Socialism!

[Irvine511]

we're all taking about it, it's going to be thrown around so long as Sanders and AOC are breathing, and it's going to take center stage in the 2020 campaign. this intensely entertaining, observant article digs deep into Brooklyn to find the Tecate-loving heart of America's growing socialist ranks.

Until very recently, it wasn’t that socialism was toxic in a red-scare way. It was irrelevant, in a dustbin-of-history way. But then came Bernie Sanders’s 2016 candidacy, then the membership boom of DSA, then the proliferation of socialist cultural products like Chapo, and then, finally, the spectacular rise of Ocasio-Cortez.

The politics of the socialism that they helped revive isn’t always clear. Stripped of its Soviet context and cynically repurposed by conservative partisans, the word had lost its meaning by the time it got hot again. For some DSA grandees, like NYC chapter co-chair Bianca Cunningham, socialism means a planned economy that replaces market capitalism. “It means we own the means of production. It means we get to run our workplaces and our own government,” she says. But that is unusual. For Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders, and most of their devotees, it’s closer to a robust version of New Deal liberalism — or, perhaps, Northern European social democracy.

Still, among New York’s creative underclass — cash poor but culturally potent — it feels like everything but socialism is now irrelevant. “I’ve noticed that there’s a kind of baseline assumption in the room that everyone is a socialist,” says Brostoff. “And if they’re not, it’s because they’re an anarchist.” Coolheaded Obaman technocracy is out; strident left-wing moral clarity is in. And while this atmospheric shift is felt most acutely among the left-literary crowd, it’s also bled into the general discourse, such that Teen Vogue is constantly flacking against capitalism and one of the most devastating insults in certain corners of the internet is to call someone a neoliberal.

The word socialism has become a kind of blank canvas on which young leftists project their political desires. The reason to call it socialism, the lefty journalist Kate Aronoff has said, is because people are calling it socialism. At least in Brooklyn, and the spiritual Brooklyns of America, calling yourself a socialist sounds sexier than anything else out there, without necessarily advocating anything too risky.

[...]

Many socialists distance themselves from Chapo, which for many embodies Bernie-bro machismo. But its zero-sum politics and caustic nihilism — the exact inverse of the Establishment-liberal Pod Save America—have set the tone for socialist discourse, especially in contrast to the pieties of the identity-politics left, the righteousness of the #resistance, or the smug wonkishness of Vox. As a result, its enemy isn’t so much Trumpism as the gauzy liberal triumphalism — like the Broadway musical Hamilton — that papers over the indignities of American life. Anyone who feels otherwise is clinging to an outmoded West Wing fantasy of American politics.

In this way, socialism is as much a repudiation of crash-era capitalism as it is of postrecession liberalism. The Democratic Party, which gave us the New Deal, had long ago lost its working-class soul. Democrats promoted valuable causes — gun control, combating climate change — but rarely challenged the economic elite. As n+1 editor Nikil Saval wrote, liberalism had become a “politics in which government cravenly submits to corporate power and cultural debates distract from material needs.” He cited examples: “The chief executive of Patagonia being hailed as a leader of ‘corporate resistance to Trump’ or Chelsea Clinton’s accusing Steve Bannon of ‘fat shaming’ Sean Spicer.”

The race to the left was stoked by an attitudinal shift in the young, mainstream press. Before it was sued out of existence by a revanchist libertarian billionaire, Gawker Media embodied the arch, ironic sensibility of New York’s online-media ecosystem. Now its alumni earnestly proselytize labor unions. (“Peace to the Denver teachers on strike today. America is with you,” tweeted Gawker alum Hamilton Nolan recently.) Across the industry, editorial staffs of a number of publications, including this one, have unionized.

Meanwhile, the magazine Jacobin — named for the insurgents who led France’s murderous Reign of Terror during the Revolution — has only grown in influence since its 2010 founding, popularizing socialism for a wider audience (“Are Workers the ‘Gravediggers’ of Capitalism?”; “Eight Marxist Claims That May Surprise You”) and elevating a new generation of leftist voices. But Twitter — a medium that structurally encourages moral grandstanding, savage infighting, and collective action — is where young socialism lives.

as someone who always understood himself as liberal, as progressive, even a part of the left-literary crowd , these people are strange to me and i find them very unappealing. i worry about their potential influence in 2020.

