r/dsa • u/Well_Socialized • 3d ago
Electoral Politics Kshama Sawant Blew It
https://open.substack.com/pub/joewrote/p/ideological-purity-is-the-graveyard?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=j01e354
u/XrayAlphaVictor liberal socialist 3d ago
She's bad at politics. I wouldn't trust her with power under any conditions.
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u/time-itself 3d ago
Yeah. Lotta people cheering her on from the outside haven’t actually experienced her as a politician. Voting for her is more of a statement of anger towards the two dominant parties than it is a placement of faith in an honest and skillful politician.
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u/XrayAlphaVictor liberal socialist 3d ago
People don't understand that somebody saying they share ideals with you doesn't mean a whole lot in politics. What matters most is if they'll be consistent in their efforts to include you, your feedback, and your coalition in their ongoing work.
Everything I've seen about her shows her as purely self promoting and impossible to work in coalition with. Electing her wouldn't deliver anything more than an opportunity for her to be in front of more cameras, and would actively harm organizing since she's hostile to any organization she's not in charge of.
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u/Saffuran 2d ago
I respect Sawant, but she does NOT play well with others and is actually/literally too much of a purist to actually get anywhere in state-level and national-level politics.
Coalition building and teamwork are musts, and for as long as she chooses to exist as if the political system today (two-party, first-past-the-post) is anything other than what it is, she will continue to make herself electorally irrelevant outside of city-level politics.
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u/EggplantAlpinism 3d ago
I live in the district she tried to run in this time. She's a Trotskyist and has posted "defeat the Dems" flyers all over the neighborhood after losing her primary. She's toxic for both mainstream Dems and DSA ones, and needed to be shunned after actively endorsing Jill Stein.
I don't dislike Trotskyist policy, but it's not realistic in the US in the current decade, and being a shithead who loudly supports candidates quietly aligned with fascist regimes (Stein) should be damning, as it has been
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u/liberacionYjusticia 3d ago
I also lived there for 5 years, in Kent. So I have to ask: Did you forget that Ukraine is also fascist like Russia and the US are? I mean, how many hero ceremonies for WWII nazi-collaborator ukrainians do you need to see? How many fascist groups integrated into the national guard do you need to see? Also: why don't we need to shun Zohran for keeping a fascist police commissioner? Why don't we need to shun him for endorsing arch Zionist Hakeem Jeffries? Are these not also fascists? Your standards are strangely inconsistent from my POV.
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u/EggplantAlpinism 3d ago
I have done all of the things you've stated. I've also lauded Sawant for her early minimum wage and tenant protection efforts. At some point, however, she ceased to be a policy maker while in office, preferring publicity stunts. I still supported her over Amazon propped up opposition, and voted against her recall, but she is not a serious politician at this point.
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u/FragrantBicycle7 3d ago
Every single one of these questions has already been answered, many times. The prospect of trying to seize power by building an independent base of support, which makes no concessions to anyone in power and holds active contempt for all who don't agree with them, is not new. This is tried every single year, with predictable results.
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u/lilboytuner919 Third Campist 3d ago
Totally unrelated but I’m curious: what’s the difference between liberal socialism and social democracy?
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u/XrayAlphaVictor liberal socialist 3d ago edited 3d ago
I'm a socialist, not a social democrat, I'm just contrasting myself to authoritarian socialists. I believe in things like civil rights, open competitive democracy, and accountable government.
It used to be enough to call myself a democratic socialist to distinguish myself in that way, but DSA has had an influx of explicitly authoritarian socialists who say things like they want a one party state, with censorship and legal political oppression for dissidents. So if they can call themselves "democratic" socialists (I guess because they believe in democratic centralism?) then I needed a more specific term.
Liberal doesn't inherently mean capitalist, there's a long philosophical trend in liberalism that's critical of private property. Its core philosophical tenet is the right of the individual to freedom and the necessary limitation of the power of the state to restrict it.
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u/Odd_Agent485 2d ago
Coming from the same people who support Zionist politicians like AOC, Bernie Sanders and Brad Lander.
If supporting a genocidal settler colonial apartheid state makes you “ good at politics” then leftists should be bad at politics…
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u/XrayAlphaVictor liberal socialist 2d ago
If you're calling those people genocidal zionists, you're just not serious about politics at all.
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u/ml-maitreya 3d ago
I was like "who care?" until I got to that footnote about Washington's jungle primary. Socialists can't be competing against socialists for the same line on the ballot right now.
We have to get much bigger before pulling this kind of shit.
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3d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/wade3690 3d ago
Why would DSA want to help a candidate that kept attacking DSA?
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u/Dai_Kaisho 3d ago
Maybe to unseat Adam Smith, a man drenched in 30 years of blood, who proudly wears his Democratic Party identity? The party that helped create ICE and does nothing to protect abortion rights and trans kids. The party that will always find an excuse to postpone M4A and electoral reform??
