CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

DSA: Exploiting the Carrion Party

Photograph Source: Cory Doctorow – CC BY-SA 2.0

The continued electoral success of the Democratic Socialists of America–whose candidates run for Democratic Party nominations rather than as independents–has a lot of people very angry. Most of these candidates when judged by their policies are more FDR’s New Deal than worker-controlled factories–a return to the party’s greatness rather than importing radical politics into a centrist machine. But in the US that practically makes you a Naxalite.

For mainstream Democrats this is a crisis. Challengers running on single-payer health care, universal childcare and rent control are beating corporate Democratic incumbents in party elections fair and square, and polling shows that socialist ideas are indeed increasingly popular in an unaffordable world. The party has evolved for decades away from the New Deal and civil rights in pursuit of this moderate center accepted by socially liberally rich donors who can live with gay marriage and abortion but need their workplaces union-free. Now Bernie Sanders’ ideological grandkids are all grown up, winning races and serving in office with the big D by their names, co-opting this coveted brand status.

Some pundits have likened this to the Tea Party candidates of 2010–right-wing populist insurgents who ousted old guard Republicans who were seen as too entrenched in the........

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