[Vlad n U 2]

I can't say I would necessarily love some of the folks depicted in the article, but the increased awareness of socialism (even if it's in a bit of a beaten down form, looking towards Scandinavia today is not the same as looking at it as it was in the 70s) is most certainly a good thing - especially if many these days are more or less immune to redbaiting.

[Jerry Dunk]

"Caustic nihilism" is such a bizarre descriptor that betrays a total misunderstanding of what we are actually after (we meaning those on the left; I am not a member of the DSA). I find the attitude that the system is something we cannot change and that can only be tweaked here and there, that there is always going to be a baseline of homelessness and poverty and people dying from unaffordable medical costs, that there is always going to be the necessity for foreign war to maintain American empire ... that feels way more nihilistic than a group of people who wholeheartedly believe we have enough resources to save everyone.

And I'm curious about your highlighting of the quote from Saval, because that to me seems a very apt description of the current state of the Democratic Party. I've seen it framed as this elsewhere: they'd rather focus on increasing the percentage of women on the board of directors than helping the much larger number of women with unstable jobs and crippling healthcare costs. And that's not 100 percent true in every case, to be sure, but it definitely rings true in how many chose to frame both their priorities and their measure of results.

[DaveC]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

as someone who always understood himself as liberal, as progressive, even a part of the left-literary crowd , these people are strange to me and i find them very unappealing. i worry about their potential influence in 2020.

donald trump and the GOP would like to thank you for doing exactly what they were hoping you'd do.

[anitram]

Originally Posted by Jerry Dunk

And I'm curious about your highlighting of the quote from Saval, because that to me seems a very apt description of the current state of the Democratic Party. I've seen it framed as this elsewhere: they'd rather focus on increasing the percentage of women on the board of directors than helping the much larger number of women with unstable jobs and crippling healthcare costs. And that's not 100 percent true in every case, to be sure, but it definitely rings true in how many chose to frame both their priorities and their measure of results.

This is a true point but really has little to do with the Democratic party. It's mostly driven by the fact that politically active feminists are by and large white, educated, professional and mostly well-off women. For this cohort, which for better or worse I'm extremely familiar with, issues like Board and executive gender quotas, diversity and inclusion initiatives at the corporate level are driving factors and there is almost always a failure to understand that most women are struggling to raise kids, find decent work, pay their mortgages and so on. To them, whether you have 20% or 40% of women on a board of directors is as helpful and useful as reading Tolstoy.

[Jerry Dunk]

Originally Posted by anitram

This is a true point but really has little to do with the Democratic party. It's mostly driven by the fact that politically active feminists are by and large white, educated, professional and mostly well-off women. For this cohort, which for better or worse I'm extremely familiar with, issues like Board and executive gender quotas, diversity and inclusion initiatives at the corporate level are driving factors and there is almost always a failure to understand that most women are struggling to raise kids, find decent work, pay their mortgages and so on. To them, whether you have 20% or 40% of women on a board of directors is as helpful and useful as reading Tolstoy.

I think the "mostly well-off" is the most important thing, and a primary driver of the former three items. And certainly that is not limited to women. The overall point, which you and I seem aligned on, being that the are insulated from the real concerns. Policy discussions are had with corporate donors, lobbyists, and think tank wonks. These are not people who are dealing with these issues on a day-to-day basis.

Ocasio-Cortez has done a very good job of weaponizing this point, in ways that people probably did not even think about it. She has time and again noted that, by not having to court donations from corporate donors, she does not have to waste time taking meetings with them, which allows her to spend way more time meeting with constituents. Most politicians do not have the time because it is spent fundraising, or shaping policy with those who have the funds.

