Not to piss on the parade but here's my experience trying just that in the San Diego County Democratic Party.
I join as a leftist hoping explicitly to do entryism and push them left following Trump's election.
Most of the local clubs are hollowed out old folks homes, because the clubs are given no real power (more on that later) and boomers are the last generation to grow up thinking the government gives a shit about them - and of course they still get everything they ask for, all future generations be damned.
Anyway 30 year old me shows up and within a year I'm president simply because they've been handing the executive committe positions off between the same few people and no one wants to do it. HEY! Great, right!
Ok so. The main value of these local clubs is they vote to endorse candidates in primaries. In southern california (out side the nazi districts of which there are plenty) this is the same as anointing them the victor. The clubs individual endorsements carry very little weight, but they do get a vote in the county party endorsement deliberations. Along with party insiders, including electeds and ex-electeds who get a lifetime vote even when out of office.
Are you starting to get the issue here? Democrats from the pre90s red state california when hating mexicans, blacks, renters and taxes was bipartisan commonsense voting FOREVER? Likewise the insider backslappers who were elected by the last group of backslappers getting a thumb to keep putting on the scale?
Well organize! we have the people they have the power. Sure except the clubs get ONE vote. clubs of a dozen people, couple dozen, some active enough to have a hundred members show up, give up an evening to listen to a bunch of candidates lie about their priorites and values, pick their favorite and they're cancelled out by whichever developers nephew got backdoored into some city attorney job two decades back.
You can start multiple clubs - someone did that, god bless him, and astroturfed a bunch of votes for a candidate and they more or less banned that. So simple organizing a new dem club is now difficult.
Ok whatever. Pessimissm of the intellect, optimism of the will. You put together an endorsement meeting, you bite your tongue and dont scream LIAR at the smug ex-florist who ran on red baiting and (((George Soros))) baiting her constiuency of elderly rich high value real estate squatting racists. You ask pointed questions during the debate, you convince you more cynical lefty friends to come out and join thebparty and waste and evening and bite their tongues and the "good" one (good in the dems varying from ok but probably lying about it to openly terrible but better than the other guy) is endorsed!
Ok great! now you get to go to the county endorsement meeting where after doing this about 5 times over the course of the summer, to get endorsements in all relevant races, your club is ready to be heard!
Well now you get to sit through it ALL AGAIN, every candidate doing their dumb stump speeches, but this time for the ones who count, the party insiders who didn't bother attending a single local clubs endorsement meeting. Why would they, they have this marathon session that happens by the way on a workday evening, RIGHT after work, which you must be signed in on time for, which means leaving your job (unlike the professional do nothing insiders and elderly cranks and prop 13/53 princelings you have to work to eat and make rent) early and fighting california rush hour traffic so all that work isnt thrown in the trash.
You also cant just cast your ballot and leave early. No. You need to *hear all of them out* even though by definition none of the clubs could cast an endorsement vote if they didnt already do this.
So where im getting at is if you dont have an exec committee member who is free on a weekday or has latitude to run out at 4pm and doesnt have a pet or a kid or any other obligation such that they can blow 4 hours in a shitty restaurant event backroom, THEN, and only then, can your voice and the voice of your couple dozen members be canceled out by one smug insider.
Again, they could simply allow thenclubs proportional votes to their membership . They could allow automatic submission and recording of club endorsements when and as they happen rather than requiring some dumb shit human presence voice vote caucus. They could require insiders to attend club meetings and register attendance to be allowed to cast their votes, just like we have to. but no.
And I havent even gotten into the time our clubs endorsement was thrown out for a congressional seat because *I*, personally, had moved to a new apartment across the street from the districts border, because Im a millenial, and rent, despite the club I represent being made up of and based in a neighborhood entirely within the boundaries. If we had sent a different committee member it would have been fine. I LIVED in the neighborhood when we made our endorsement!
And yea with a million members all brigading a million clubs maybe we could make something happen. But if you gave me enough people with enough long term commitment to do that? We could found a third party and roll up the Dems tomorrow.
So the Republicans would win a few elections they should otherwise have lost in the meantime. They do that all the time anyway under our system, see also Bush V Gore and the popular vote spread in 2016. The difference would be at the end of two decades of exhausting, backbreaking work you would have a real party with real values, rather than a riven dem party that assuming you didnt lose to the ratfuckers, youd always be looking over your shoulder because ratfuckers never, never rest. For reference, see the section in the back of your book I just read where Eisenhower talks about how no one serious has an issue with unions. took em another 30 years but they never, never rested.
What Im saying is they have this shit sewn up to the subatomic level. They see you coming. In fact they saw you coming decades before you even started coming because this is far from a novel argument.
How you keep the rats and snakes from slinking across the street tonwhere the power is once you win some? Good question. No idea. I will say that having worked with the DSA also, there is no minimum quanta of power that will not attract insane dysfunctional narcissists. Just the curse of politics I suppose.
Sitting in on local Democratic clubs is not generally the way that organized labor influences the Democratic Party. But this was a very interesting comment regardless, thanks.
Fair enough, wasnt in a union at the time. (though there was a union dem club that tried to advocate from within to the same effect. President of that one was the only one I could stand, I think he was IBEW, because he was as cleareyed about how bad it was but what else can you do)
I'm just saying from my perspective, they are well insulated, actively, against populist pressure. Its not an inertia problem like pushing a boulder uphill or turning a battleship. Its like storming a castle. They dont want to hear from you, they know what we want and they oppose it. Once you have enough leverage and power to force them to do what you want you have enough leverage and power to have built a third party, without internal headwinds.
