Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Covers for the Undemocratic Constitution
AOC says the U.S. is a democracy; DSA could've unendorsed her on those grounds, too, writes Luke Pickrell
In June, Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA) National Political Committee (NPC) voted to endorse Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) so long as she fulfilled four conditions: publicly oppose all funding to Israel, including the Iron Dome; participate regularly in DSA’s Federal Socialists in Office Committee; publicly opposes all criminalization of Anti-Zionism, such as bills advancing the IHRA definition which conflates criticism of Israel with anti-semitism; and publicly support BDS (Boycott, Divest, and Sanction) to end Israeli settler-colonialism.
Last week, the NPC withdrew its conditional endorsement, stating, “A national DSA endorsement comes with a serious commitment to the movement for Palestine and our collective socialist project” and “We have not seen evidence of AOC meeting these conditions.” The NPC did the correct thing in unendorsing AOC. The decision by DSA’s highest elected body makes it clear that endorsement comes with rules and expectations.
Defending Joe Biden and giving an uncritical platform to the Jewish Council for Public Affairs weren’t AOC’s only transgressions. On multiple occasions, AOC has publicly supported the Constiution and sowed distortions and confusion by calling America a democracy. Last week, she introduced Articles of Impeachment against Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, arguing that a “yearslong pattern of misconduct and failure to recuse in cases bearing their clear personal and financial involvement represents an abuse of power and threat to our democracy, fundamentally incompatible with continued service on our nation’s highest court.”
As Daniel Lazare pointed out in his analysis of Trump v. United States, no one, including Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Jackson, seems interested in admitting that the impeachment mechanism has failed. AOC should be added to that list. Attempting to impeach Alito and Thomas is a PR stunt. AOC knows as well as anyone else that passing Articles of Impeachment through the Republican-led House (and gaining a two-thirds majority in the Senate) is “effectively impossible.” This difficulty is by design. Article III of the Constitution created an unelected federal judiciary system to disempower state justices and check the interests of the American people. Federal judges “hold their office during good behavior,” which means they have a lifetime appointment, except under astonishingly limited circumstances. AOC calls the U.S. a democracy. She pretends that impeachment, even if possible, would change the Supreme Court’s reason for existence. She praises the Court’s “independence” (read: unelected) as progressive and redeeming.
Like her waffling on Palestine, AOC’s stance on U.S. “democracy” violates several DSA positions, including a statement in the Political Program that the U.S. is not a democracy and a demand for “a second constitutional convention to write the founding documents of a new socialist democracy” (leaving aside the problem of calling for a constitutional convention instead of a constituent assembly). Importantly, AOC’s tactic for “solving” SCOTUS is reflected in the Program’s demand that term limits and court-packing be used to “break the countermajoritarian conservative majority.” Like AOC, some in DSA think SCOTUS is redeemable with a progressive majority — a far cry from the Socialist Party of America’s demands for the abolition of judicial review and the direct election of all judges.
DSA’s Program is inconsistent regarding democracy and the nature of the Constitution, but several other statements are not. Last year, Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) passed R21: Winning the Battle for Democracy, stating, “The political institutions established by the Constitution are intended to be an obstacle to democracy at every step.” Crucially, the resolution calls on “all DSA members in office” to take “concrete actions to advance the struggle for a democratic republic, such as against undemocratic Judicial Review, fighting for proportional representation, delegitimizing the anti-democratic U.S. Senate, and advancing the long-term demand for a new democratic Constitution.” (See our interview with Steven Raney, the resolution’s author). Recently, Cleveland DSA passed a copycat resolution, repeating the call for DSA electeds to publicly demand a democratic constitution. San Diego DSA is looking to pass a similar resolution.
In his critique of the German Social Democratic Party’s (SPD) Erfurt Program, Friedrich Engels observed that German socialists did a disservice to their party and the working class by pretending the Reichstag was a democratic body and thereby obfuscating the true nature of the state. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is similarly obfuscating the nature of the Constitution by calling the U.S. a democracy and pretending that it’s possible to hold Supreme Court Justices accountable by filing Articles of Impeachment. As with support for Palestine, DSA should instruct its representatives to follow its Political Program and R21 by demanding a true democracy.