender Tiffany Cabán
[[link removed]] and
Brooklyn tenant activist Michael Hollingsworth
[[link removed]].

With two state senators and five representatives out of 213 lawmakers,
the New York State Legislature already has the country’s
largest DSA legislative caucus
[[link removed]].
These Democrats share a leftist platform that includes
guaranteeing housing as a human right and ending mass incarceration
[[link removed]]

The DSA has upended local politics in this Democratic stronghold
[[link removed]], and
its wins extend well beyond New York – into Virginia, Nevada and
beyond. How did socialism jump from the fringes of American politics
into its very center?

 

American socialist history

The DSA’s roots trace back to the Socialist Party of America, which
was formed in New York in 1901 to promote such issues as establishing
an eight-hour workday and public ownership of utilities like water and
electricity.

[Black-and-white image of a man speaking from a train to a crowd of
men in top hats]
[[link removed]]

Union leader and Socialist Party presidential candidate Eugene Debs
campaigning in 1900. Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage
Images/Getty Images
[[link removed]]

Writer Upton Sinclair
[[link removed]],
Christian theologian Reinhold Niebuhr
[[link removed]] and
Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger
[[link removed]] were prominent early
members. But many early American socialists were Jews and Eastern
European immigrants – groups that were considered well outside
mainstream “white” society
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the time.

My research as a historian
[[link removed]] of
American socialists finds that early 20th-century socialists found
electoral success by running candidates who represented the economic
and racial diversity of their communities and championed the issues
that mattered to working-class, immigrant constituencies.

In 1918 – the heyday of New York’s socialist caucus, when
socialists held 10 of 121 seats in the State House – socialist
politicians were teachers, settlement house lawyers and union leaders.
They proposed New York’s first birth control bill
[[link removed]],
allowing advocates to give women educational pamphlets about
contraception, and put forward programs to create old-age insurance
and rent control.

The Socialist Party began losing members to the growing Communist
Party
[[link removed]] in
the 1930s. By the mid-20th century, it had responded to Americans’
growing anticommunism with a rightward turn. In 1972, party leaders
actually renamed the party the Social Democrats, USA
[[link removed]] because
so many people associated the word “socialist” with America’s
great antagonist, the Soviet Union.

The DSA, past and present

Disillusioned, the activist and Marxist professor Michael Harrington
left the organization and in 1973 formed the Democratic Socialist
Organizing Committee, which later merged with another leftist
group, the New American Movement
[[link removed]], to form the
Democratic Socialists of America
[[link removed]].

Unlike the Socialist Party of America, which was a registered
political party and ran candidates on its own ticket, the DSA is a
political group. Harrington wanted to create the “left wing of the
possible
[[link removed]]”
within the Democratic Party.

[Black and white image of Harrington, seated in a suit and tie,
speaking.]
[[link removed]]

DSA founder Michael Harrington, who died in 1989. Photo by Barbara
Alper/Getty Images
[[link removed]]

For four decades, DSA members have mostly run in Democratic primaries,
attempting to push the party leftward – on the Iraq War and NAFTA,
for example
[[link removed]] –
while endorsing Democratic presidential nominees from Walter Mondale
to Barack Obama.

It had some early local successes. From the 1980s to the early 2000s,
DSA members were elected to city councils
[[link removed]] nationwide
and won mayoral races in liberal college towns like Berkeley,
California
[[link removed]]; Ithaca,
New York
[[link removed]];
and Burlington, Vermont, where the openly socialist politician Bernie
Sanders
[[link removed]] was
mayor from 1981 to 1989.

In 2016, Sanders ran for president. His campaign, coupled with Donald
Trump’s subsequent victory, created a surge in DSA membership
[[link removed]] among
young voters. The group’s median age dropped from 68 in 2013 to 33
by 2017
[[link removed]].
The DSA now claims
[[link removed]] over 90,000
dues-paying members, up from 6,000
[[link removed]] in
2015.

The DSA’s electoral strategies also changed after 2016, partly due
to the influx of new members and partly in frustration with mainstream
Democratic candidates.

In Democratic primaries across the country, DSA candidates ran to
replace older, centrist, white incumbents with young leftists who
promised to fight for “Medicare for all” and to “hold elected
officials accountable
[[link removed]].”

It was a winning strategy for the Trump era
[[link removed]].
Since 2016, DSA-backed candidates have won district attorney races
from Philadelphia
[[link removed]] to Travis
County, Texas
[[link removed]],
and hold four seats in Congress
[[link removed]].
Forty DSA members sit in 21 state legislatures. DSA members hold five
of Chicago’s 50 city council seats
[[link removed]].

The professional backgrounds of today’s DSA legislators resemble
those of their forebears. New York State Sen. Jabari Brisport
[[link removed]],
elected in 2020, was a teacher and tenant organizer
[[link removed]].
New York State Rep. Phara Souffrant Forrest
[[link removed]] was
previously a tenant organizer and nurse.

The DSA’s legislative proposals – rent control
[[link removed]], free
college
[[link removed]] and reproductive
rights
[[link removed]] –
are classic socialist issues, updated for the 21st century. The
Democratic Party has now embraced many of these proposals
[[link removed]],
but moderates like West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin
[[link removed]] have
not.

[Young crowd of young people holding red 'DSA' banners on a New York
street]
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DSA activists in New York march for immigrant rights, May 1,
2019. Spencer Platt/Getty Images
[[link removed]]

As in the past, the DSA tends to back candidates from marginalized
groups
[[link removed]] –
whether African American, Caribbean, South American or South Asian –
who reflect the racial makeup of the neighborhoods they represent.

Angry Dems and DSA infighting

The DSA’s growing political profile has caused tensions within the
Democratic Party.

Shortly after DSA-backed candidates in March 2021 swept all five
leadership positions in the Nevada Democratic Party
[[link removed]],
many longtime party staffers quit rather than work under the new
leftist leadership. But first, according to the Nevada Independent
[[link removed]] and
other local newspapers, the Democratic staffers transferred
US$450,000
[[link removed]] from
the DSA-controlled Nevada Democratic Party coffers into the Democratic
Senatorial Campaign Committee, which is controlled by the National
Democratic Party.

Some DSA policies that diverge sharply from the Democratic party line
– such as its support for the movement to boycott, divest from and
sanction Israel
[[link removed]] for
its militarized occupation of the Palestinian territories – draw
fierce criticism from other Democrats
[[link removed]].

The DSA has also been accused of having a “race problem
[[link removed]].”
Despite running primarily candidates of color, the organization’s
leadership is largely white and male. Some DSA members say the group
silences the concerns and voices of people of color.

After new groups arose within the DSA
[[link removed]] to recruit more Black leaders
[[link removed]],
the DSA’s national committee announced
[[link removed]] in
February 2021 that it would start an initiative to better attract,
mentor and retain people of color.

In the 20th century, American socialism cracked under the weight of
infighting and social change. Can the modern DSA survive its
21st-century challenges?

Its next test is in New York City on June 22.

_Joshua Kluever
[[link removed]] is
a Ph.D. Candidate of 20th Century American History, Binghamton
University, State University of New York_

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