Okay so this is actually one of my favorite things to argue about/get stoned and ponder. I’ve generally come around to agreeing with your take and I think the increasing influence of pols like Tim Walz and Gretchen Whitmer who aren’t necessarily of the left but are more ideologically flexible and willing to work with labor/the left if they are an ascendant faction and can deliver them legislative wins is a great sign that this is doable! I also hope this Supreme Court reform proposal is a step in the direction of giving more public attention to democracy reform measures like proportional representation/getting rid of the electoral college because I still think this should be a priority. Even in an ideal world where unions become hegemonic in the Democratic Party I don’t think a two party system where the parties are a) people who want America to become the Fourth Reich and b) everyone else and the everyone else party has to win every election is a long term stable or desirable situation. I agree that there’s a way better shot at getting a third party off the ground at the state/local level and the place to me that immediately springs to mind as somewhere where it might actually be worth trying is New York. There’s already a third party infrastructure in place, there’s not a real risk of republicans gaining power plus the state Democratic Party is extremely dysfunctional and as we saw with the India Walton affair does not consider “vote blue no matter who to be a two way street.” I think the best way to counter the right’s narrative about blue cities and crime and homelessness is to show examples of progressive solutions to these problems actually working and the NY state dems are functionally incapable of doing that. I got fried for this take on twitter but I actually would have been down with Jamal Bowman running on the WFP ballot line in the general after he lost his primary. The last thought I have on this is I wonder if more parties would do anything to correct the “both sides-ism” problem in our political media? My initial instinct is I don’t think so because at the end of the day our media organs are serving the interests of their owners but I do think it would be interesting to see what would happen in a more multipolar environment
If I were to go back in time 30 years and tell my past self about Joe Freaking Biden becoming President and being not so bad on labor issues, he'd ask me if I still had some of what I was smoking.
That it really happened is due to staying inside the arena and establishing the conditions that made it possible.
As for proportional representation, you can bet the relatively sane Republicans who allowed the psychopaths to take over their arena wish we had it right now.
As someone that has worked in labor politics since 2008, I would have to say that one of the biggest obstacles to Labor changing the party is Labor itself. All the way from the National to the local level. From presidents to individual members.
At the top, the issue seems to be that many national labor leaders don’t understand or don’t want to understand that if we want our politics to be different, we have to engage in real *institutional* relationship building. Instead national labor leaders often tend to build individual relationships, because they believe those relationships will translate to labor power. All that really happens is that in the long run, the individual leader builds their own personal power. And the political gets to frame themselves as “good on Union stuff”.
The way many PACs and committees function reinforces this pattern. They see politics as just elections, and leave relationship building to the lobbyists (I believe there is a place for lobbyists, but this isn’t it). So committees make endorsements because an elected “makes the right vote in the end” or “well, they are going to win so we might as well get on their good side” or “they’re the Democrat”.
And let’s not forget that a sizable number of rank and file members believe the sole function of the union is to get them a better contract, better working conditions, and protect them from the boss. They don’t see the connection between their union and politics, because their leaders don’t talk about politics and their political committees talk about their endorsements as though they are separate from their union.
Since 2015, I have worked for a small education local. I honestly don’t have a single professional colleague that gets to work the way I do. Because the local I work for decided that they wanted to approach their political work with an organizing mindset. This was necessary, because their PAC was so dysfunctional that rank and file didn’t trust any endorsements. It had become so bad that the committee was just one person, making whatever decision they wanted. That person held all the power, and often misled the electeds about union positions - including bargaining proposals.
It’s taken a long time to rebuild trust - both with members and with electeds. We don’t endorse in all races. We don’t do “friendly endorsements. We don’t make contributions to everyone we endorse. We have a clear stated minimum criteria for endorsement. We have a process that is designed to seek input from rank and file before endorsements are made. We help members build relationships with electeds that go beyond sending an email, and electeds know when to reach out to our union and more importantly they know that who in our union they should reach out to is different, depending on what they need. We *talk* about politics and help members connect the dots between having relationships with electeds, open bargaining, and our wins at the bargaining table (and we get big wins). Our members understand that an election is only a beginning, and sometimes is the least important part of doing politics. Our endorsement used to be an afterthought or a joke. Now it’s the most sought after in our city.
We don’t have a seat at the table, because that just means someone can feed you shit. We are there when you make the grocery list and figure out the menu. If this can be done in a small education local, it could be done at a national level.
I have to admit: I was ready to hate on this just from reading the title. I must say, however, that I found this article incredibly intriguing, and persuasive.
For all the reasons you mentioned, I’ve been disillusioned with the Dems, and I was beginning to that a new party, a Labor Party, would be the way to go.
But, I like the idea of working in the arena that’s already built. And supporting the labor movement. And getting laws passed like the ones you mentioned.
Learning about Governor Walz, and seeing him get selected as VP, actually gave me hope, and actually got me excited about the party for the first time in a long time.
Crap. I think I believe in the Democratic Party. Not necessarily in all the people wearing the brand, but I believe in the arena. I think there’s a lot of work to be done, and that that work will be fruitful, if we organize, and encourage participation from our fellow citizens.
