By Nolan R.
This article was originally published in Democratic Left: Find it here
We all know the narrative by now: socialists are too radical, fringe, and unpopular to win any kind of lasting power. “Enjoy your time in the sun, lefties, because any moment now the hammer of reasonable, moderate thought will come crashing down and send you back to the depths of political obscurity with your collective tail tucked between your legs.”
Variations of this line are repeated constantly across the country by national media and prominent members of both parties. They repeat it like a mantra, both because they need it to be true and because they would rather eat glass than honestly engage with our ideas. Unfortunately for them, the recent streak of socialist victories has proven there is immense hunger for a working-class movement in this country. In fact, DSA may be more popular among Democratic voters than the Democratic Party itself. One out of three Democratic voters now identify as democratic socialists, and even among those who don’t, two-thirds would be comfortable voting for one.
How does the media react when a socialist wins against allegedly insurmountable odds? They minimize. They put Zohran’s victory down to personality and social media presence, not policy. When a slate of DSA candidates won across multiple levels of government, they said that’s just New York. When DSA won in Denver, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Detroit, well, those are all reliably blue areas, so what’s the big deal?
On the other hand, they pounce on any whiff of failure as an opportunity to discredit the entire movement. Fox News triumphantly declared Kai Newkirk’s loss in Arizona a “setback” for DSA even though Newkirk only became a member days before requesting an endorsement, and was not endorsed in his primary. Similarly, they label progressive politicians like Abdul El-Sayed “commies in camouflage” despite his self-identification as a “capitalist who believes in regulation.” Their goal is to erase nuance, lumping anyone to the left of Stephen Miller into the same communist boogeyman so they can tar us all with the same brush.
Francesca Hong started her campaign for governor of Wisconsin as a little-known state assembly member going up against the full weight of the Democratic establishment and still managed to come within a razor-thin margin of the nomination as an open socialist in a swing state. Outspent by several orders of magnitude, she relied on a robust canvassing operation of enthusiastic volunteers. Her narrow loss proves the viability of insurgent socialist campaigns even in states conventionally considered moderate. To the New York Times, however, the results represent a brick wall for DSA’s momentum.
It would be much more sensible, pundits and political operatives argue, to nominate safe, unchallenging centrists who promise nothing and deliver less. Otherwise, we might spook the independent voters, sink the Democrats in the upcoming midterms, and doom us all to a freshly empowered Trump administration. The goal is to browbeat the voting public into believing that holding principled positions opens the door to fascism. If Democrats stand for nothing, then there’s nothing for Republicans to criticize, right?
This narrative is bullshit. It assumes that independent voters’ politics lie smack dab between Republicans and Democrats, but the reality isn’t so simple. While most independents describe themselves as moderate, they also tend to hold an assortment of incongruent beliefs, such as support for universal healthcare. Rather than diehard centrists, they often refuse to identify with power (hence the independent label) and feel abandoned by both parties.
Corporate media endlessly promote pundits who complain that Democrats have gone too far left instead of admitting that many voters are disillusioned by the cycle of optimism and disappointment that comes with electing milquetoast Democrats. Millions of Americans voted for Obama or Biden with the earnest belief that they would get the change they were hoping for and then they were duped into supporting a vessel for the capitalist status quo. Despite the hand-wringing, independents and the politically disaffected are fertile ground for DSA’s growing constituency.
Each DSA win forces the mainstream media to move the goalposts and adjust their narrative. They argued that AOC and Zohran were outliers, that we could only win in New York City, that we couldn’t win in swing states like Michigan. Now, they’re arguing that we can’t win in competitive races against Republicans. How will the narrative shift again when we prove them wrong?
In all likelihood, they’ll double down on the idea that DSA’s success will hurt Democrats in the midterms. After the midterms, they’ll likely argue that while socialism may be gaining in popularity, our policies will inevitably fail. No electoral success will prod the hostile media into fairly appraising our program or our candidates.
At the end of the day, we shouldn’t internalize the bad-faith criticisms of the corporate media and the party duopoly. The fact that the media can’t stop talking about us, that they’re so obviously terrified of an ascendant Left, means that we are on the right track. We will harness this energy and attention that’s being focused on us, and we will ride that wave to victory.
We are now the largest socialist organization in the history of the United States, with 120,000 members and counting. Our names and our ideas are echoing in hushed tones throughout the halls of power. The president and the speaker of the house describe our movement in apocalyptic terms while the Senate holds McCarthyist show trials alleging connections to terror. While they lie about our goals and our methods, they are right to be afraid. We threaten to seize the reins of power that the ruling class has taken for granted for so long and to deliver them into the hands of the people.
More than ever, it seems that a better world is possible. Keep winning, DSA.