[trojanchick99]

It's obvious 2020 is going to be about the evils of "SOCIALISM" and the "tyranny" of the Green New Deal. What's absolutely infuriating, is most Americans are in favor of many of the policies brought forth by the left wing including the DSA. It's just that socialism as a word has so much stigma behind it, some people (mostly boomers and older Gen X) immediately freak out. Those of us with no real memory of the Cold War don't have that baggage. I'm a young Gen Xer and my only memory of the Cold War was the Berlin Wall coming down.

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by DaveC

donald trump and the GOP would like to thank you for doing exactly what they were hoping you'd do.

i'm happy to work with these folks. my sense is that they find a mere liberal such as myself part of the problem.

what Trump and his thugs want is a repeat of 2016, with a fractured left that results in their winning the presidency as they did in 1980, 2000, and 2016.

[Jerry Dunk]

Originally Posted by trojanchick99

It's obvious 2020 is going to be about the evils of "SOCIALISM" and the "tyranny" of the Green New Deal. What's absolutely infuriating, is most Americans are in favor of many of the policies brought forth by the left wing including the DSA. It's just that socialism as a word has so much stigma behind it, some people (mostly boomers and older Gen X) immediately freak out. Those of us with no real memory of the Cold War don't have that baggage. I'm a young Gen Xer and my only memory of the Cold War was the Berlin Wall coming down.

A quote today yesterday from Brad DeLong, a Clinton alum:

“Barack Obama rolls into office with Mitt Romney’s health care policy, with John McCain’s climate policy, with Bill Clinton’s tax policy, and George H.W. Bush’s foreign policy,” DeLong notes. “And did George H.W. Bush, did Mitt Romney, did John McCain say a single good word about anything Barack Obama ever did over the course of eight solid years? No, they fucking did not.”

The right will call everything Democrats do socialism, and find a way to whip up the frenzy to get their people out to vote, regardless of how much the Democrats cater to the right and center. The number of voters on the Republican side is pretty constant. The variable is the Democratic candidate and how many people they get to the polls.

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by Jerry Dunk

And I'm curious about your highlighting of the quote from Saval, because that to me seems a very apt description of the current state of the Democratic Party.

i highlighted it because it seemed important to the article, was not intended as either praise or criticism.

[Jerry Dunk]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

i'm happy to work with these folks. my sense is that they find a mere liberal such as myself part of the problem.

what Trump and his thugs want is a repeat of 2016, with a fractured left that results in their winning the presidency as they did in 1980, 2000, and 2016.

I do find liberals do be a big part of the problem, and your "happy to work with these folks" message rings hollow on the heels of "I worry about their influence."

I am not happy to work with liberals who are dismissive of the left. I'll vote for them when I have to, just as I did when I voted for Clinton in 2016, but the policies they support and their inability/unwillingness to reckon with the significant role they played in getting us to where we are make discussing politics with liberals a nightmare anymore.

The Democrat lost in 1980, 2000, and 2016 for a number of reasons, but number one in each case was that they ran a candidate who people did not want to vote for because they did not stand for things people thought would help them. Jimmy Carter ushered in modern liberal economic policies (I mean that pejoratively), Al Gore was completely uninspiring and showed what happens to Bill Clinton's platform when his overstated charisma is taken out of the equation, and Hillary Clinton insisted against all odds that the previous eight years had been a wild success everyone should be happy with and vote for more of.

[Jerry Dunk]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

i highlighted it because it seemed important to the article, was not intended as either praise or criticism.

Thanks for clarifying! I think it's an interesting comment, and I was unsure of the intention so I thought it best to ask.

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by Jerry Dunk

The right will call everything Democrats do socialism, and find a way to whip up the frenzy to get their people out to vote, regardless of how much the Democrats cater to the right and center. The number of voters on the Republican side is pretty constant. The variable is the Democratic candidate and how many people they get to the polls.