I was heavily involved with Tony Mazzocchi's effort to build a Labor Party, as were many other labor activists including APWU President Mark Dimondstein. I find it myopic to think of building a Labor Party as the same as other third party efforts. First Labor has infinite resources in the form of treasuries, infrastructure, and active members. Of the 6 or 8 national unions who formed the original Labor Party Advocates were unions like the AFGE and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way, both of whom were waylaid by Democratic Party legislation. Two things are important to imagine. First The electoral season is not the time to engage in these early endeavors. Second, the organization must be built first as an activist based pressure group, with the long term goal to mount electoral campaigns that operate with the full support of the labor movement. The time may not be now... but it is coming.
How is "an activist based pressure group" that presumably pressures the Democratic Party different from the labor movement itself? I guess I don't understand the distinction. Also what kind of electoral campaigns do you imagine such a party running specifically?
My vision of a Labor Party would function as an independent (non electoral) party, or possibly as a caucus, but its primary advantage would be that it has resources committed. I would think that the original program of the Labor Party might lend guidance. Universal Healthcare, Free Higher Ed, Shorter workweeks. All redistributive policies to benefit the working class. AS it grows and succeeds in winning mass support for its program then it could shift into an electoral party. BTW there is a single state with a Labor Party with Ballot Access. Thanks to the work of the State Fed, The Longshore Union and people like Adolph Reed Jr. and Katherine Isaac.
A Labor party doesn't need to be a third party. We already have multiple parties within a party in both the Democratic and Republican party. A political party at its core is just a means of organizing, that can look like "Labor Party" or "Labor Democrats".
A lot of people trying to work within the Democratic party have been foiled by their isolation, by their lack of political expertise, and by being out-organized by the establishment. We need an organization that can preserve the knowledge and expertise to beat the establishment so it's not being reinvented every campaign. We need the ability to coordinate reform efforts. We need an organization to recruit and train people to run for government and party positions.
And ideally we need a mirror version in the Republican party that can operate in red areas.
I am surprised at how convincing this argument is. The arena metaphor, the arguments that the filibuster and the Fair Representation Act are labor issues, and realizing that proportional representation is not in the Constitution did it. That is, I somehow already knew districts are not mentioned in the Constitution but I never put 2 and 2 together. So, I am convinced we don't need a labor party.
The only thing un-answered is how vote-blue-not-matter-who can ever change anything.
I ask this as a failed activist. That is, several times I tried to get involved in progressive politics in some way or another. Every time I realized I was getting involved with clowns. The last time was Brand New Congress. They weren't clowns, but they only managed to recruit a handful of candidates and I think She Who Tweets was the only one who won a race. Alas, she is still tweeting.
Back to the argument.
If labor union leaders are not willing to risk losing a House seat by opposing a reactionary Democrat, that is, to punish the Democrats by withholding votes and accepting a hostile Congress for two years, how can things change?
I honestly don't know and I have yet to read or hear a convincing argument.
Your book finally pushed me to do something I've been thinking about for a few years. I'm going to get more involved in my union. The only reason I haven't so far is I'm a government employee and I just assumed government employee unions were little more than company unions. But this post has convinced me to get involved.
Excellent point that if/when the Labor party got big enough to replace the Dem Party the assholes would come here. UK is case in point. the career politicians signed up and looked to suck up to corporations just like here.
They're an example of a group that runs candidates at local levels and then pushes the Democrats at the national level. They are not a full on political party per se.
In principle they could be, but their greatest "success" so far is She Who Tweets and votes to make a strike by rail workers illegal.
DSA would be a great pressure group if they could get their act together. DSA's national political committee withdraws endorsement of She Who Tweets but the NYC chapter continues to endorse her. And now two other "better" Democrats who had significant support from DSA chapters (or the national organization, I honestly don't know or care anymore) lost their primaries.
I've always wondered why there's so much fanboying and fangirling over her as an example of "representation" while elsewhere in DC, where the Twitter drones aren't looking, there's a different "brown" woman of the exact same age making an actual, material difference in people's lives. Because of my work I've been signed up for regular newsletters and announcements from the FTC since the Trump administration. It seems every other week there's another announcement of punishment for fraudsters who stole people's money and people getting some of their money back, or punishment of some business for breaking the law, or white collar criminals pleading guilty before a trial because either the FTC or the Justice Dept. have a solid case against them, or the FTC stopping or challenging a merger. These are real, material gains.
I tried to get excited about DSA in DC by going to their "Socialist Night School." They're clowns and know nothing materially useful. They know what they've read about socialism in the ABCs of Socialism you get when you get a subscription to Jacobin.
If somehow we nationalized major infrastructure, or workers owned the means of production through cooperatives and employee-owned firms, the last thing I'd want is twenty-something liberal arts grads from "Socialist Night School" in charge of anything. We'd need socialist engineers and technicians. Not much use for socialist tweeters.
"It’s better to think of the Democratic Party as an arena, where politics takes place."
Well said.
But there is another argument. Namely that a third party can pull the other parties in their direction as the progressive party did 100 years ago. While it never won an election many of its policies (such as anti-trust) became mainstream.
Be careful what you wish for with that third party for sure. My riding in the last Canadian federal election went to the Conservatives with only 40% of the vote. 38% went liberal (center-left) and 15% went to the lefty NDP. Now I have to endure pamphlets in my mailbox from my MP about how he's fighting the Liberal-NDP coalition in Ottawa. Maddening.
