Thread by @therubykid

I don’t have a vote in the #LabourLeadership election (see: workersliberty.org/story/2017-07-…), so I’m gonna tweet about a leadership election (of a sort) that I am voting in instead...

As a US citizen, I’m getting ready to cast my vote in the Democratic global primary. Only one choice: @BernieSanders. @Bernie2020UK

On the most basic level, policies Sanders is promoting, on issues like healthcare, wages, and education, would represent an enormous leap forward in terms of material standards of living for working-class people in America, and a huge blow to the far-right bigotry of Trumpism.

Getting rid of Trump is just one necessary act in the war against the reaction Trumpism is part of, but it is very necessary, and very much in the interests of civilised humanity everywhere. A vote for Sanders is a vote for the candidate I believe is most able to beat Trump.

As a US citizen living abroad, who won’t be personally affected by Sanders’ domestic policies, voting for him is also in part an act of solidarity with those struggling to win them on the ground.

I guess that distance gives me the luxury of thinking about voting for Sanders more in terms of what it represents in the context of a wider politics, rather than just in terms of immediate zero-sum electoralism.

I think the movement around Sanders has immense potential. It has revived socialism as an idea in mass political discourse in the USA in a way not seen for generations.

Sanders’ socialism isn’t my socialism; he often cites Scandinavian social democracy, or FDR New Deal statism, as models to aspire to. I think we can do better than both.

But he does talk about class struggle, about taxing the rich, about empowering the working class economically and politically. He’s explicit about supporting unions and supporting and encouraging strikes.

On some of the policy areas where others on the far left say he’s weak, like supporting a two-states settlement in Israel/Palestine or being critical of authoritarian governments like Maduro’s, I think his instincts are qualitatively better than default far-left common sense.

A Sanders candidacy, or even presidency, isn’t “the answer”: a mass working-class socialist movement organised in workplaces and communities is. But I believe a Sanders candidacy/presidency can help create better conditions for building that. That’s also why I’m voting for him.

Registering as a Democrat in 2016 wasn’t something I ever thought I’d do. I believed, and still believe, that the Democrats are an electoral machine for a wing of the US ruling class, partially enmeshed with the state, rather than a political party of the type that Labour is.

But the Sanders movement has proved that Democratic presidential primaries can be used to advance socialist ideas, and (potentially) build a movement. If Sanders wins, that’d represent a political earthquake that could very well split the Democrats in several directions.

Where I part ways with a lot of fellow Sanders supporters, and perhaps with Sanders himself, is that I see those splits as positives to actively work towards, rather than a negative outcome to be avoided.

I definitely don’t see interventionist work in the Democrats as something US socialists should be pursuing. Strategic use of primaries shouldn’t occlude an analysis of the Democrats as tied to capital.

I don’t think the Democratic Party can be “reclaimed” or “reformed” on any meaningful level. The path to an independent working-class political party in the US lies through a break from the Democrats, not a doomed attempt to “reclaim” them.

But this requires building up the forces capable of affecting such a break, and Sanders winning would create radical new possibilities for building those forces. That’s why, despite my view of the Democrats, I’m happy, and hopeful, about voting for him. #Sanders2020