Democrats need to do the following:

1. get black voters to the polls in PA, MI, WI, and OH; latino voters to the polls in NV and AZ
2. win the winnable center, like they did in 2018 by focusing on health care
3. run a candidate who tells a compelling and hopeful story -- Trump is about doom and fear, the candidate must be the opposite of that; s/he who tell the best story wins ("American carnage" somehow became more compelling than "stronger together")

2018 is how you win. they beat the GOP by +9 points. it was a crushing defeat for Trump and the GOP. that's the playbook -- Trump isn't GWB, he makes many, many Americans in the center and even the center-right deeply uncomfortable. this is the group that may want lower taxes, but they find Trump deplorable (think ATL suburbs).

i agree that the reddest states are lost, and i actually spend a decent amount of time deep in Trump country every year. this is the group for whom abortion and guns and now health care and taxes are cultural issues tied to their growing understanding of white identity.

the kids in Brooklyn -- who i drink with on the weekends -- aren't going to do any of this. and if they show up again with tape over their mouths sobbing and protesting at the convention in 2020, then they can move to Venezuela.

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by Jerry Dunk

I do find liberals do be a big part of the problem, and your "happy to work with these folks" message rings hollow on the heels of "I worry about their influence."

I am not happy to work with liberals who are dismissive of the left. I'll vote for them when I have to, just as I did when I voted for Clinton in 2016, but the policies they support and their inability/unwillingness to reckon with the significant role they played in getting us to where we are make discussing politics with liberals a nightmare anymore.

The Democrat lost in 1980, 2000, and 2016 for a number of reasons, but number one in each case was that they ran a candidate who people did not want to vote for because they did not stand for things people thought would help them. Jimmy Carter ushered in modern liberal economic policies (I mean that pejoratively), Al Gore was completely uninspiring and showed what happens to Bill Clinton's platform when his overstated charisma is taken out of the equation, and Hillary Clinton insisted against all odds that the previous eight years had been a wild success everyone should be happy with and vote for more of.

and this is an easy story to tell when you have no evidence of anything. tell me how well Left (not liberal) candidates have done in Democratic primaries, let alone a general election. and tell me again how the 19990s and the Obama years were miserable failures in which nothing good happened. there's a lack of understanding, to me, of exactly what kind of country this is, how vast it is, how culturally distinct it is, and how change that comes incrementally is change that lasts -- like the ACA. that's how the Democrats won in 2018.

the razor-think margins of victory in 2000 and 2016 by the GOP demonstrates that the Democrats lose when they don't have an impossibly charismatic candidate and succumb to their narcissism of small differences.

as for "where we are" ... by many, many measures (in fact, most measures), the world is a better place than it was in 1980. of course liberal economic policies aren't perfect. of course we have vast problems. of course we are feeling the effects of those left behind by globalism and it must be addressed. but i find the sweeping statements of MISERABLE FAILURE to be about as compelling as when it's presented by the Right, which is to say not at all.

[Jerry Dunk]

You see, I thought this was all relatively reasonable most of the way through. I was going to comment that this formula probably eeks out a win in 2020, even if it does not take the Senate, and that my concern would be longer term and about the viability of building a coalition with more half-measures that will be looked at as the only logical result of Democrats in charge. And then I got here:

Originally Posted by Irvine511

the kids in Brooklyn -- who i drink with on the weekends -- aren't going to do any of this. and if they show up again with tape over their mouths sobbing and protesting at the convention in 2020, then they can move to Venezuela.

And then, it's just like, what am I supposed to do with this? This is the dismissive attitude I'm talking about. Looking at people who are trying to organize, trying to fight against a political reality that is increasingly brutal to everyone below a certain level of earning, criticizing American foreign policy ... and saying they're crybaby sore losers too naive to understand the world. It doesn't personally offend me, in the sense that I feel attacked or I'm angry with you. Rather, it makes me feel defeated that we have any hope of working together. And it's not me who is the problem here, it's you.

[Jerry Dunk]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

and this is an easy story to tell when you have no evidence of anything. tell me how well Left (not liberal) candidates have done in Democratic primaries, let alone a general election. and tell me again how the 19990s and the Obama years were miserable failures in which nothing good happened. there's a lack of understanding, to me, of exactly what kind of country this is, how vast it is, how culturally distinct it is, and how change that comes incrementally is change that lasts -- like the ACA. that's how the Democrats won in 2018.

the razor-think margins of victory in 2000 and 2016 by the GOP demonstrates that the Democrats lose when they don't have an impossibly charismatic candidate and succumb to their narcissism of small differences.

as for "where we are" ... by many, many measures (in fact, most measures), the world is a better place than it was in 1980. of course liberal economic policies aren't perfect. of course we have vast problems. of course we are feeling the effects of those left behind by globalism and it must be addressed. but i find the sweeping statements of MISERABLE FAILURE to be about as compelling as when it's presented by the Right, which is to say not at all.