On the plus side, the NDP have outsized power compared to the number of seats they hold, as they're the ones keeping the Liberals in power in a minority government. The Liberals have had to enact some of the NDP policies like Universal dental care.
Hope this is the first and last time my morning pleasure reading comes with the unwelcome reminder that Larry Summers exists. That ghoul needs to come with a content warning.
I'm listening to your appearance on Mr Henwood's show. What strikes me (other than your prediction re: labor discussions inevitably leading to immigration being absolutely true) is that Sohrab never seems to contend with the fact immigration policy under Biden/Obama is largely the same as under Trump/W Bush. Sure, they have softer rhetoric and (in words only, at least so far) a commitment to expanding processing of asylum seekers. And there was DACA. But Biden still wanted that horrible right-wing dream list immigration bill that Trump scuttled. And Obama deported millions. Ultimately it seems that there's so little daylight between Dem and GOP immigration policy!
I...kinda wish you or Mr Henwood had mentioned that.
"Rather than storming out of the Democratic Party and forming a new party and then toiling on the margins of the power, it makes infinitely more sense to first reform our system so that a third party could actually have power, and then go make your new party."
Hard disagree. The order-of-operations approach to third parties is a cudgel ("Not now. And really, not ever."). Keeping one foot in Team Blue without simultaneously working seriously on electoral reforms and building alternatives to the duopoly is a recipe for More of the Same. It also discounts the power of organized vote-withholding campaigns; Abandon Biden's stance is a current example.
We don't actually differ there (Uncommitted is a current example). Third parties are, however, needed for a fully-representative democracy—which is impossible with the duopoly.
If you're not keen on starting a new party, just pick an existing one and go all-in. PSL (e.g.) has been organizing for twenty years.
I don't know what PSL is...and if they've been organizing for twenty years, why haven't I heard of them? I don't watch mainstream news and don't read the big newspapers regularly. My sources of information are more niche, more likely to be the places where I would have heard of PSL.
The Republican Party was formed in 1854. Six years later their candidate was President. Stop and consider what that implies. Circumstances are different now but is there a useful lesson in that story?
Why has PSL accomplished little, if anything, of note in twenty years? Is it because when it comes to general elections, the PSL members keep voting blue no matter who?
Not quite. I don't have a theory. I don't even have a hypothesis to test.
But yes, I think a lot of the work that goes into organizing third parties is wasted energy because in the end, if your party has no candidate, you're going to vote for a party in the duopoly. Very few people, it seems, abstain on principle. Effectively everyone in one of the third parties is going to vote blue no matter who. This results in no change from the Democratic Party. Why would they change if they know you’re going to vote for them anyway?
Let's consider the Working Families Party, Socialist Alternative, and the Green Party.
Using Wikipedia as my reference, WFP has two elected officials, SA had one and now has none, and Green has none. I'm sure these parties are all good people and I'm sure I agree with them on most issues. And I'm pretty sure they vote blue no matter who, in any election in which their party has no candidate. And I can't see that these parties have any effect on policies at state or federal level. SA led the campaign for a $15 minimum wage in Seattle and succeeded. I don’t know if the Green Party or WFP has any legislative accomplishments at city, county, or state level.
These three parties illustrate the arena metaphor. They are each trying to create their own arena, the Greens and WFP for decades, and most people don't know WFP exists and they only hear from the Greens in presidential election years.
Instead, they could be fighting to win in the Democratic Party's existing arena. What if they banded together and did that?
How could doing so give them less influence than the no influence they have now?
Now we can consider the Justice Democrats. They ran 79 candidates in 2018 and seven won seats in the House: Raúl Grijalva, Pramila Jayapal, Ro Khanna, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib. Those original seven were labeled The Squad by someone and the name stuck. In 2002 they endorsed and helped Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, and Marie Newman win seats in the House. Marie Newman lost her primary in 2022, but Greg Casar and Summer Lee won seats. In 2024 Delia Ramirez replaced Marie Newman.
So of ten they elected, three are gone and one of those was replaced. This "Squad" has been absorbed into the Democratic establishment. They don't operate as a unit, they don't coordinate, they don't fight with their leadership. In other words, Justice Democrats is a kind of mini-party, a caucus within the Democratic Party, but they have no agenda, no plan, and no intention of working collectively, which some of them have actually said in so many words.
I've begun to wonder if it's because their political ideas are not grounded in anything except not being Republicans. That is, they are not union members, or if they are, they don't understand collective power and solidarity.
This brings me to Nolan's other idea, that labor and unions should be at the center of the Democratic Party, they should be its core and kernel. If the "Squad" were ten union members, or shop stewards, or otherwise directly connected to a union, they might actually accomplish something.
My goal is a truly representative multiparty democracy. The goal you've described is to reform the Democratic Party. I'm telling you like a friend, their big- and corporate-donor based business model makes that *impossible*.
I've written a fair amount about this. Third parties, like unions, are part of the solution.
Not to piss on the parade but here's my experience trying just that in the San Diego County Democratic Party.
I join as a leftist hoping explicitly to do entryism and push them left following Trump's election.
Most of the local clubs are hollowed out old folks homes, because the clubs are given no real power (more on that later) and boomers are the last generation to grow up thinking the government gives a shit about them - and of course they still get everything they ask for, all future generations be damned.
