by On Sunday, DSA’s NPC took the most contentious vote of the 2025-27 term. By a 14 to 13 margin, the NPC voted down a Reform & Revolution compromise proposal to conduct a nuanced mass poll of all DSA members for input on the presidential election. The NPC also voted to table another R&R proposal which would have affirmed the 2027 DSA Convention’s ability to make the final decision on endorsement and orientation for this momentous campaign.
Behind these seemingly procedural votes was a series of decisive questions for the NPC: our approach to internal democracy, our relationship to coalition partners, the nature and tone of internal debate in DSA and, most decisively, the strategy of DSA in the 2028 presidential election. This statement aims to outline our positions as a caucus.
R&R believes that the leading factions of the NPC have made a series of major mistakes in this process, locking the body in a cycle of escalations that can only be addressed with a robust democratic process and a campaign which threads a delicate needle. We must use a campaign in 2028 to build DSA! We must let members have the first word in a deliberative process, and the last word at Convention! We must end the bureaucratic escalations, sectarian attacks, and talk of a split. We have a choice: build DSA, or break it.
AOC without illusions: a chance to build the movement
We believe that DSA should support a socialist candidate for president in 2028. Failing to advance a candidate in this election would be disastrous for the socialist movement; it would constitute ceding the stage to liberal and conservative forces at a time when millions of workers are politically engaged and being radicalized. In the highly likely case that the only viable candidate is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, R&R supports a campaign waged with no illusions, with the simultaneous understanding that AOC’s campaign will inspire mass energy and attention from the working class with the potential to rapidly grow DSA, but that it will also inevitably run into the contradictions inherent to pursuing executive power under capitalism and running within the capitalist Democratic Party. These are inescapable contradictions which will tear apart DSA and set the socialist movement back if we follow AOC blindly by linking us to positions we don’t hold and taking responsibility for any and all of her statements and actions.
Therefore, R&R supports DSA launching an independent expenditure campaign, with our own socialist message and canvassing operation, which aims not merely to elect AOC, but to build the organization which can push her forward and, when necessary, go beyond her. We believe this position speaks to both the hopes and concerns of the majority of our 120,000 members.
Democracy and convention: Let the members decide
R&R believes DSA’s engagement with the presidential election can only succeed if our members are convinced in a legitimate, democratic process. We support a series of steps designed to empower our membership. Firstly, we proposed, in addition to chapter discussions, a nuanced poll to inform the NPC’s first steps—that is to say, a poll which gives members the chance to choose between all viable candidates, and to choose whether to support them with an uncritical, coordinated campaign, a critical campaign with our own message, or not at all.
In general, our caucus has opposed email polls, especially for leadership elections. However, in the case of engaging in a massive electoral project that will reverberate across the nation, a national member poll done well will genuinely give important information for how the broad base in our organization believes we should go about this. Polls do not work if they are mere rubber stamps, or if they collapse the nuance and diversity of perspective that DSA members have on a question into one-word answers. To give our members a voice, we must give them a range of options. This poll is a means to give members an input and to start our presidential process and begin our organizing, but polls can only take us so far.
At the heart of DSA’s member democracy is our National Convention. This is why we have also proposed that the final decision on an endorsement be made by Convention itself. While we understand that the power of the NPC between Conventions is important, the truth of the matter is that this decision is much more substantial than any other the NPC will make. Furthermore, our proposal would have addressed concerns that we would not be able to begin campaigning on time by giving the NPC and other national bodies explicit permission to begin preparing the work of a presidential campaign throughout the deliberative period.
The strength of our campaign is with our members. Let our members have the first say, with a nuanced poll to inform our initial preparatory campaign efforts and discussion circles in every chapter, and let them have the final say, with a vote at Convention.
Against a split, against attacks on members. Debate the politics and let the members vote!
This debate has been marked by vicious, sectarian, uncomradely attacks. Groundwork and Socialist Majority Caucus (SMC) have waged a widespread pressure campaign, falsely portraying those of us on DSA’s left as being against member democracy and seeking to undermine AOC through procedural means. Unconcerned with addressing the legitimate fears of members that a candidate who spoke before the DNC to defend Joe Biden’s stance on Gaza may be out of step with our politics, Groundwork and SMC instead sought to badger the NPC into backing their proposals, a strategy which had no chance of working and would inevitably anger and demoralize members across DSA.
Much of DSA’s left, uncertain of their stance on AOC and afraid of the fact that a poll would likely show the marginality of opposition to her in DSA, has leaned on procedural approaches which only advance concerns that they are indirectly trying to undermine an endorsement of AOC. The DSA left is hoping to avoid, in the immediate term, a contentious fight over an endorsement of AOC, by shifting the debate to questions of process and the structures of national leadership. However, their approach has ultimately resulted in engendering the same divisions that they hoped to avoid, just through organizational disagreements which are more difficult to resolve in a politically clarifying manner. It is likely that the DSA left will eventually support an endorsement of AOC, so their attempts to shift the lens of debate are largely distractions from the vital task of laying out a principled strategy to retain our political independence while intervening in the 2028 Elections.
Bread and Roses, standing in the center, has put forward a strategy which does away with all-member polling and has the NPC vote on a de-facto endorsement before convention. Despite our often aligned and productive collaboration with B&R, in essence, their “compromise” is the inverse of ours. They propose the minimum democratic oversight, instead of the maximum. Unfortunately, this has only escalated tensions, and has set the stage for a highly contested NPC vote, with minimal input from members.
Hopefully, the NPC will find their way to a truly independent campaign. But this could have been achieved earlier and with less tension if this debate had not been turned into a proxy fight over failed One Member One Vote proposals around the concrete issue of an AOC endorsement.
If this is how we handle the mere question of how to discuss and decide on an endorsement, how will DSA handle an endorsement itself, let alone the politics of a hypothetical AOC presidency, regardless of endorsement status? At every turn, we are shirking political debate, clear messaging and strategy for factional campaigns, escalatory procedural maneuvering, and the fleeting hope a candidate other than AOC will appear from thin air.
It doesn’t have to be this way. AOC is far from R&R’s first choice for a candidate—we dedicated much of the first months on the NPC to trying to find a viable alternative. But she is almost assuredly running, she has real weaknesses, and DSA is deeply split over her candidacy in a way only a sustained process of democratic member input can resolve.
The NPC has sunk to its lowest depths in this debate when instead we must rise to the occasion. We must openly debate AOC’s politics, the opportunities and costs that would come from an endorsement, and the importance of political independence. We must analyze the political conditions that will emerge in 2028, and how we can cultivate thousands of new DSA members from them. We must prepare national and chapter-level infrastructure that is fit for coordinating hundreds of thousands of conversations with workers about not just the election, but our program, our theory of change, our local campaigns, and how we can fight back. On the doors, in our workplaces, at protests, and at community events; we have a world to win.
