electoralism

This is how I hear the news that she won?!!

DC is filled with corporate democrats running in every ward. So glad to see that the city is united enough to vote for a progressive over mcdookie.

Very odd to me, actually lol. DC is filled with Reaganite democrats, state employees, government contractors, NGO liberals, I'm surprised she won.

I keep getting bombarded by ads for fake progressives like Pinto, who is very obviously a corporate democrat who talks about making it cheaper for homeowners by giving tax credits, and focusing the rest of her platform on giving tax credits to developers to fix the housing crisis. Very obviously not trying to solve the root of the issues and wants the petit-boug vote because less than half of DC owns their homes.

Assuming of course that she wins the DC mayoral race.

Trump ending home rule is more likely than a republican winning the DC mayoral race. There hasn't been a Republican in DC administration since they started holding elections.

It's very clear there is an arm of the Democratic Party using the DSA as a means of appealing to the alternative voter. The voter who doesn't enjoy the current formation of the Democrats, but is still registered as a Democrat. It's a working strategy right now. You pluck the most capable DSA member out of flock, dress them up, and send them out hat in hand. The PSL's assessment, that this represents a shift in peoples desire for "socialism" does ring true, it's obvious that people are looking for "something different". I think it's also clear that what voters desire is exactly what the DSA and the Democrats are offering, which is strictly Social Democracy + "acceptable" levels of national chauvinism. I think in order for a desire for something more than strictly the Democrats, you need to have some kind of crisis of self, and a loss of faith in these institutions. In a way that sours the Democratic Party for you altogether.

The real linchpin here is the primary process, right? In DC, it is a closed primary, which means that only registered Democrats can vote in that primary. I think it's interesting that most of these high profile DSA primaries happen in places where closed primaries are the requirement. It varies state to state, but in DC and NYC the primaries are closed. This means that, you have to stay a registered Democrat in order to have a voice in the primary process. These primaries obviously precede the actual race. In many cases, they're more of a spectacle than the race itself. This is because, the tension isn't between Democrats and Republicans in the country anymore, it's between Democrats and a growing progressive base of voters. The growing progressive base isn't going to be interested in voting for Republicans. In Democratic strongholds, the fight is no longer one where the battle lines are drawn between Republican and Democratic policy, but between liberal and progressive policy. The goal is to not lose people to these populist ideals like they did during Trumps last election run. They need to capture them somehow, and what better way to do it, then to have the battle internally first, instead of externally between two parties. You ultimately have more control over that environment.

This tactic then, forces disillusioned registered Democratic voters to come back to the table, and gives them a sense that they're making a choice that pushes things forward. It gives them what they want, which is this feeling of progress, change, and voting for an "outsider", but it does it at the primary level, before the actual race. If this new progressive wins, they will then be folded into the Democratic Party machine, forcing them to become the "insider". This is good for Democrats, because it means that Democrats are still getting votes, and these "progressives" can help clean their tarnished image. However, as we've seen, these candidates often do not engage with the base of support they built during their primary once it's over. They not only become molded by the liberal mayorship they inherit, but also become molded by the Democratic Party itself. An independent of say, a principled Workers Party, would have similar limitations, except that they have the ability to agitate against the Democratic establishment while doing so. They would not need to mold their shape to whatever Democratic Party operatives need them to. This presents another problem, however.

Say you're operating a workers party under these conditions, and have a member who you want to present as a challenger against these DSA candidates. In these localities, these primaries can have almost 12 months worth of build up in the media. The NYC Democratic primary, obviously incredibly high profile, was in the news for almost that long before the primary had happened. That's a lot of air time that your candidate is not getting, because they're not in the primary. I think Democrats must understand this, and it is part of why we've seen these candidates enter these specific primaries. It lessens the risk that a true progressive third party option enters the fray and has a chance in the race. However, it's also true this relationship cuts both ways. I've seen the argument being made time and again that the progressive in roads all start with the Democratic Party and the primary process. So, these candidates seek out these primary positions as what they believe to be the only "viable" option towards progress. What is interesting though, is that it doesn't appear that in Zoran's case or Lewis George's case that there were any challenges to their admission to the ballot. If these candidates really represented a kind of challenge to Democrats as they seem to position themselves as, it stands to reason that Democrats would use whatever legal authority available to attempt to remove them from the primary process. This would include things like challenging the candidates petition signatures in court, which is not an unusual thing to do.

I think what this shows us is that these DSA candidates represent a kind of compatible formation. If they were incompatible, and represented a threat to the norms of the party, we would see more material pushback from the party itself. Instead, they are embraced, and while Zoran undoubtably dealt with unrelenting attack ads during his mayoral campaign and the primary, eventually the party folded when it was clear he had won. Contrast this with the 2024 election, where in Pennsylvania and Georgia, the PSL was removed from ballot access by Democratic challenges. In fact, you can even see how these systems of registration requirements can passively work against these third party options. Take Pennsylvania for example, where two Democratic-aligned challenges were filed. A Commonwealth Court judge ruled the PSL's paperwork was "fatally flawed" because seven of their 19 presidential electors were registered Democrats who had voted in that year's primary, violating state law. The PSL was removed from the ballot. Laws like this serve to prevent things like "Party Raiding", but they also reinforce the two party system by making it arbitrarily complicated for third parties to establish themselves.

In places like California where they have their "Jungle" primary system, you're probably more likely to stand a chance, since that process is used to pick the two candidates that'll appear on the ballots for given positions. A process where, in the race for governor, the PSL placed 10th in the recent primaries in the state, out of I think 60 candidates.