Happy with Bernie Sanders and gaining some membership…
And hoping for a boost with Sanders polling numbers…
An official with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) argued Tuesday that many voters lost faith in the Democratic Party following President Trump’s victory in 2016.
“Hillary Clinton lost to Trump and people lost faith in the Democratic Party,” said Megan Svoboda, a national political committee member at DSA, in an interview with Hill.TV.
Svoboda also credited the 2016 election for helping DSA create a Democratic socialist movement that is more representative of voters.
“If we’re were thinking long-term, we have to be clear that we are different than the Democratic Party,” she said. “We want to be of and for the working class — not fighting for the interests of millionaires and billionaires as the Democratic Party is.”
Following Trump’s election, DSA said it saw a surge in popularity, growing from about 7,000 members to 50,000. Progressive lawmakers and candidates have also leaned into the DSA label.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who was endorsed by DSA last year, gave a forceful speech in June defending the political philosophy, characterizing it as an extension of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.
DSA also scored a number of victories during the 2018 midterm elections, backing Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).
The group is now hoping to rekindle its success in 2020 and has backed roughly 100 congressional candidates…
image…NYTimes.Com
Correction….
The original title of this post was incorrect
The right group is the The Democratic Socialist of America group…
The DSA is not an actual political party as the headline implies.
They generally work to advance their goals within the Democratic Party.
They are analogous to the American Conservative Union which works within the Republican Party.
Thanks Jack….
I would like DSD feed back on this…
Corrections made on this post..
Thanks DSD….
Jack is right. Although some members of DSA (including perhaps Ms Svoboda above) still hope for a third-party alternative coalition or else want to organize outside electoral politics, the vast majority want to and have wanted to work within the Democratic Party.
By far the greatest recent successes of DSA have been for Democratic nominees: Sen. Sanders, Reps Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Tlaib, not to mention dozens if not hundreds of state legislators and municipal councillors. Most of the huge influx of DSA members since 2016 have come from supporters of Bernie Sanders in 2016 & 2020. In 2019, 75% of all DSA members voted to endorse Sanders.
And that’s been true of most democratic socialists and social democrats since the 1950’s — when the ticket of Darlington Hoopes & Sam Friedman failed to win more than a few thousand presidential votes — if not earlier.
(Norman Thomas reluctantly ran in 1948 only to provide a left-wing alternative to Henry A. Wallace & Glenn Taylor on the Progressive Party ticket; although started as something broader, the Progressive Party itself, but not Wallace or Taylor, had soon been taken over by the pr0-Soviet Communists.)
And James confuses matters by calling DSA the Democratic Socialist Party. There is a Socialist Party USA (quite distinct from DSA), which does run its own candidates, e.g. the late Dave McReynolds, in most presidential elections. And even within the SPUSA, there has been much discussion about whether the enormous investment of time and effort in presidential elections drains too much from their other activities. (When I observed a national convention of the Socialist Party in 1995, the comrades who were most reluctant about such efforts were the former candidates themselves, exhausted on the campaign trail with but little return in votes.)
For more background (and perhaps to correct any omissions, distortions or errors of mine), see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Socialists_of_America
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Party_USA
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Party_of_America