by Stephan Kimmerle argues: DSA Should Endorse Cornel West for President and Call for a Vote for West in Safe States
[Read the other part of this debate: DSA Should Focus on Bodily Autonomy, Not on Cornel West]
The 2024 presidential race is already dominating the political debates in the US, with a likely rerun of Biden vs. Trump. Cornel West entering the race is an important chance to make independent, socialist politics visible in this central arena of political debate.
Supporting West is an opportunity for us to use the attention around the presidential election to popularize left-wing politics and offer a working class alternative to both the far-right Republicans and the Wall Street Democrats. DSA should use its support for West to build support for our main campaigns (supporting labor struggles, fighting for bodily autonomy, etc.) and build our organization. Ignoring the presidential election, dodging the question of whom to vote for in the most important and politicizing election in the US, won’t help build DSA.
The prospect of another race between two of the most unpopular Presidents of all time – Biden and Trump – is appalling. As many as 79 percent of independent voters and 69 percent of voters in general say “the country needs ‘another choice’ other than Biden-Trump”, according to June’s Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll.
One way or another, a far-right threat to trans rights, abortion rights, workers’ rights, and more will be on the ballot. If the only credible alternative is a moderate Democrat like Joe Biden, then working-class and oppressed people will be pressured into voting for them. However, this will be accompanied by low expectations and broad alienation. DSA has to stand out and point to building an alternative to get out of this destructive dilemma.
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The 2024 elections will be the dominant terrain where battles on questions like trans and reproductive rights are fought out, with Republicans going on the attack and Democrats pretending to defend them. The question of a national abortion ban is part of the GOP primaries and will be debated in and around this election. The Democrats’ inaction, their refusal to take measures like expanding the Supreme Court to break the ultra-right dominance over the Court, their banning of the railway workers strike, their continuation of anti-immigrant policies, their ongoing lack of resistance to fossil-fuel giants, and their unwillingness to call on people to build a strong movement in the streets – this all needs to be called out. But we can’t do that effectively if we stand aloof from the political contest that working-class people follow most closely, the presidential election.
Connecting Support for West with Building DSA
Still, we must acknowledge the limitations of a third-party campaign. The Green Party is likely to get Cornel West onto the ballot in most states. But the Green Party is not an organizing center for active resistance or for organizing discussions about a socialist transformation in the way that DSA is. DSA also has much more vital contributions to make in rebuilding the labor movement.
DSA should connect its support for Cornel West with a campaign to join DSA, build labor and community organizations, and to promote our campaigns on workers’ rights, trans rights, reproductive rights, and a Green New Deal.
One big advantage to the candidacy of Cornel West is that he’s much more closely linked to DSA than to the Green Party, as cemented by his long and public history as a DSA member.
Still, the results of West’s campaign will be limited. If DSA goes all in, we can help to win millions of votes for him – no more, no less. Some fear that supporting West will make the socialist movement look weak and irrelevant when measured against the massive impact made by Bernie Sanders. However, Sanders will not run again, so leaning on his popularity isn’t an option. Sanders built his support through decades of independent campaigning. This isn’t something that can be replicated overnight. In the end, there is no alternative to building a new mass party – one that goes beyond relying on one very popular candidate like Sanders, and which builds up its own independent profile.
Lesser-Evilism
As long as we don’t have a mass working-class party, the entrenched two-party system will keep extorting voters. And the threats it uses to compel submission are real: The far-right, misogynistic, anti-LGBTQ, anti-worker, and anti-immigrant populism of Trump is a much more immediate threat to working-class and oppressed people than the business-as-usual Wall Street politics of moderate Democrats. It’s understandable that, out of fear, working-class voters check the box for Joe Biden and other Democrats. In the 10 or so contested states where the presidential election is decided, it may even be prudent to vote for the lesser evil – but only if we also work seriously toward building an alternative to all evils in the whole country, including those battleground states: a new Democratic Socialist Party.
DSA has been good at using the Democratic Party ballot line for tactical reasons, but bad at linking that to the strategic goal of working-class political independence.
That’s why an endorsement by DSA for Cornel West and a call to vote for him in all of the safe states is the right thing for DSA to do.
An Opportunity for DSA
DSA has been good at using the Democratic Party ballot line for tactical reasons, but bad at linking that to the strategic goal of working-class political independence. In fact, the way that DSA’s most well-known representatives have increasingly operated as a left appendage of the Democratic Party has turned what was supposed to be a tactic for maximizing the audience and impact of socialists on the electoral plane into a millstone around the neck of our organization, which still claims at every national convention since 2017 to be working toward the goal of a mass working-class party.
Endorsing Cornel West – while also taking into account how the electoral system pressures working-class voters into voting for the lesser evil – could tremendously help DSA change its electoral appearance. Especially in a context where DSA still runs campaigns for candidates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, and others on the Democratic ticket, linking these to a campaign for West would help to demonstrate – in actions, not just words – that DSA intends to build toward independence from the Democratic Party.
Safe States?
What are the safe states? Could more states be in play in 2024 than those we already know?
The undemocratic election system in the US assures that presidential elections are decided in around 10 battleground states. When voters cast their ballot, they know what is (and isn’t) at stake in their state. In the most-watched election in the US, we should propose voting tactics that take justified fears into account and send the strongest possible signal that we need a socialist alternative to Democrats and Republicans.
While this system undemocratically favors the two parties, it also opens up some space for a “safe states strategy” where we can make some support for an alternative to both of those parties visible.
Stephan Kimmerle
Stephan Kimmerle is a Seattle DSA activist. He's been involved in the labor and socialist movement internationally from being a shop steward in the public sector in Germany to organizing Marxists on an international level.