It was not really the ACA that was the major issue; it was specifically the preexisting condition mandate, which was the only part of the ACA that addressed a specific issue fully. Everything else was "incremental," and all of those parts have been stripped away to varying degrees. Do you think healthcare is good in this country right now? It's a fucking disaster. The number of people dying because they cannot afford healthcare is insane, and to defend it by saying "Welp, better than the 1980s!" is to whitewash a horror show in an offensively flippant manner.

The planet is dying, we have hundreds of thousands of homeless people, we have millions of people in financial peril, a hopelessly broken healthcare system built entirely on enriching investors in pharmaceutical companies, an entire generation boxed out of financial security by skyrocketing costs of living and massive debt ... and did I mention the climate is on pace to kill many of us within our lifetimes?

The progress we have made culturally is significant, of that there is no doubt. But I would think the fascist backlash and mainstreaming of right wing extremist political figures would send the signal that this can all be very temporary. And I think using that as a shield against criticism is extremely naive. Gay marriage can be legal ... so long as it's not preventing someone from refusing to hire a gay person. Racism is outlawed by an amendment ... so long as police officers can view any minority as a threat whenever they want and kill them sight unseen. Roe v. Wade remains ... so long as it's legal for each state to strip funding to the point where it's inaccessible for many of the people who need it most.

I think some of you who are a little bit older fail to understand how significant my generation is diverting from yours. The two most significant events of our formative years were 9/11 and the subsequent forever wars launched thereafter, and the economy cratering and recovering only for those with stock portfolios and the ability to buy real estate.

You continue to map out a blueprint for how to win elections for people who view politics as being the way it was 10-20 years ago, and it may work again in 2020, if you're lucky. But I would not count on it. Creating an entire political movement around just wanting to feel normal again like we did before Donald Trump is where many Democrats are. And that's not a place that's going to help most people.

[Vlad n U 2]

Flippant references to Venezuela are hugely unhelpful in a serious conversation, and more befitting of your generic conservative. It also shows a complete lack of understanding of the current predicament that country is in (+ the various factors affecting it, it's not a 'duh it's socialism that's why' situation by any stretch), and the ongoing American role in it over the last two decades.

[DaveC]

i hated this thread at first but now i love it.

[namkcuR]

(This is going to be long. There is criticism here, but I intend for it to be constructive criticism. My thesis is not that this movement is bad, but rather that while there is much good in it, it needs to be better. I am trying to have a productive conversation, to state my grievances without attacking anyone. I hope it is taken well.)

I have read the whole article(if you haven't - here it is), and found it fascinating. This is an important debate to have, and this article has illustrated, in several ways, why I am weary of fully embracing this movement.

I want to be clear, I support the following things:

Medicare-for-all
Raising the minimum wage
Free public college tuition
Green New Deal(or something like that, maybe scaled down a little)
Quality education as a right for every child
etc

I lay this out as a way of saying that I don't think there's actually that big of an ideological divide between leftists and what you call liberals. I'm not talking about elected officials here, that's something else, I just mean among regular people, I don't think there's that big an ideological divide. I think the bigger divide is a tactical/strategical one.

First, I feel like the personalities and mindsets presented in the article paint a picture of a movement that is dogmatic, exclusive, and unapproachable to outsiders.

Take this this snarky comment said by somebody selling a new dating app:

Who wants to slog through a few bad dates only “to find out that someone is a liberal?”

We have already endured decades of the GOP making liberal into a dirty word, now the people who should be our friends on the left are doing the same? You(this is the collective you here) cannot demonize a group and then act all frustrated when they are not in a hurry to join you.

