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this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2026
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I'm actually referring to a subset of the DSA. DSA does have DemSocs and many other tendencies and I wouldn't say they are all just DemSocs or SocDems. I mean the people who are the topic of this post, the people who are really into electoralism and dedicate their political lives to running and supporting candidates above all else (literally). These folks tend to be highly liberal and are barely even in the reformist discussion because their idea of reformism is something quite vague, it is plainly evident that it is more about gaining power in bourgeois electoralism than actually standing for anything other than there being 7 Bernie Sanders instead of 1. There is no additional game plan, no discipline outside of lashing out at others (pro-Palestine, pro-BLM, none of it matters unless it serves getting elected for these folks), no plan for having real fights and what they will lean on for support aside from having some people in office.
It is not in any way a coincidence that this is identical to how "progressive" left electoralism functions. There is no difference at all except for the aesthetics and trappings and they will abandon even those if it serves the "elected". There is no reform vs revolution debate, there is no real plan to reform anything much beyond dog catcher level challenges, it's all incoherent. The same "strategies" and excuses are trotted out as are used for other liberals. "We can lobby X candidate better than Y once they are in office!" And then once in office, now that is not the priority, keep your criticisms quiet, we need unity. lmao.
It would be much more interesting if it tied into other forms of building power and maintaining momentum, something that requires sticking to clear principles and positions. Maybe defunding police isn't particularly salient for enough people yet in a given city - so work with orgs to (1) agitate and (2) increase the number of orgs making demands. An organizer that wanted to follow through on this would not have any trouble developing a strategic longitudinal campaign to attempt this sort of thing. The SocDem opportunist doesn't know how because that is not how they approach the topic at all, it isn't about building a base that is always there or a larger policy campaign, it is about the getting the person in office and then staying in office. If anything else happens intentionally it is in support of the politician, not the politician in support of the left projects.
I think we may be agreeing with one another but I'm not totally sure lol
we are very much agreeing! I just saw an opportunity to post that article because I thought it was relevant to the discussion, and I have often seen debates about DSA and what not use very imprecise/inaccurate language to call them reformists when often times we are criticizing the social liberal faction in actuality.
This is pretty much the reasoning behind why it would be good for actual reformists to have a resurgence, even if we know it's not enough the framing of reform vs revolution is a lot better for us than this environment where social liberalism* remains king.
*i think people often use this interchangeably with socdem/succdem, but people also use socdem to mean an actual reformist occasionally too so I kind of like using social liberalism like in the speech
I agree with pretty much everything you said here, except I think I'm just somewhat more optimistic about DSA developing a more principled position as time goes on. I don't have a strong argument to support my position except for my (vague) impression that the farther left caucuses are continuing to gain power in the national level of the organization.
I have seen some activities beyond electoralism in Portland and Seattle, but it is not well developed and properly bonded to the electoral front in the way that you and I would like to see.
I think the liberal electoralists within DSA have grown via the electoralism and their recruitment efforts around them. Those groups don't do much political education, they just get people who like vaguely left electoralism to join the org and volunteer in elections, so their political alignment tends to be fairly to the right within DSA aside from those who are committed to specific moral principals that eventually run up against the opportunism of the liberal electoralists - e.g. those who will not accept any level of Zionism regarding Palestine get alienated pretty fast. Which is to say I think a lot of DSA's growth lately is unfortunately not particularly politically educated and is a bit tot the right, though I'd welcome being wrong.
The left formations in DSA are much better organized (electoralism itself is what organizes the electoralists) and have indeed gotten leadership positions and are overrepresented at conventions, which of course I think is a good thing. They tend to do political education, event organizing, solidarity work, etc in their local groups, they distinguish themselves.
We'll need to see how things shake out in the next few years, but I appreciate that we are both hoping for the best