Base and Superstructure

Alienation, autonomy, and ideology

Category: Partisan Politics (Page 11 of 21)

DSA Convention 2021

DSA Convention 2021: A Few Thoughts

August 9, 2021 /

The online version of the DSA Convention, as one might expect, didn’t have the kinds of large crowds, side debates, and raucous noise one might expect at a leftist convention with more than 1,000 delegates. But it wasn’t too far off. I’ll collect here a few thoughts about my experience as a delegate from Iowa City.

The first thing I’ll say is that the DSA Convention was still huge and a bit overwhelming. Delegates received tons of emails and discussion options. We had dozens (hundreds?) of pages of material to read on resolutions, bylaws changes, NPC candidates, and so on. Yes, it was pretty chaotic. But DSA staff did an excellent job putting materials into shape and organizing the online experience.

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DSA Bernie Wins

What Would the DSA Look Like if Bernie Won?

August 2, 2021 /

In both 2016 and 2020, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) went all-in on Bernie Sanders. It did so for strategic reasons. In particular, a theory drives these decisions: endorse Sanders, identify with the Bernie brand, and then gain new members from Bernie association. Maybe it doesn’t announce such things that explicitly (though it kinda does), but anyone familiar with DSA knows this was the basic idea.

Sanders lost in both 2016 and 2020. But in each case, the DSA grew enormously.

And so, in one sense, the DSA wildly succeeded. It started as a marginal organization of a few thousand mostly older leftists. It emerged as the largest U.S. socialist organization in a century, boasting around 100,000 members. Along the way, it transformed itself from a minor, largely irrelevant discussion group to a (arguably even the) major player in US leftist politics. Furthermore, the DSA grew not only in membership, but also in ideology. It grew not by tacking to the center, but rather by moving to the left. At both its 2017 and 2019 conventions, its new, younger member base pushed the org to the left.

What if, though, Sanders had won in either 2016 or 2020? What if he were president right now? In that scenario, what would the DSA look like?

Let’s take a look. I think this exercise reveals both opportunities and weaknesses in the DSA’s political model.

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building the dsa

Building the DSA?

July 29, 2021 /

Leftists spend a lot of time talking about building an organization. More recently, we see this with discussion around the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). But, in fact, it’s an ancient set of debates. From the struggles of Marx and Bakunin around the First International to division and upheaval in the Socialist Party of America in the 1920s and 1960s, we love arguing about what the “party” should look like.

I’m not sure how much new I have to say about an old debate like this one. But I did recently read an article in Current Affairs by Matt Hartman on his experience as a DSA chair in North Carolina. I thought that article raised some issues worth thinking about.

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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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