I figure DSA is almost certainly going to endorse grandpa Bernie so let’s talk about what that could mean and what the stakes might be.
I’m sure we all realize that the Dem field in 2020 will look vastly different than 2016. Bernie v Hilary was a story that told itself. Bernie v Liz Warren, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris is quite different. And that’s just what passes for vaguely progressive.
Cory B has been groomed specifically to be the next Obama and there are plenty of libs who will fall for that. And plenty of people who think Liz Warren should be next just so they don’t have to listen to a shouty old man.
So how should we approach this terrain? One approach would be to go all in for Bernie, knowing that we’d be taking sides against people who are just adjacent to him in the eyes of most people. There’s always a risk in tying any org to one person and Bernie already has Our Rev.
What would DSA offer the Sanders campaign that OR doesn’t? What level of impact on the campaign would we have to have in order to have a seat at that table. My guess is that we’d have to stop all our other work and just work for the campaign to be able to make a clear difference
And let’s say we do that- what do we want from Bernie? Do we have platform demands? Is the green new deal good enough for our ecosocialist needs and the crisis we’re all facing? What about all those damn wars? Withdrawing from countries we’ve destabilized is a massive undertaking
Who benefits from the programs we want to dismantle and how do we innoculate against the damage those interests will throw against us? And that’s assuming DSA has something Bernie wants. After all, the national Medicare for All coalition is using Knock Everydoor, not DSA.
Let’s rewind and go back to some of the opportunities we have in a national conversation within DSA about this, rather than a knee jerk ‘Bernie will save us’ position.
What has capacity been like in our recent campaigns? I don’t know the stats on Jovanka’s state senate loss but I’m curious. How many people canvassed for Julia Salazar’s win in Brooklyn? amendment 4 in Florida?
let’s take a list of the ballot measure and candidate wins AND LOSSES from @DemSocialists tweets and measure engagement from fundraising to social media to boots on the ground over the campaigns. If that’s a baseline of participation in the org, does it need to be higher on 2020?
My guess would be absolutely yes we would need to have way way more people out there for us to make a measurable difference for the Bernie campaign to notice and take us seriously.
If you believe DSA members, esp those who are less engaged, will turn out, why would they do it with us and not directly with the campaign or through another group? What do we offer that they don’t? Think on that for a moment. I’m going to go have some leftovers.