Anyway 30 year old me shows up and within a year I'm president simply because they've been handing the executive committe positions off between the same few people and no one wants to do it. HEY! Great, right!
Ok so. The main value of these local clubs is they vote to endorse candidates in primaries. In southern california (out side the nazi districts of which there are plenty) this is the same as anointing them the victor. The clubs individual endorsements carry very little weight, but they do get a vote in the county party endorsement deliberations. Along with party insiders, including electeds and ex-electeds who get a lifetime vote even when out of office.
Are you starting to get the issue here? Democrats from the pre90s red state california when hating mexicans, blacks, renters and taxes was bipartisan commonsense voting FOREVER? Likewise the insider backslappers who were elected by the last group of backslappers getting a thumb to keep putting on the scale?
Well organize! we have the people they have the power. Sure except the clubs get ONE vote. clubs of a dozen people, couple dozen, some active enough to have a hundred members show up, give up an evening to listen to a bunch of candidates lie about their priorites and values, pick their favorite and they're cancelled out by whichever developers nephew got backdoored into some city attorney job two decades back.
You can start multiple clubs - someone did that, god bless him, and astroturfed a bunch of votes for a candidate and they more or less banned that. So simple organizing a new dem club is now difficult.
Ok whatever. Pessimissm of the intellect, optimism of the will. You put together an endorsement meeting, you bite your tongue and dont scream LIAR at the smug ex-florist who ran on red baiting and (((George Soros))) baiting her constiuency of elderly rich high value real estate squatting racists. You ask pointed questions during the debate, you convince you more cynical lefty friends to come out and join thebparty and waste and evening and bite their tongues and the "good" one (good in the dems varying from ok but probably lying about it to openly terrible but better than the other guy) is endorsed!
Ok great! now you get to go to the county endorsement meeting where after doing this about 5 times over the course of the summer, to get endorsements in all relevant races, your club is ready to be heard!
Well now you get to sit through it ALL AGAIN, every candidate doing their dumb stump speeches, but this time for the ones who count, the party insiders who didn't bother attending a single local clubs endorsement meeting. Why would they, they have this marathon session that happens by the way on a workday evening, RIGHT after work, which you must be signed in on time for, which means leaving your job (unlike the professional do nothing insiders and elderly cranks and prop 13/53 princelings you have to work to eat and make rent) early and fighting california rush hour traffic so all that work isnt thrown in the trash.
You also cant just cast your ballot and leave early. No. You need to *hear all of them out* even though by definition none of the clubs could cast an endorsement vote if they didnt already do this.
So where im getting at is if you dont have an exec committee member who is free on a weekday or has latitude to run out at 4pm and doesnt have a pet or a kid or any other obligation such that they can blow 4 hours in a shitty restaurant event backroom, THEN, and only then, can your voice and the voice of your couple dozen members be canceled out by one smug insider.
Again, they could simply allow thenclubs proportional votes to their membership . They could allow automatic submission and recording of club endorsements when and as they happen rather than requiring some dumb shit human presence voice vote caucus. They could require insiders to attend club meetings and register attendance to be allowed to cast their votes, just like we have to. but no.
And I havent even gotten into the time our clubs endorsement was thrown out for a congressional seat because *I*, personally, had moved to a new apartment across the street from the districts border, because Im a millenial, and rent, despite the club I represent being made up of and based in a neighborhood entirely within the boundaries. If we had sent a different committee member it would have been fine. I LIVED in the neighborhood when we made our endorsement!
And yea with a million members all brigading a million clubs maybe we could make something happen. But if you gave me enough people with enough long term commitment to do that? We could found a third party and roll up the Dems tomorrow.
So the Republicans would win a few elections they should otherwise have lost in the meantime. They do that all the time anyway under our system, see also Bush V Gore and the popular vote spread in 2016. The difference would be at the end of two decades of exhausting, backbreaking work you would have a real party with real values, rather than a riven dem party that assuming you didnt lose to the ratfuckers, youd always be looking over your shoulder because ratfuckers never, never rest. For reference, see the section in the back of your book I just read where Eisenhower talks about how no one serious has an issue with unions. took em another 30 years but they never, never rested.
What Im saying is they have this shit sewn up to the subatomic level. They see you coming. In fact they saw you coming decades before you even started coming because this is far from a novel argument.
How you keep the rats and snakes from slinking across the street tonwhere the power is once you win some? Good question. No idea. I will say that having worked with the DSA also, there is no minimum quanta of power that will not attract insane dysfunctional narcissists. Just the curse of politics I suppose.
Sitting in on local Democratic clubs is not generally the way that organized labor influences the Democratic Party. But this was a very interesting comment regardless, thanks.
Fair enough, wasnt in a union at the time. (though there was a union dem club that tried to advocate from within to the same effect. President of that one was the only one I could stand, I think he was IBEW, because he was as cleareyed about how bad it was but what else can you do)
I'm just saying from my perspective, they are well insulated, actively, against populist pressure. Its not an inertia problem like pushing a boulder uphill or turning a battleship. Its like storming a castle. They dont want to hear from you, they know what we want and they oppose it. Once you have enough leverage and power to force them to do what you want you have enough leverage and power to have built a third party, without internal headwinds.
