What Should DSA Do After the Election?
Luke Pickrell offers three humble suggestions
Just yesterday, Joe Biden was making stump speeches in Arizona about threats to American “democracy” while gearing up to run against Donald Trump. Or was it last September? Time flies.
It’s hard to imagine election season lasting a year-plus if the U.S. had a parliamentary system. We’d be fussing over the next prime minister and what party (out of many) would win the most seats. However, our current system gives the executive branch immense power and allows only two parties to meaningfully participate. Hence, who will be the next president is a big deal. But November always arrives, and election fever eventually breaks. Life continues, and while some things may change, others stay the same. The Senate certainly never goes away. The same goes for the Electoral College, gerrymandering, the filibuster, and the executive veto.
People wonder: What should be done after the election?
My humble suggestion to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is that we should develop political agitation based on the following section of the preamble to our 2024 Program: “Our goal is to put workers in charge of the government through a new democratic constitution that establishes civil, political, and democratic rights for all, is based on proportional representation in a single federal legislature, and ends the role of money in politics.” Let’s go full democratic republican.
A few ideas (please feel free to suggest your own):
When DSA members attend protests or other high-visibility events, they should hold signs saying things like “I want a democratic constitution,” “One person, one vote,” “The U.S. isn’t a democracy,” or “Win the battle for democracy.” Chapters can get creative with the language.
When chapters interview candidates for endorsement, they should solicit opinions about the Constitution. Don’t take my word for it; just listen to the good folks in YDSA: “YDSA urges DSA as a whole to take up a stance of opposition to the Constitution, openly indicting it as antidemocratic and oppressive, encouraging all DSA members in office to do the same, taking concrete actions to advance the struggle for a democratic republic such as agitating against undemocratic Judicial Review, fighting for proportional representation, delegitimizing the antidemocratic U.S. Senate, and advancing the long-term demand for a new democratic Constitution.” There’s a lot of concern about our “electeds” being socialists. We should expect them to be democratic republicans, too.
The National Political Education Committee (NPEC) has organized Capital reading groups. Chapters should also host reading groups to discuss Aziz Rana’s The Constitutional Bind, Daniel Lazare’s The Frozen Republic, Sanford Levinson’s Our Undemocratic Constitution, or Robert Dahl’s How Democratic is the American Constitution? This might be heretical, but I’ll say it: Any of these four books has more to offer the U.S. socialist movement in the first ten pages than another translation of Marx’s most famous work. Thomas Geoghegan, who has been writing about this stuff for three decades, says it just as I would: “Before the young in this country ever stop racism, much less enact socialism, they better start by changing our form of government.”
DSA is a strange creature. On paper, it’s in a fair position to be the vanguard movement for a new constitution. I’ve listed all the official documents discussing the need for a new constitution. In The Constitutional Bind, Aziz Rana likened the organization’s 2021 program to the best stuff coming out of the Socialist Party of America in the early nineteen-teens. And yet, DSA just… won’t… budge. Why?
Well, it’s not really DSA that’s talking about the Constitution. Instead, Marxist Unity Group (MUG) members are working hard to insert key phrases here and there. That’s a steep enough hill to climb on its own. But to make matters more frustrating, MUG isn’t a consistent proponent of a democratic constitution either, as Gil Schaeffer (here) and I (here) have pointed out. It would be one thing if MUG was a consistent democratic republican thorn in DSA’s side — but it’s not.
I say DSA should live up to the preamble of its 2024 Program (along with many other statements) — and it should! Do I think it will? Eh, maybe. Probably not. But there’s never any harm in talking about democracy, and one can do a lot worse than talking with people who have “democratic socialist” in their name. Who knows? Maybe these three suggestions will speak to a few people.