Here we are again.
Here we are again, folks peddling the stuff that didn't work while others who are trying to break the mold are attacked. The election patter has fallen into the usual intertribal jousting, but with a twist. At a time when the Republicans are proving themselves easy targets, the Democrats are vibing their usual masochistic self-defeating personality disorder and are fighting each other.
DSA is a flashpoint. There are the moderates, pragmatists who want to stay the course and not rock the boat. They dump on the DSA not because they disagree with "socialism" but because of the heat that the term generates. They fear the damage that comes with the brand of the scarlet letter of socialism. They see is as an distraction, which it is, and they're afraid that DSA jeopardizes the party's chances of winning the election.
Not that the left makes defending them easy. The DSA big tent has more than its share of clowns. The "left" who can it rightfully be said to be guilty of the many things for which they are criticized, have their own purity litmus issues. Mostly, it boils down to Gaza, a crime so horrible that anyone who has, past or present, been "complicit" must pay. It is the mountain on which they are prepared to die.
Within the left sphere there is also the subcurrent of progressives who unequivocally support Israel and for whom DSA is a threat to the Jewish state. The issue is so all-important to them that they willingly carrying the GOP's water against anyone that talks about ending support for Israel. As someone who has for years been choking down some harsh realities about Israel's behavior, condoning it in the same manner that other folks are now justifying the genocide in Gaza as quid pro quo, I know where they're coming from but I have moved on.
I'm prepared to accept that others disagree. My heartburn is the manner in which it is being done. It's been disappointing to see educated folks taking shit shots worthy of the John Birch society. They mischaracterize terms, more to confuse than to educate.
I'm a Bernie bro, I go as far back as to when he was the mayor of Burlington. In the 70s we started a NAM/DSOC chapter here. (The groups merged, eventually becoming DSA.) I have voted for just about every rump candidate; Eugene McCarthy, Ralph Nader, Jesse Jackson. I was instrumental in the dismantling of the Solid South when we took over the Democratic Party with George McGovern at the helm of our Titanic. I don't discount the concerns surrounding spoiler candidates or the taking responsibility for our actions. I know to be careful about what I wish for.
Jimmy Carter started to turn me around, mainstream, but not. I campaigned against Bill Clinton as "not conservative enough". I fell in line when he won the nomination and was relatively satisfied (as were most conservatives at the time) with the job he did. I was now somewhat in the pocket of the "don't rock the boat" folks, oblivious to the wreckage I was abetting.
Maintaining my Yellow Dog cred during Republican administrations was easy. But with Obama, I backslid. Young. Black. A gifted orator. Inexperienced and seemingly unbothered by the quixotic nature of his quest. He was Brooks Brother Malcolm X. I loved his 2004 coming out convention speech. I was on board. "Come what may", I told myself, "I will vote for him." The 2008 election campaign was a quandary; Hillary or Obama. I went with hope.
I hated his choice of Biden, another knight errant of the neoliberal crusade. For years those of us on the left felt betrayed by what seemed the party's penchant for expediency and what felt like doublecross. Concessions were made too willingly and for what seemed to be antithetical rewards. Biden's fingerprints were on much of the party's dirty work. As President they were his strong suit. He was the consummate politician, a bureaucrat, who carried himself admirably by cleaning up the mess left by his predecessor.
There are those justifying themselves by rationalizing the failures of the past to smother the prospect of a better future. They use a variety of reasons to rationalize why Kamala lost the election. But the fact is that KAMALA lost the election. Her "support for Israel" - characteristically mealy-mouthed - might have had some part of it, but I doubt that meant anything for the folks who aren't "of the base". Even now when we are bombarded with horrific examples of state murder, most folks can't be bothered to think beyond "what is the price of gasoline".
It was the "try to say nothing", "offend noone" "try to squeak through lest anyone find discomfort in what you say" that cost her. The apparatchiks, the stalwarts of the Democratic Party lost her the election. They are the apostates to the cause of progressivism. She broke ranks. She chose an extremely counter-intuitive message. Rather than tout a wholly defendable record - HER ADMINISTRATION'S RECORD - she jettisoned all of that work. No one was buying it. She twisted in the breeze.
Will DSA disrupt things? Probably. Is it worth the risk? Time will tell. We need to stop playing the game with a hand that has been consistently beaten. Break the mold. Remember what Obama did. If there ever was a perfect analogy for the unlikely prospect of catching lightning in a bottle, he was it. And, like it not, it was also Trump. They spoke to what mattered and people listened. While we fight amongst ourselves Gaza burns, we are at war, graft and corruption is wildly brazen, and incompetence rules. Well, at least we're not talking about Hunter's laptop.
