Another day, another Geese article driving discussion. I agree with their article “AOC and Zohran are wrong about “Woke 1” on two key counts:

1. We must be full-fledged in our attacks on the establishment.
2. We should have run Chi Osse against Hakeem Jeffries.

I also quite like the concrete suggestions at the end, which argue for socialists to ruthlessly transform the far right into political pariahs. I believe a strong Chi campaign could have served this aim, as well as stronger opposition to the undemocratic economic and political order and to racism in particular, as laid out in DSA’s Workers Deserve More platform.

However, I think the article fails to engage with the underlying contradiction between these two things. A Chi run likely would have been pragmatic and deliverist along the lines of other NYC-DSA campaigns. The more we dive into this populist moment, the more reformist pressure we face. This is why support for candidates like Zohran, AOC, or indeed Chi Osse, is driving a retreat from so-called “Woke 1,” and by extension from taking unambiguous stands on questions such as policing. This is why Marxist Unity Group had a reasonable basis to be worried that jumping into a high-level Chi campaign would have a liquidationist character. If you want to defend “wokeness” you must recognize that engaging with populist candidates threatens that. This has self-evidently been the case for most major DSA campaigns so far, particularly those in NYC. Most prominently, NYC DSA’s endorsement of Zohran Mamdani, who takes a very moderate approach to the police, has played a major role in sparking a wave of conflict and calls for retreat on our abolitionist position.

DSA has open membership rolls, which is good, but it means that the character of our organization, and therefore our ability to maintain sharp critiques, is directly affected by influxes of new members. Even if we do not intend to liquidate into a populist movement, the surge of new members can cause liquidation nonetheless. The article authors do not acknowledge this risk. One might argue that members of this character may join anyway—that is, of course, true. To reiterate, the critiques of “Woke 1” emerging within DSA, which the authors oppose, are a direct consequence of the sort of campaigns the authors support.

If, as I argue, it is indeed a contradiction to engage thoroughly with left populism and to defend our radical principles as articulated in the popular upsurge now colloquially written off as “Woke 1”, how might this circle be squared?

My challenge to the Geese comrades is this: where, precisely, do the comrades disagree with left populism? Where do they think DSA should break, not merely to offer criticism, but to cease all support for candidates?

Otherwise, one ends in a position where they move along a left populist road while criticizing that direction—not distinguishing oneself by anything other than rhetoric.

Within Reform and Revolution, our position is support for ambitious campaigns and a mass slate of candidates for 2028. Many of these candidates will be strong, all would be real steps forward, and hopefully a non-negligible number will defend the WDM program. However, we have no illusions that the vast majority of these candidates will instinctively uphold our socialist principles. This is why we supported DSA adopting abolition as a key part of our platform and why we place programmatic clarity at the heart of our strategy for DSA. As we navigate this messy populist movement, DSA, the foundation of what we hope may become a mass party, must not be dragged along by populist vagueries. Candidates worth supporting, candidates who grow the movement, may disagree with abolition or “Woke 1.” Zohran was one such candidate. But we are under no obligation to do the same, and the key task of the DSA Left should be to build up our own capacity for mass campaigns and election work to prove that candidates can be elected without making such retreats.

The debate in NYC-DSA over whether to run Chi was a missed opportunity for the DSA left to advance precisely this perspective. Socialist Majority’s primary argument against endorsing Chi was the question of capacity, that it would be unstrategic for DSA to take on a labor-intensive campaign that could disrupt negotiations between Zohran’s administration and the Democratic establishment. Zohran himself got on stack at the endorsement forum to make roughly the same argument. The results of this year’s primary seem, in part, to vindicate this: NYC-DSA ran a large slate that required a massive amount of volunteer labor, including two victorious congressional campaigns. However, the only reason that Claire Valdez’s race (which she won in a landslide) was at all contested was the Working Families Party leadership’s scandalous decision to run Antonio Reynoso against her, against the will of their own membership in Brooklyn and Queens and in spite of DSA member Alexa Avilés’ withdrawal from the NY-10 race in favor of WFP-aligned former DSA member Brad Lander. Running Chi against Jeffries would’ve put enormous pressure on the WFP leaders and the nonprofit left as a whole to fight the Democratic establishment rather than the socialist left. By arguing against a Chi endorsement on the basis of his purported personal opportunism, MUG and others in the NYC-DSA opposition ultimately gave left cover to SMC. The decision not to run Chi was not understood as an act of anti-liquidationist principle but as the chapter pragmatically lining up behind the Mayor in pursuit of legislative aims.