Okay so this is actually one of my favorite things to argue about/get stoned and ponder. I’ve generally come around to agreeing with your take and I think the increasing influence of pols like Tim Walz and Gretchen Whitmer who aren’t necessarily of the left but are more ideologically flexible and willing to work with labor/the left if they are an ascendant faction and can deliver them legislative wins is a great sign that this is doable! I also hope this Supreme Court reform proposal is a step in the direction of giving more public attention to democracy reform measures like proportional representation/getting rid of the electoral college because I still think this should be a priority. Even in an ideal world where unions become hegemonic in the Democratic Party I don’t think a two party system where the parties are a) people who want America to become the Fourth Reich and b) everyone else and the everyone else party has to win every election is a long term stable or desirable situation. I agree that there’s a way better shot at getting a third party off the ground at the state/local level and the place to me that immediately springs to mind as somewhere where it might actually be worth trying is New York. There’s already a third party infrastructure in place, there’s not a real risk of republicans gaining power plus the state Democratic Party is extremely dysfunctional and as we saw with the India Walton affair does not consider “vote blue no matter who to be a two way street.” I think the best way to counter the right’s narrative about blue cities and crime and homelessness is to show examples of progressive solutions to these problems actually working and the NY state dems are functionally incapable of doing that. I got fried for this take on twitter but I actually would have been down with Jamal Bowman running on the WFP ballot line in the general after he lost his primary. The last thought I have on this is I wonder if more parties would do anything to correct the “both sides-ism” problem in our political media? My initial instinct is I don’t think so because at the end of the day our media organs are serving the interests of their owners but I do think it would be interesting to see what would happen in a more multipolar environment
If I were to go back in time 30 years and tell my past self about Joe Freaking Biden becoming President and being not so bad on labor issues, he'd ask me if I still had some of what I was smoking.
That it really happened is due to staying inside the arena and establishing the conditions that made it possible.
As for proportional representation, you can bet the relatively sane Republicans who allowed the psychopaths to take over their arena wish we had it right now.
As someone that has worked in labor politics since 2008, I would have to say that one of the biggest obstacles to Labor changing the party is Labor itself. All the way from the National to the local level. From presidents to individual members.
At the top, the issue seems to be that many national labor leaders don’t understand or don’t want to understand that if we want our politics to be different, we have to engage in real *institutional* relationship building. Instead national labor leaders often tend to build individual relationships, because they believe those relationships will translate to labor power. All that really happens is that in the long run, the individual leader builds their own personal power. And the political gets to frame themselves as “good on Union stuff”.
The way many PACs and committees function reinforces this pattern. They see politics as just elections, and leave relationship building to the lobbyists (I believe there is a place for lobbyists, but this isn’t it). So committees make endorsements because an elected “makes the right vote in the end” or “well, they are going to win so we might as well get on their good side” or “they’re the Democrat”.
And let’s not forget that a sizable number of rank and file members believe the sole function of the union is to get them a better contract, better working conditions, and protect them from the boss. They don’t see the connection between their union and politics, because their leaders don’t talk about politics and their political committees talk about their endorsements as though they are separate from their union.
Since 2015, I have worked for a small education local. I honestly don’t have a single professional colleague that gets to work the way I do. Because the local I work for decided that they wanted to approach their political work with an organizing mindset. This was necessary, because their PAC was so dysfunctional that rank and file didn’t trust any endorsements. It had become so bad that the committee was just one person, making whatever decision they wanted. That person held all the power, and often misled the electeds about union positions - including bargaining proposals.
It’s taken a long time to rebuild trust - both with members and with electeds. We don’t endorse in all races. We don’t do “friendly endorsements. We don’t make contributions to everyone we endorse. We have a clear stated minimum criteria for endorsement. We have a process that is designed to seek input from rank and file before endorsements are made. We help members build relationships with electeds that go beyond sending an email, and electeds know when to reach out to our union and more importantly they know that who in our union they should reach out to is different, depending on what they need. We *talk* about politics and help members connect the dots between having relationships with electeds, open bargaining, and our wins at the bargaining table (and we get big wins). Our members understand that an election is only a beginning, and sometimes is the least important part of doing politics. Our endorsement used to be an afterthought or a joke. Now it’s the most sought after in our city.
We don’t have a seat at the table, because that just means someone can feed you shit. We are there when you make the grocery list and figure out the menu. If this can be done in a small education local, it could be done at a national level.
I have to admit: I was ready to hate on this just from reading the title. I must say, however, that I found this article incredibly intriguing, and persuasive.
For all the reasons you mentioned, I’ve been disillusioned with the Dems, and I was beginning to that a new party, a Labor Party, would be the way to go.
But, I like the idea of working in the arena that’s already built. And supporting the labor movement. And getting laws passed like the ones you mentioned.
Learning about Governor Walz, and seeing him get selected as VP, actually gave me hope, and actually got me excited about the party for the first time in a long time.
Crap. I think I believe in the Democratic Party. Not necessarily in all the people wearing the brand, but I believe in the arena. I think there’s a lot of work to be done, and that that work will be fruitful, if we organize, and encourage participation from our fellow citizens.
Crap. I might be convinced…for now.
This is a damn good piece. Bravo.
