What Is To Be Done About the Democrats (hexbear.net)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5594440

In light of the recent capitulation by Z on the phrase “globalize the intifada” I wrote a comment on another post that I want to discuss with others

“The Democratic Party must be destroyed root and stem. I will bang this drum for the rest of my fucking life.

We have to recognize that the call is coming from inside the house. They could have throttled the RNC into submission after bush 2. The Republicans weren’t that much less radical then! They deliberately chose not to because they would rather be the lesser evil than do any good with the privileged position they occupy. At a certain point negligence becomes indistinguishable from culpability, especially when your whole thing is you are the only game in town.

I don’t think Zohran really made any major tactical mistakes up to this point. It remains to be seen what the fallout from this will be. The reality is that in NYC you can’t even get close to any position of power without being a Democrat. There are aberrations to this but the historically privileged position of the Democrats in NY specifically makes participation in the party pretty unavoidable in that region. They were and are a necessary vehicle for him in this mayoral race.

But with all that said: does anyone see this shit happening with a party that actually has his back? A party that actually operates like a disciplined party with political goals and values? Not just a coterie of consultants and opportunist, like the Democrats. The way the Dems have handled arguably the greatest political talent to join their ranks in over a decade should tell you everything you need to know. The average Democratic politician would rather see him dead than actually have any meaningful effect on the status quo.

I truly believe he needs to take whatever political capital and good will he has and invest it into another party ASAP. Whether it’s something new or the PSL or whatever, anything less will be a slow and suffocating death filled with illusory near-victories and nothing ever truly happening.

I don’t think the backlash from the rest of the party could get any worse anyway. They already see him as disloyal and some kind of outside force trying to upset this revolting political consensus they have worked so hard to construct. He cannot afford to keep all his eggs in one basket.

I’m just some fucking random person on the Internet but I think a lot of us have staked an uncomfortable amount of hope on this guy. I’m just hoping and praying he doesn’t go down easy and he recognizes the totality of who his adversaries are before it’s too late. He cannot afford to give these people one inch and it looks like he’s starting too and that makes me very nervous. Hoping for the best but unfortunately expecting the worst.”

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[-] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago

this is the correct criticism of zohran. critical support is not bad faith rejection, of course. i think it's got to be incredibly tiring to experience a month of every interview nonstop asking him about a phrase he didn't say, slandering him, while trying to avoid talking about his actual policies. part of his problem is likely that bernie sanders advice as a liberal zionist is as awful and wrong as is to be expected. norman finkelstein echoes this same advice that zohran should very simply counter that he is not the extremist wrt the genocide being committed by the zionist entity (not in those words obviously). in other words, the entire amerikkkan media-political apparatus is attempting to "corbyn" him.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

It has been exhausting to observe and I’ve been screaming at the screen every time I hear him have to answer another stupid fucking question about globalizing the Intifada.

[-] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago

I agree completely, but I think either the new wing of DSA needs to take power over it—which I'm hoping for—or a new party needs to be founded.

Otherwise, I am once again calling upon the PSL leadership to run candidates with the actual fucking goal of winning realistic offices. If they especially ran slates partnered with DSA, both could potentially win an incredible amount of local offices in certain areas to establish local power to eventually contest and win offices like the mayor. PSL had the jump on DSA and fumbled it, they should've started doing this in 2016 and now they missed out on so much momentum. Another opportunity has currently arisen again but they're still getting shown up by DSA and PSL is still nowhere to be found besides their protests and reading groups. Such a waste of a Communist Party, it's more like an anarchist bookclub with better politics.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

The only way a new party emerges is after a new labor movement emerges which will necessitate operating with a degree of independence from (and maybe even hostility to) the existing labor unions that most leftists are not prepared for. History shows that dramatic changes in the politics of developed countries only follow dramatic evolution in proletarian organization.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

Yeah I think you make a good point here. As much as I want a new party to form as soon as possible I also find myself thinking that it feels like there’s almost a necessary step in between to change people’s self conception in some really foundational ways before we have people who are ready to do the kind of work that will be necessary to build a revolutionary party. Maybe that’s idealism but American exceptionalism and settle colonialism are more the changes I'm getting at. All in on organizing your work place is never a bad choice of praxis!

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

It's interesting because people in the labor movement cannot fathom forming a labor party but if you talk to any worker off the street they probably support a third party for workers. The masses are sort of already there they just have to be organized to fight for themselves (admittedly this is much easier said than done) and then they'll figure out the need for political struggle quite quickly. It's just the people that are supposed to lead that effort are uninterested because they've always opposed it going back to Gompers.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

I've often thought about a new labor movement in the US to take over the space of the dead unions. How do you see that potentially happening? Like, what are potential forms a new labor movement and new unions would take?

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The big growth will happen in essential industries (meaning things break down within days without them) that have low union density or inactivity and are labor intensive. My guess is warehouse work and anything in the food chain, hospitals, maybe hospitality, and maybe public education. It has to break from the majoritarian NLRA approved organizing and be willing to violate the law. These operations all run on skeleton crews so a few people walking out would have profound effects if it happened at enough worksites. The big unions won't support this so it has to be done independently of them, but should definitely happen regionally or even nationally and not be isolated to single worksites/employers. The goal won't necessarily be contracts but rather approaching political demands (e.g. living wages + COLA, just cause, usable health insurance, etc.) It will resemble how the CIO emerged in a lot of ways.