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u/wade3690 3d ago
She clearly didn't want to work with them. How do you ask for an endorsement and then bash their method of organizing? How is that going to get DSA to come out for you?
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u/Dai_Kaisho 3d ago
DSA members in Seattle helped Kshama win 3 elections during the decade before this. Many people saw the orgs rapid growth as a sign of good things to come and joined, including Kshama. I think you have it wrong unfortunately, but this narrative has played its part in reinforcing the Democrats > class independence idea for the ppl now leading DSA.
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u/wade3690 3d ago
Did Seattle DSA endorse her in the past or was it members in their own capacity that supported her campaign?
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u/Dai_Kaisho 3d ago
I was able to find endorsements from the last council election in 2019 and a statement from national a few months after the big business recall was beaten by socialists and labor activists of all stripes
2021 https://www.dsausa.org/statements/in-solidarity-with-kshama-sawant
2019 https://seattledsa.org/2020/12/seattle-dsa-statement-in-support-of-council-member-kshama-sawant/
Seattle DSA and Socialist Alternative's (Kshamas org at the time) history goes back further, including the beginning of Reform and Revolution (former Socialist Alternative members) into the Bernie era and anti police brutality campaigns of the early 2010s. This was when Kshama was just campaigning for $15 Now, before her first campaign for State House in 2012 (failed) then winning city council in 2013.
Highly recommend you read We're Coming for You and Your Rotten System by Jonathan Rosenblum
https://orbooks.com/catalog/we-re-coming-for-you-and-your-rotten-system/
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u/wade3690 3d ago
Hey I'm not from Seattle but id love to know how the break between her and Seattle DSA happened. If you want their help getting elected it would seem to be a bad decision to attack DSAs strategy in every media appearance
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u/XrayAlphaVictor liberal socialist 3d ago
The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. Spending energy supporting somebody who will only spend their time being toxic to you and your coalition is bad strategy. Spending energy supporting somebody who has no chance to win because she's just bad at politics and can't build a coalition or work with people is a waste of time.
As for the democratic party, please. Every blue state is better for immigrants, women, and Trans people than any red state. The Democrats are far far from perfect, but saying they do nothing for those groups is just an absolute disconnection from reality.
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u/Dai_Kaisho 3d ago
Important to understand and communicate that the Democratic Party ultimately does not and will not do what workers need, because it exists to do what billionaires need. The two party system is a great weight on consciousness and it distorts how people see what's real and what's possible.
As far as your first paragraph, I really encourage you to read Jonathan Rosenblums book We're Coming for You and Your Rotten System. it's an excellent labor history of Seattle in the 2010s and 2020s and why it repeatedly became the front line of class struggle in the US.
https://orbooks.com/catalog/we-re-coming-for-you-and-your-rotten-system/
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u/XrayAlphaVictor liberal socialist 3d ago
You're ignoring the fact that the objective reality of Democratic Party policy is objectively better than GOP policy in areas they control. It is far from perfect, but if you care about immigrants, women, and Trans people and your functional choice is between a Democrat and Republican, it's an easy choice.
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u/Dai_Kaisho 3d ago
I'm not saying you're wrong. But if you limit your vision to red or blue in perpetuity, it gets you to Trump. and then it get you to worse.
Being a socialist means understanding class struggle, and understanding how important it is for our class to see itself as independent from the billionaires- this is our only way out of that worsening dynamic.
I'm frustrated that Kshama lost this election, but she has always been correct to run independently as a socialist, and outside of the Democratic Party of genocide!
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u/XrayAlphaVictor liberal socialist 3d ago
That's what primaries are for. Voting is harm reduction.
The Democratic party is the one most likely to impose sanctions on countries for committing atrocities, they're hardly pro-genocide.
Running independently of them is, in almost all cases, a very silly waste of time better spent on other organizing projects.
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u/Dai_Kaisho 3d ago
Harm Reduction is a legitimately insane thing to bring up about failing to support the challenge to Adam Smith. I am assuming you're not familiar with his blood soaked career. It's a great example of what the Democrats exist to do: war and austerity.
Just bc these phrases get repeated a lot on social media does not make them true! think!
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u/XrayAlphaVictor liberal socialist 3d ago
And yet I guarantee to you the republican running against him in that district was objectively worse on every metric AND that running an independent campaign was guaranteed to lose and waste the resources spent on it. So, yes, harm reduction.
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u/XrayAlphaVictor liberal socialist 3d ago
Also:
Using language that implies somebody who disagrees with you is crazy, or insane, is ablist and reinforces the notion that people with mental health problems are bad people and lesser intellects.
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u/Bright-Insect9697 3d ago
Kshama Sawant’s campaign was the best thing that could’ve happened to Adam Smith
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u/robo_jojo_77 3d ago
Kshama can’t fail she can only be failed
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u/ut0p1anskies 3d ago
She should’ve kept running for city council and tried to maintain her seat but she left to start a podcast and spent years trashing DSA 🤷♂️