I was heavily involved with Tony Mazzocchi's effort to build a Labor Party, as were many other labor activists including APWU President Mark Dimondstein. I find it myopic to think of building a Labor Party as the same as other third party efforts. First Labor has infinite resources in the form of treasuries, infrastructure, and active members. Of the 6 or 8 national unions who formed the original Labor Party Advocates were unions like the AFGE and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way, both of whom were waylaid by Democratic Party legislation. Two things are important to imagine. First The electoral season is not the time to engage in these early endeavors. Second, the organization must be built first as an activist based pressure group, with the long term goal to mount electoral campaigns that operate with the full support of the labor movement. The time may not be now... but it is coming.
How is "an activist based pressure group" that presumably pressures the Democratic Party different from the labor movement itself? I guess I don't understand the distinction. Also what kind of electoral campaigns do you imagine such a party running specifically?
My vision of a Labor Party would function as an independent (non electoral) party, or possibly as a caucus, but its primary advantage would be that it has resources committed. I would think that the original program of the Labor Party might lend guidance. Universal Healthcare, Free Higher Ed, Shorter workweeks. All redistributive policies to benefit the working class. AS it grows and succeeds in winning mass support for its program then it could shift into an electoral party. BTW there is a single state with a Labor Party with Ballot Access. Thanks to the work of the State Fed, The Longshore Union and people like Adolph Reed Jr. and Katherine Isaac.
A Labor party doesn't need to be a third party. We already have multiple parties within a party in both the Democratic and Republican party. A political party at its core is just a means of organizing, that can look like "Labor Party" or "Labor Democrats".
A lot of people trying to work within the Democratic party have been foiled by their isolation, by their lack of political expertise, and by being out-organized by the establishment. We need an organization that can preserve the knowledge and expertise to beat the establishment so it's not being reinvented every campaign. We need the ability to coordinate reform efforts. We need an organization to recruit and train people to run for government and party positions.
And ideally we need a mirror version in the Republican party that can operate in red areas.
I am surprised at how convincing this argument is. The arena metaphor, the arguments that the filibuster and the Fair Representation Act are labor issues, and realizing that proportional representation is not in the Constitution did it. That is, I somehow already knew districts are not mentioned in the Constitution but I never put 2 and 2 together. So, I am convinced we don't need a labor party.
The only thing un-answered is how vote-blue-not-matter-who can ever change anything.
I ask this as a failed activist. That is, several times I tried to get involved in progressive politics in some way or another. Every time I realized I was getting involved with clowns. The last time was Brand New Congress. They weren't clowns, but they only managed to recruit a handful of candidates and I think She Who Tweets was the only one who won a race. Alas, she is still tweeting.
Back to the argument.
If labor union leaders are not willing to risk losing a House seat by opposing a reactionary Democrat, that is, to punish the Democrats by withholding votes and accepting a hostile Congress for two years, how can things change?
I honestly don't know and I have yet to read or hear a convincing argument.
Your book finally pushed me to do something I've been thinking about for a few years. I'm going to get more involved in my union. The only reason I haven't so far is I'm a government employee and I just assumed government employee unions were little more than company unions. But this post has convinced me to get involved.
Excellent point that if/when the Labor party got big enough to replace the Dem Party the assholes would come here. UK is case in point. the career politicians signed up and looked to suck up to corporations just like here.
Doesn't the DSA operate as such a group within the Democrats, or have I misunderstood it?
They're an example of a group that runs candidates at local levels and then pushes the Democrats at the national level. They are not a full on political party per se.
In principle they could be, but their greatest "success" so far is She Who Tweets and votes to make a strike by rail workers illegal.
DSA would be a great pressure group if they could get their act together. DSA's national political committee withdraws endorsement of She Who Tweets but the NYC chapter continues to endorse her. And now two other "better" Democrats who had significant support from DSA chapters (or the national organization, I honestly don't know or care anymore) lost their primaries.
I've always wondered why there's so much fanboying and fangirling over her as an example of "representation" while elsewhere in DC, where the Twitter drones aren't looking, there's a different "brown" woman of the exact same age making an actual, material difference in people's lives. Because of my work I've been signed up for regular newsletters and announcements from the FTC since the Trump administration. It seems every other week there's another announcement of punishment for fraudsters who stole people's money and people getting some of their money back, or punishment of some business for breaking the law, or white collar criminals pleading guilty before a trial because either the FTC or the Justice Dept. have a solid case against them, or the FTC stopping or challenging a merger. These are real, material gains.
I tried to get excited about DSA in DC by going to their "Socialist Night School." They're clowns and know nothing materially useful. They know what they've read about socialism in the ABCs of Socialism you get when you get a subscription to Jacobin.
If somehow we nationalized major infrastructure, or workers owned the means of production through cooperatives and employee-owned firms, the last thing I'd want is twenty-something liberal arts grads from "Socialist Night School" in charge of anything. We'd need socialist engineers and technicians. Not much use for socialist tweeters.
"It’s better to think of the Democratic Party as an arena, where politics takes place."
Well said.
But there is another argument. Namely that a third party can pull the other parties in their direction as the progressive party did 100 years ago. While it never won an election many of its policies (such as anti-trust) became mainstream.
Be careful what you wish for with that third party for sure. My riding in the last Canadian federal election went to the Conservatives with only 40% of the vote. 38% went liberal (center-left) and 15% went to the lefty NDP. Now I have to endure pamphlets in my mailbox from my MP about how he's fighting the Liberal-NDP coalition in Ottawa. Maddening.
