This Is Not Our Revolution

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For socialists, the strategy of back­ ing candidates in the Democratic primaries is a dangerous mirage. 6 SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 2017 T tana at the end of May saw Repub­ he special House election in Mon­ lican Greg Gianforte defeat Rob Quist, a Bernie Sanders-endorsed progres­ sive Democrat. This feat was made re­ markable by the fact that Gianforte had physically assaulted Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs the day before the election.

Exactly how Quist, a folk singer noted for his cowboy hats, was meant to be a progressive is somewhat unclear. His platform stood for small business, nev­ er mentioned single-payer health care, failed to call for any change to Ameri­ ca’s imperialist foreign policy, talked up tax reform, and embraced the fairy tale of “clean coal” pushed by energy con­ glomerates. There was a very modest call for economic nationalism—taxes on companies “that ship American jobs overseas”—but barely a major chal­ lenge to the orthodoxies of the modern Democratic Party. Quist’s appeal as an outsider was simply a question of his image and his willingness to stand with people like Sanders identified with the “left wing” of the Democrats.

Quist’s opposite also lost his election. Jon Ossoff, who came in as a surprise first-place finisher in a jungle primary, failed to defeat Republican Karen Han­ del. Ossoff was a tabula rasa, a candi­ date without really any substantial pol­ icy platform. He represents the “Resis­ tance” of the so-called establishment wing of the Democrats, attempting to essentially run a candidate against the Republicans by hanging Trump on them as an albatross.

But despite considerable outside sup­ port, Ossoff’s campaign, too, withered and lost. The Sanders wing crowed at this, claiming that only they would be able to run substantial candidates with energetic support and defeat Trump and the Republicans at the polls.

As Quist and Ossoff were losing, a candidate in Philadelphia chosen by the Sanders wing was winning his elec­ tion. Larry Krasner, a civil rights attor­ ney, won the Democratic primary in the race for District Attorney. Krasner ran a campaign to the left of the other can­ didates, and the Democratic decision makers in the city failed to coalesce around a single candidate, with all oth­ er comers being flawed.

Krasner was supported by Reclaim Philadelphia (a group that had its be­ ginnings among Sanders’s primary campaign volunteers and staff) and the Philadelphia branch of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), with hun­ dreds of phone bankers. Krasner won a plurality (around 38% of the vote), and turnout only added up to about 17% of voters, but his victory was hailed na­ tionally and by groups such as Socialist Alternative as a progressive win.

Mere days later, Krasner was making friends with the head of the Fraternal Order of Police, which has spent the last 35 years campaigning for the state to murder political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal.

These were three of the campaigns that shaped the dialogue when Bernie Sanders took the stage at the People’s Summit on June 9 to 11 in Chicago, a gathering of the self-declared left wing of the Democratic Party. Supporters included National Nurses United, Our Revolution, Progressive Democrats of America, and Democratic Socialists of America.

Sanders presented his grand strategy to “open up” the Democratic Party’s ranks to youth and trade unionists, and bring about a political revolution. This does not mean a revolution against the racist, imperialist, capitalist govern­ ment of the United States but a trans­ formation of the Democratic Party into something that is, well, sort of “pro­ gressive.”

Exactly what this means, as we see in Quist’s case, is unclear. The “pro­ gressive” and establishment wings of the Democratic Party are less about substantial policy issues, which Sand­ ers and the groups supporting him are muddled on, and more a pair of brands vying for the affection of the Democrat­ ic voting base.

The “establishment” brand, until the catastrophe of Hillary Clinton’s loss, typically sold itself as cool, collected, and competent. Its brand was very much that of former President Obama, whose supporters would often share images branded “Everyone Chill the F--- Out, I Got This.” Now it wants to build its credentials as a “resistance” to Trump, as seen in the recent sit-in on health care held by New Jersey Senator and likely 2020 presidential candidate Cory Booker.

The “progressive” side has primarily branded itself around support for Sand­ ers, who has put forward a cantanker­ ous form of New Deal liberalism and support for single-payer health care. Especially after the recent near-victory for Jeremy Corbyn’s revitalized Labour Party in Britain, the chorus from this section has been “Bernie Would’ve Won.” It has taken up the idea of class, although often in muddled terms such as “middle class” (an amalgam based on income rather than on the relation­ ship to production) and Sanders’ “bil­ lionaire class.” In retribution the estab­ lishment wing has taken up the mantle of being feminist and antiracist, despite its obvious failings in advancing the lib­ eration of women, LGBTQIA+ people, and oppressed nationalities.

Advancing this, Our Revolution has put forward a plan to “retake” the Democratic Party by convincing for­ mer Sanders supporters to run for Democratic county committees. A te­ dious and bureaucratic process, this serves not to build power under the ra­ dar for progressive causes, but rather to rebuild the very machinery that the establishment wing of the Democrats long neglected.

Unfortunately, once Democrats are elected, the right wing of the party structurally holds all of the cards and will demoralize and disappoint its young adherents—just as it did those who went into the party after the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

More vigorous than Our Revolution, Democratic Socialists of America has seen an uptick in running candidates, mainly as Democrats. DSA has grown significantly since Donald Trump’s election, and has swapped its old “re­ alignment” strategy for an “inside/ outside” relationship to the Democrats. It also has encouraged its members to run as “open socialists.” Unfortunately, this has made no difference in policy;

DSA members are mostly running for (Left) “Progressive” Democrat Rob Quist with Bernie Sanders.

local offices on good-government plat­ forms. Their being known as socialists is only remarkable because of the long and ugly history of repression of the left in the United States. The campaign content is less radical than the Sewer Socialists of early 20th-century cities like Milwaukee.

None of these forces or strategies can overcome the class character of the Democratic Party. It is a party of capital, and has never been otherwise. It is not the openly draconian face presented by the Republicans, but the Democrats remain a prop of forces in Wall Street and Silicon Valley that want a relatively flexible, dynamic, and modern capi­ talism rather than the brute laissez-faire model desired by the energy and manufacturing companies that group mainly behind the Republicans. Capital in the United States has the luxury of two parties.

A strategy rooted in the Democrats can never be anti-imperialist. The “progressive” wing of the Democrats, including Sanders, continues to sup­ port the state of Israel and its brutal oc­ cupation of Palestine. The Democrats have never been an antiwar party; Obama was president for eight years and never had a single day of peace. Many support imperialist bombing and intervention as long as it can have a humanitarian gloss, as was seen in pressure on Obama to bomb Libya and Syria.

For socialists the strategy of backing candidates in the Democratic Party pri­ maries is a dangerous mirage. Groups like Socialist Alternative thought that they could endorse Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary, only to switch to an independent candidate in midstream once he was defeated. Instead, they wound up as builders for Sand­ ers’s long operation in the Democratic Party, and have lost credibility when they speak about independent work­ ing-class politics.

Socialists run in elections not be­ cause we believe that capitalism can be reformed, as the “progressives” in the Democratic Party do. Socialist cam­ paigns are a method of bringing revo­ lutionary socialist ideas to a broad au­ dience and allowing voters to register their discontent with the capitalist sys­ (continued on page 10, in “British Columbia turns left”)