For those on the left not enamored of democratic socialism, these trends have been destabilizing. “If you set yourself up to represent the progressive flank of politics and someone says, ‘Actually, you’re a centrist, we are the left,’ it shakes your identity, your career, your influence,”

This resonated with me. It is really frustrating to support all the things I laid out above, for years, and still be told, 'nope, not left enough, you're a centrist' just because I dare suggest that capitalism is not 100% evil and that some things, like medicare-for-all or the green new deal, might need to be done in less than the complete sweeping all-at-once revolutionary fashion the movement wants.

And look at this about the darling of the movement, AOC:

Even Ocasio-Cortez, DSA’s proudest export, hasn’t emerged unscathed from the organization’s purity tests. After Senator John McCain died last summer, she had the temerity to say a few nice words about him on Twitter. Twitter, being Twitter, slammed her for it. Not long afterward, she held a closed-door DSA town hall in Queens, where members submitted questions. And she was grilled about the tweet. In December, after George H.W. Bush died, Ocasio-Cortez did not tweet her condolences.

I obviously understand why people on the left would have a problem with these two men, but should tweeting a few nice condolences when they die really be disqualifying?

The purity tests, the making anyone who disagrees with you into the enemy, it just rubs me the wrong way. Operating like that moves the discourse away from critical thinking and towards religious fervor and cultish behavior, and I don't think that's a good thing, no matter the ideology.

Second, I feel as though the movement might have a problem in attracting and/or appealing to the very people it purports to be fighting for. Take this from the article:

Ross Barkan, a 29-year-old local political journalist who ran unsuccessfully for State Senate in his native Bay Ridge last fall, told me he aggressively courted DSA’s endorsement as “one of the very few groups anywhere that can put a lot of bodies on the ground.” (DSA declined to endorse anyone.) Still, Barkan says, “DSA can be intimidating for outsiders. If you are not steeped in the vernacular and jargon of the socialist left, if you did not attend college, if you did not take the right classes, you will not know what they are talking about.”

DSA’s closest historical analogue is probably not the century-old socialism of Sanders’s hero Eugene Debs but the New Left of the 1960s and its campus organizing vehicle, Students for a Democratic Society. SDS laid the groundwork for a lot of effective antiwar activism, but the New Left was far from a mass movement and never got close to wielding political power.
“DSA needs to become a genuine working-class organization,” Barkan said. “And it’s not yet. It’s still driven by affluent, college-educated people.”

Like it or not, there is a perception that this movement is one of white, college-educated people(that would be you and me). The talk is always about the working class and the underprivileged, the people struggling to pay the bills, but it seems like the working class wasn't convinced. Look at the 2016 primaries. In South Carolina, Hillary won 'income < 30k' 81-19. In Georgia, it was 73-26. In North Carolina, 55-42. In Ohio, 59-38. In Pennsylvania, 60-40.

The numbers say Bernie could not reach large percentages of the working class. And race? The argument from the movement is always that the rising tide lifts all boats, that helping the working class and the poor is helping minorities. But a lot of you also reject identity politics which means those minorities are going to feel like you're not talking directly to them enough. So while the rising tide thing is true, I think it hasn't been communicated effectively or enough to the minorities in question. Bernie lost the African-American vote to Hillary in the above mentioned states by similar margins.

Further, look at this from the article:

Despite the hype around her campaign, Nixon lost the gubernatorial primary to Cuomo by basically the same amount Teachout had four years earlier. Salazar, incredibly, won. But the results weren’t contradictory.
Nixon and Salazar appealed to the same core set of voters: white, college-educated progressives. Proportionally, there were just way more of them in Williamsburg and Bushwick than in the rest of the state. Salazar’s remarkable accomplishment, besides winning as an ethically suspect socialist, was getting so many usually apathetic Brooklynites to turn out. The more awkward aspect of her victory is that she had less success with poorer black and Hispanic voters. The gentrifiers, not the gentrified, carried her.

Another 'socialist' candidate who didn't do great with minorities.

I'm just saying, a Democrat NEEDS those minorities to win the nomination. And you can decry identity politics all you want, but I don't see why it has to be an either-or thing. Why can't we speak to both class and race/gender/orientation. Why can't we walk and chew gum at the same time? Thus far, minorities have not jumped aboard the train at the same rate as caucasians, and that's going to be a problem for getting 'socialists' elected. It needs to be remedied.