On the plus side, the NDP have outsized power compared to the number of seats they hold, as they're the ones keeping the Liberals in power in a minority government. The Liberals have had to enact some of the NDP policies like Universal dental care.
Hope this is the first and last time my morning pleasure reading comes with the unwelcome reminder that Larry Summers exists. That ghoul needs to come with a content warning.
I'm listening to your appearance on Mr Henwood's show. What strikes me (other than your prediction re: labor discussions inevitably leading to immigration being absolutely true) is that Sohrab never seems to contend with the fact immigration policy under Biden/Obama is largely the same as under Trump/W Bush. Sure, they have softer rhetoric and (in words only, at least so far) a commitment to expanding processing of asylum seekers. And there was DACA. But Biden still wanted that horrible right-wing dream list immigration bill that Trump scuttled. And Obama deported millions. Ultimately it seems that there's so little daylight between Dem and GOP immigration policy!
I...kinda wish you or Mr Henwood had mentioned that.
This was really interesting ! And . . . uh . . . persuasive!
"Rather than storming out of the Democratic Party and forming a new party and then toiling on the margins of the power, it makes infinitely more sense to first reform our system so that a third party could actually have power, and then go make your new party."
Hard disagree. The order-of-operations approach to third parties is a cudgel ("Not now. And really, not ever."). Keeping one foot in Team Blue without simultaneously working seriously on electoral reforms and building alternatives to the duopoly is a recipe for More of the Same. It also discounts the power of organized vote-withholding campaigns; Abandon Biden's stance is a current example.
I think where I differ with you is the idea that the only way to move the Democratic Party is to start another party. It's not.
We don't actually differ there (Uncommitted is a current example). Third parties are, however, needed for a fully-representative democracy—which is impossible with the duopoly.
If you're not keen on starting a new party, just pick an existing one and go all-in. PSL (e.g.) has been organizing for twenty years.
I don't know what PSL is...and if they've been organizing for twenty years, why haven't I heard of them? I don't watch mainstream news and don't read the big newspapers regularly. My sources of information are more niche, more likely to be the places where I would have heard of PSL.
The Republican Party was formed in 1854. Six years later their candidate was President. Stop and consider what that implies. Circumstances are different now but is there a useful lesson in that story?
Why has PSL accomplished little, if anything, of note in twenty years? Is it because when it comes to general elections, the PSL members keep voting blue no matter who?
So your theory is that people build third parties but then vote for the duopoly?
Not quite. I don't have a theory. I don't even have a hypothesis to test.
But yes, I think a lot of the work that goes into organizing third parties is wasted energy because in the end, if your party has no candidate, you're going to vote for a party in the duopoly. Very few people, it seems, abstain on principle. Effectively everyone in one of the third parties is going to vote blue no matter who. This results in no change from the Democratic Party. Why would they change if they know you’re going to vote for them anyway?
Let's consider the Working Families Party, Socialist Alternative, and the Green Party.
Using Wikipedia as my reference, WFP has two elected officials, SA had one and now has none, and Green has none. I'm sure these parties are all good people and I'm sure I agree with them on most issues. And I'm pretty sure they vote blue no matter who, in any election in which their party has no candidate. And I can't see that these parties have any effect on policies at state or federal level. SA led the campaign for a $15 minimum wage in Seattle and succeeded. I don’t know if the Green Party or WFP has any legislative accomplishments at city, county, or state level.
These three parties illustrate the arena metaphor. They are each trying to create their own arena, the Greens and WFP for decades, and most people don't know WFP exists and they only hear from the Greens in presidential election years.
Instead, they could be fighting to win in the Democratic Party's existing arena. What if they banded together and did that?
How could doing so give them less influence than the no influence they have now?
Now we can consider the Justice Democrats. They ran 79 candidates in 2018 and seven won seats in the House: Raúl Grijalva, Pramila Jayapal, Ro Khanna, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib. Those original seven were labeled The Squad by someone and the name stuck. In 2002 they endorsed and helped Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, and Marie Newman win seats in the House. Marie Newman lost her primary in 2022, but Greg Casar and Summer Lee won seats. In 2024 Delia Ramirez replaced Marie Newman.
So of ten they elected, three are gone and one of those was replaced. This "Squad" has been absorbed into the Democratic establishment. They don't operate as a unit, they don't coordinate, they don't fight with their leadership. In other words, Justice Democrats is a kind of mini-party, a caucus within the Democratic Party, but they have no agenda, no plan, and no intention of working collectively, which some of them have actually said in so many words.
I've begun to wonder if it's because their political ideas are not grounded in anything except not being Republicans. That is, they are not union members, or if they are, they don't understand collective power and solidarity.
This brings me to Nolan's other idea, that labor and unions should be at the center of the Democratic Party, they should be its core and kernel. If the "Squad" were ten union members, or shop stewards, or otherwise directly connected to a union, they might actually accomplish something.
Hmm. The Labor Squad.
My goal is a truly representative multiparty democracy. The goal you've described is to reform the Democratic Party. I'm telling you like a friend, their big- and corporate-donor based business model makes that *impossible*.
I've written a fair amount about this. Third parties, like unions, are part of the solution.
https://jamesbelcher.substack.com/p/pick-a-party-any-party
As for "banding together", Workers Strike Back will host a conference about working-class and third party electoral strategy in February.
Onward.