Base and Superstructure

Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology

Category: Elections (Page 5 of 17)

These are posts on elections from the blog Base and Superstructure. Topics include international elections, American elections, and local Iowa elections. There’s a particular focus on describing and explaining leftist electoral results.

Jamaal Bowman DSA

DSA’s Issue Is Deeper Than Jamaal Bowman

December 1, 2021 /

Within the Democratic Socialists of America – especially the very online parts of DSA – there’s been a hot debate lately over whether to expel Jamaal Bowman from the org. Bowman recently won an election to Congress, joined The Squad, and formed a big part of the DSA’s strategy of building membership through electoral engagement.

I won’t recap all the details. Readers can check out coverage from the DSA Observer. But the basic story: Bowman voted for Iron Dome funding for Israel. He took a lobbyist-paid trip to Israel and posed with Israel’s right-wing prime minister, among other things. In response to a rebuff from Bowman and his supporters, the DSA’s Palestine Solidarity Working Group called on him to fix these issues or face expulsion. Some on the online left sided with the WG, while other parts sided against expulsion.

But I think the whole expulsion question arrives far too late. The DSA should look into how it got into this mess in the first place.
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left electorate

The Left’s Vision of the Electorate

September 27, 2021 /

In a review of the 2020 Thomas Frank book, The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism, Erik Baker lays out a basic progressive theory of the electorate. I’ll set aside, for the moment, the tension between that and the title of this post. Many leftists, after all, still identify as progressives.

It so happens I recently wrote a post that touched on this idea, in part. Here I’ll briefly sketch out Baker’s critique of Frank and why it’s so important for leftist electoral projects.

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Jon Green

How Did Jon Green Do?

June 9, 2021 /

Jon Green – former mayor of Lone Tree known to many locals as a Sanders-wing Democrat wearing a cowboy hat – won the Democratic nomination for Johnson County Supervisor. Sanders even endorsed him. And then he defeated Phil Hemingway for the special election victory.

I briefly mentioned Green last month in a post about the perils facing Iowa Democrats in the 2020s. In short, I think the Democrats stand little chance to win statewide the rest of this decade. Why? National demographic changes in voting leave them with a base that’s too small to win. I argued that Iowa Democrats should, in response, re-imagine and rework their base for the future. They should organize new voters and run new sorts of candidates.

Candidates like Jon Green. Or Stacey Walker, or Cathy Glasson. Were I to approach the topic in more detail, I’d suggest Mazahir Salih as a possibility. The point is that Democrats should run candidates who will focus on immigrants, low-wage workers, non-voters, POC voters, and other growing populations in the state of Iowa who don’t currently vote Democratic but whose interests align with the left.

So, how did Jon Green do? Did he help make the case that he could do some of these things statewide?

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Persist: Warren’s Campaign Bio

June 7, 2021 /

Persist Warren

Elizabeth Warren published a book called Persist. She said it’s not a campaign bio, but that’s how it goes with politicians. Persist is, of course, a campaign bio. Warren tells her story through chapters on her own roles in life – a mother, teacher, planner, fighter, learner, and woman. As with her campaign itself, Warren organizes the book around a tight theme. Warren builds Persist around a broader policy vision.

In this post, I’ll take a look at Warren’s book, building on some of the points in my own eBook on the Warren campaign.

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