by A Statement on the 2024 Elections from the Reform & Revolution Steering Committee
The election of Donald Trump is a disaster for working people in the US and around the world, and his right wing politics will cost countless lives. The blame for his election rests squarely on the shoulders of the leadership of the Democratic Party and their decades of disastrous capitalist policies, which have fueled and strengthened the far-right and destroyed trust in democratic systems.
Why did Trump Win?
The Democrats abandoned working class issues to chase support from Republicans and lost, and we are all now paying the price. In state after state, abortion rights protections and minimum wage increases ran far ahead of the Harris/Walz ticket. Trump gained significant ground with Latino voters and young men, and urban, suburban, and rural counties across the map shifted red. To win, Democrats would have had to connect with the desperate economic realities workers are experiencing and put forward a message of change with transformative policies behind it, like Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and tuition free college. Instead, Harris ran on vibes, not policy and campaigned with the Cheneys and Clintons. She signaled that there would be no changes from the unpopular Biden Administration, promised to appoint Republicans to her cabinet, and saw 94% of Republicans vote for Trump anyways.
After capturing the Presidency, Senate and likely the House of Representatives as well, Trump is positioned to enact the Project 2025 agenda with minimal checks on his power. He will gut federal agencies like the NLRB and FDA, stack courts with right wing judges, pursue mass deportations and nationwide abortion bans, attempt to strip away our gender affirming care and bodily autonomy, expand the military industrial complex and support for the Israeli military, and crack down on protest movements and labor organizing.
Towards a Socialist Party!
As our struggles face down the barrel of increased brutality and repression from the capitalist state under Trump, it is imperative for us to cohere the strength of our movements behind the banner of an embryonic socialist party. The Democrats are unable to stop the rise of Trumpism and right wing forces, they are the party of no real solutions, and working people are realizing it. The Democratic Party’s base is fracturing, and DSA has a crucial role to play over the next four years in constructing a fully independent socialist party, and winning over the support of unions and workers away from the Democratic and Republican parties. A socialist party is needed to carry the struggle forward, fight the right and win, and build a socialist world. Doing so will require a more oppositional and coordinated electoral strategy than we have had before, but it is what is needed to meet the moment. Now it is time for socialists to take the lead.
DSA has the potential to be an important coordinating force within the resistance to Trump, and we can do so through mass nationwide campaigns with clear socialist messaging, advanced by our chapters and elected officials. DSA’s downballot victories in Georgia, Oregon, Kentucky, Washington, Maine, Michigan, Vermont, and elsewhere have placed our new elected officials on the front lines of the anti-Trump resistance. We must pursue strategies of municipal non-compliance with the Trump administration’s right wing policies, and demonstrate to demoralized and disgusted workers how socialism can improve their material conditions and resist the Trump agenda.
Socialists in elected positions must use their offices as a platform first and foremost as to help build mass struggle from below and for educating working people around the need for socialist policies rather than limiting themselves to a purely “parliamentary” opposition role.
Mass Struggle Against the Right Wing
DSA can join together and help build broad based mass protests and movements against Trump. These movements will inevitably be made up of a variety of political forces, including liberal and progressive elements which are under the influence of the Democratic establishment. While rejecting sectarianism and working together to build the largest opposition to Trump, we must at all times advocate its own independent socialist message, work to spread the influence of working class, left-wing and socialist policies, and actively struggle to combat the damaging influence of liberal, pro-capitalist politics within our movements. We can help cultivate these movements by holding national and local mass meetings of the left between now and inauguration day, bringing together immigrant rights organizations, unions, progressive groups, and other socialist and left wing organizations and parties.
We demand no deportations, we demand no abortion bans, and we demand an end to genocide. We will fight back at our workplaces, at city halls, and in the streets. We will cultivate new generations of socialist organizers, steeled in the struggle against Trump 2.0 and ready to organize a socialist party oriented towards revolution. Our choice is either socialism or barbarism, and we know which side we’re on. Our struggle continues, join DSA to fight back!
If you’re interested in organizing alongside revolutionary marxists in DSA to build a socialist party rooted in the working class and mass movements, consider joining Reform & Revolution Caucus!
Photo Credit:
- Featured: Graphic by Daniela Outen