Third - you might've noticed I put quotes around the word socialist twice. Words like socialist and socialism are used so much now, but I think we need to be clear about whether we are talking about Democratic Socialism or Social Democracy, because they're not the same thing.

I am sure that a lot of these people genuinely believe in full socialism wherein there is communal or public ownership of means of production. But I also think there's probably a lot of people, particularly younger people, who don't really understand or know the difference. I am more supportive of Social Democracy, i.e. FDR new-deal type stuff, adding socialist-leaning wealth redistribution programs into a capitalist system, and less supportive of Democratic Socialism, because I am highly skeptical of the ability of a democracy to exist in a socialist state. I look at history and I see power vacuums that lead to dictatorships. Of course it would be nice if we could all play nice, have no bosses, divide our income fairly, etc, but it sounds like a fairy tale to me.

I am at least heartened to read this on wikipedia:

While ultimately committed to socialism, the DSA focuses their political activities on reforms within capitalism:
"As we are unlikely to see an immediate end to capitalism tomorrow, DSA fights for reforms today that will weaken the power of corporations and increase the power of working people."

I don't know which side of this particular divide you fall on, but I think in order to win, it is important to hammer home at every opportunity that it is social democracy, and not socialism, that is being pushed for.

So those are the three big things that are making me hesitant - the dogmatism and the making of 'liberals' into the enemy, the failure to reach the working poor and minorities(yet), and the zeal in some quarters to do away with capitalism altogether. And I guess all of that falls under the umbrella of just being more inclusive, more inviting movement, because right now it comes off as a combative movement unfriendly to outsiders.

I've read some Jacobin articles, and it's like their favorite thing is to find some mainstream Democrat to write a tear-down piece about. At some point you have to stop tearing everyone down and try to extend a hand instead.

When you see people who are basically in favor of universal healthcare, green energy, serious policy to combat climate change, free public college tuition, etc etc etc, but who are hesitant to buy into the rallying cry of revolution, instead of calling them 'liberals' with a sneer, instead of raging against 'establishment democrats', reach your hand out and be more welcoming, try to build a more inclusive coalition(I'm justing talking amongst the left here, I'm not taking the Cory Booker line of trying to compromise with the GOP, 'cause that's not possible at this point in time), because all politics is ultimately numbers, and ALL of our votes are going to be needed to win.

And yes, I FULLY understand that the Democratic Party has had its share of responsibility for the state we're in and that both parties have had a bias towards people with money for a long time. That is indisputable to anybody who's been paying attention, and it should change. I just don't think the way to do that is to shout down every Democrat who has supported the party over the years and who doesn't automatically and fully buy into the socialist party line right away.

I think the movement is important and I think a lot of the policies it espouses are the right ones, but I think it needs to be more inclusive and inviting to outsiders in order to build a broader and more politically powerful coalition.

Anyway, I've rambled enough. I hope you found this post constructive.

[Jerry Dunk]

The DSA has a lot of problems, and actually a number of people who are referenced/quoted in that article have come out and said they resented the implication they were part of DSA just because they commented on socialism.

The problem we have with Ocasio-Cortez's comments on McCain is a problem with a lot of American leftists have, where they cannot place the events occurring in America into a broader global context. It is a lack of understanding of how America's foreign policy impacts other places, and how the socialist movement must be a global one. Ocasio-Cortez has been doing a horrific job of trying to explain her thoughts on Omar, simply because she can't get to "Omar is correct, and did not do anything wrong." She is trying to bend over backwards to accommodate those arguing in bad faith about the Israel/Palestine divide, who deserve no such benefit of the doubt.

It's the same thing alluded to above by Vlad with the discussion surrounding Venezuela. Even leftists in America fail to reckon with the horrifying global damage American empire has wrought.

But ultimately the problem is that too many Democrats/liberals think capitalism works and just needs better managers. It does not. Capitalism is about profit and hoarding of resources. That is a feature, not a bug. And until we can bridge that divide, this is not going to work.