As R&R has described elsewhere, this decision is itself emblematic of the populist-reformist approach and its associated pressures. In their approach to recognizing this inherent political problem, I feel the Geese comrades often move, without acknowledging it, in two directions at once. This is best reflected by their frequent unwillingness to articulate a coherent minimum standard for endorsement, as reflected by their support for Nythia Raman’s re-endorsement.

Populism is not a neutral territory. It is, rather, a natural and contradictory stage of mass political energy which emerges in advance of, and then simultaneously with, the emergence of more coherent socialist energy and more developed reactionary opposition. We must therefore engage productively, supportively with left populism but critically and skeptically. Populism is not intrinsically a boon to our growth and a neutral or positive force within which we can easily impose, or even fight for our ideas. It serves as a particular expression of mass popular energy in the absence of coherent organizations. We must selectively judge different manifestations of populism to weigh the relative risks and prospective benefits for the socialist movement.

There are distinctions that exist among populist candidates. On the one hand, there are candidates within DSA whose campaigns are populist in character, such as Zohran. On the other hand, there are left-populist candidates external to DSA, such as Bernie Sanders, Abdul El-Sayed, and to a considerable extent AOC. Candidates active within DSA tend to have substantial advantages as it relates to their messaging, ability to grow the organization, and willingness to shift their message under pressure from DSA members.

Geese seem to propose an orientation towards almost all left-leaning populist movements with an endorsement wherever possible, regardless of context. However, these movements are not only ones that can grow our movement and raise the political level of the masses, but ones that can pull our organization in a reformist direction—that is to say, in precisely the direction the Geese article warns of. To confront this, DSA’s engagement needs to be accompanied by a clear consciousness of these pressures by our leaders and deliberate political guardrails within our organization. The primary orientation to these campaigns within DSA is the opposite—a tendency towards uncritical liquidation which relentlessly opposes criticism of endorsed populists for fear of undermining short-term electoral gains.

The problem, of course, is that short-term gains which come at the cost of our long-term interests are not coherent gains at all. If a win comes by making political retreats which undermine our long-term ability to pursue socialism, have we won? Such would be the case if electing Zohran or campaigning for AOC leads to DSA dropping our opposition to the police. We have only achieved a real gain if we advance and do not fatally undermine our strategy and principles in the process.

It is important not to caricature those who wish to prioritize populist wins, even if those wins mean dropping core parts of our message. Why the appeal of populist retreats? The idea that we can achieve real power through rhetorical maneuvers is incredibly exciting. To borrow a metaphor from antiquity and the current box office, left populism is like a siren song. Like the siren, these wins are entrancing to behold, and like the sirens, their allure is something which must be engaged with and passed through, not merely avoided. But while DSA can move forward by supporting populist candidates, be they internal or external in character, we must not follow them into dropping our ideas, and we must not have illusions that there is limited or easily avoided pressure to do so. If we follow the logic of rhetoric around “Woke 1”—that is to say, if we are seduced by the siren song of short-term populist victories which can be achieved by throwing off our political values—we won’t actually end up in power. We will end up, as populist leaders and their movements often do, caught in between with our principles left behind and power still far off.

We need, therefore, to have some carefully chosen red lines: candidates must support BDS, they must call themselves socialists, and they must be DSA members, for example. These are not guarantees of perfect politics. Rather, they are attempts to guarantee against abysmally bad ones. We should also seek to find the balance between populism’s offers to grow our movement, and it’s dangerous to us. This is why, for example, I hold the rather complicated (But I believe, quietly majoritarian amongst DSA members) position that AOC did not deserve a congressional endorsement, as it would have done little to build the movement or DSA, but probably will deserve a critical presidential endorsement, as the potential compromises and challenges to our values in that case are worth attempting to navigate because of the enormous advantages to broader political conciseness (not to mention DSA membership) such a campaign would offer.

Alongside this nuanced focus, DSA must, however awkward and frustrating it sometimes is, be willing to distinguish our ideas from our own endorsed electeds. It is only by consistently articulating strong principles over the long term, through a program like Workers Deserve More (or, ideally, a stronger one), while tactically and critically campaigning for populist candidates, that we can simultaneously grow the wider movement while articulating our own principles clearly. If one does not recognize the inherent dangers of populism, and calls for the illusory potential of the principled populist, they can end up like the Geese article: articulating genuinely admirable aims, but without the caution towards populism necessary to achieve them, or the skepticism towards populist leaders necessary to recognize they themselves will not pursue such aims.