The big unions will either follow the tides of change or will have to be brought down from the inside. Workers committees should be formed in shops that are already under union contract and they should organize and fight regardless of the support of their representative union. Socialist caucuses (distinct from democratic/reformist caucuses) should be formed to fight or disaffiliate from reactionary unions. Workers councils will be needed to coordinate all this activity but not in the narrow-viewed way the CLCs of the AFL-CIO do now.

The most important things will be maintaining independence from the AFL-CIO and the Democrats and keeping to broad visions of what the labor movement should be fighting for. It won't necessarily be communism or Marxism or whatever but the vision will be a lot more than the next contract.

All of this will take an immense amount of work and time of course. Less so than reforming the Democratic Party and the AFL-CIO, but still a lot. Nothing will change without it though and there will never be a base for a socialist/communist party without it.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

I largely agree with what you are saying here. I’ve always felt that one of the biggest shortcomings of organizing in America is the actual process. The idea that your union needs to be granted sovereignty by the state is a huge organizing barrier and makes the labor movement kind of inherently beholden to state actors in some capacity. All of this serves to neuter the labor movement as an antagonistic force to the state. The organizing you are describing does not have the same issue necessarily.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Importantly too basically all labor law is case law which means it's very malleable and it people just start doing things differently en masse then the law will change. For example briefly during the Clinton administration Weingarten rights extended to all workers, not just workers that had won a certification election. Under Biden that was also NLRB policy though a legal precedent was never established. If workers organize around and demand Weingarten rights regardless of the majority status of their union then that will become standard practice. The broad scope of the NLRA is in some respects very useful because it gives a legal framework for the masses to set the standards. They actually have to make it happen though.

[-] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

my inner pessimist believes that there's nothing that can be done and that any change can only come from the self-destruction of the system to enables them; a generations-long self destruction.

[-] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

I think, as a more overarching point, yes the Democrat Party as is needs to be destroyed, whether outright or in all but name only. And there’s recent history showing that an NYC mayor can pivot from running as a member of one of the duopoly parties to not being that.

It’s also a truism that the mayor of NYC is a political dead end; for decades if not centuries, mayors of NYC rarely have a career as an elected after being mayor. And of course, Zohran would have to do the actual work of being mayor. That’s one of the inherent problems with electoralism, there’s the desire of the larger socialist movement that wants the elected to spark the socialist revolution, and then there’s the voters in that district/municipality/state that are concerned with their everyday lives running smoothly. If Zohran commits fully to the former and neglects his duties as mayor, the people of NYC will see him as just using the office for larger ambitions and not caring about the residents of the City, only feeding into the stereotype of the Western left not being able to lead once they’re in power. Vice versa, then he risks undermining the revolutionary energy that got him there in the first place and just makes people more skeptical of any future Zohrans.

I think the middle ground is, rather than trying to be a Great Man sprouting the socialist movement purely out of his own charisma, he should use the office of the Mayor as a way to empower the sort of working class groups that are necessary for a socialist movement. The mayor’s office controls a lot of purse strings, it appoints a lot of high level bureaucrats, and so having PSL/IWW/union people in those positions and getting those contracts can do a lot for the movement regardless of what letter he puts next to his name.

Directly telling Schumer/Jefferies/Hochul to fuck off won’t do anything for that, but I do think that the runaround can keep them off guard and unaware. Like, if the democratic establishment can make promises to the left and then not follow through on them, then fair game to do it the other direction.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

I think this kind of third column deceptive political maneuvering will be necessary to a limited extent. I just think it’s important to have a goal in mind (undermining the Democratic Party) when undertaking such an operation because the unfortunate part about operating that way is you risk losing public credibility and being seen as duplicitous. Risks worth taking though as I said, especially depending on where you live.

I also see your point about him having to actually be mayor, I think it is very possible that his mayoral term ends up being a net negative for the disorganized left if his enemies are able to render him entirely uneffective.

I guess in my mind the reason why I am staking this particular hope on this particular guy has to do with two things:

The party is in an especially weak and compromised position at this moment. Even the Chuck Schumer seat may not have the same appeal as it did a decade ago and especially after all the friction he has experienced already from his ostensible allies.
And this is the big point, he is not technically allowed to run for president. It’s a stupid nativist xenophobic policy but it means he does not have the temptation of the White House as a next step.

Any sane person, with political ambitions, when offered the choice between navigating the fetid swamp of American third party politics or having a credible shot at winning the White House would choose the latter. There are numerous reasons why but a big one is that there is a lot lower chance of fading into obscurity if you go for the big job. Up until this point it has been career suicide for anyone in politics to seriously pursue forming or participating in a third party. Jill Stein is the high water mark for that career track. It may still be career suicide and he may just go more the Bernie route in congress or the senate but I think there is a better shot now more than ever.

this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2025

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