In Thursday’s debate, the true condition of President Biden’s mental state was revealed to the public in the most embarrassing fashion imaginable. To die-hard establishment Democrats, the ramifications are confusing. Should the Democrats still nominate Biden, with his advantage as the incumbent and most recognizable face of the party? Or, should they swap in someone else at the last minute, preventing Biden’s personal issues from disrupting this vital election?
To all US socialists, the debate should have made our next course of action crystal clear: break with the Democrats immediately.
For years now the more radical wings of the DSA have seen the need for a break with the Democratic party, forging a real workers’ party in the US for the first time in history out of the ashes of mass disillusionment with the Clintonian establishment. However, no progress has been made on this front, in no small part due to a hesitancy to take responsibility for the collapse of the US’s only viable “left” party. This hesitancy is expressed in the “dirty break” formulation, which projects the inevitable conflict with the Democratic establishment onto the horizon, taking place only when the Democratic party is sufficiently weak and the DSA is sufficiently strong. The televised Presidential debate the other night ought to have made this internal debate among socialists irrelevant. The Democrats are weak, and the DSA shows no sign of getting much stronger. We are over the horizon, the time for a break is now.
Potential voters across the country were just horrified with a shocking display of Biden’s incoherence, totally unable to contend with the debating skills of national oaf Donald J. Trump. Biden is now leading by just 7 points in New York alone, down by 23.1 News sources are abuzz with anonymous Democratic staffers completely panicking.2 Even the New York Times editorial board, a bastion of reactionary Democratic politics, swiftly issued a column opining that Biden should step down in favor of a different nominee.3 In other words, it increasingly looks like Biden will fail to be re-elected, meaning the Democrats are failing to deliver on their last substantial promise to progressives: support us, and we will sit on offices that would otherwise be occupied by fascists.
In other words, the Democratic party will not prevent Republicans from taking power this November, whether or not the vote is “split” by progressives who dare to vote for something besides genocide and climate denial. Frankly, this has always mattered little, the left is always blamed regardless of whether or not we try to pose any alternative. This time, however, after seeing the total failure of Biden on the debate stage, this complaint will ring especially hollow in the ears of the American public. The Democratic party has been unmasked as its own worst enemy.
Even if they were to swap in another candidate now, the damage has already been done. The biggest complaint about Biden was always that he looked weak, bundling him off and replacing him with someone else makes the party as a whole look even weaker. Sure, the performance may be slightly improved with Kamala Harris as the Presidential nominee, but even if she does barely scrape across the finish line, the sheer incompetence and humiliation of this moment will be an enduring sore spot for the Democratic party. People will ask why they waited so long to make such an obvious call, and there will be no satisfying answer.
Enter the DSA. While Democrats argue amongst themselves over the Biden problem, we should come out and give people what they want: a progressive candidate, a candidate who is not Biden. DSA would not even need to produce its own candidate so late in the game, merely support a different one. Cornel West comes to mind immediately, but the specifics matter little in this instance. This election would likely go to the Republicans, but that seems to be the obvious outcome already. Frankly, if socialists wanted to win this election, we should have broken with the Democrats much earlier, getting the inevitable conflict out of the way beforehand. The reality is that the DNC was allowed to continue its domination of the electoral left, entrusting the future of the fight against fascism to a pack of saboteurs.
However, it is not too late. The fight can start now, with an independent or third party candidate for President, but with sufficient energy it could be concluded in 2028. After rejecting Biden and whoever the DNC might dredge up to replace him, the DSA must extend this policy into smaller races, starting with safely blue strongholds, local races in urban centers. Alliances must be pursued with other organizations, from the Green Party to the Party for Socialism and Liberation, coordinating attempts to replace Democratic electeds with progressives free of allegiances to the oligarchy. The Democratic party is held together by fear alone, and once the fear is lost, once DSA show that the Republicans can be beaten without them, it will collapse. The work of attaining critical mass will be difficult, but once that has been achieved, supporters and activists will flock to the new progressive banner.
If we refuse to break now, this will be looked back upon not only as a missed opportunity, but the start of an avoidable catastrophe. Worst case scenario, the Democratic party will actually learn a lesson from the Biden debacle and curb their fatal arrogance. In 2028 they may very well select a candidate who is actually palatable to the US public, maybe even the youth, but who is in no way capable of fighting back against the growing barbarism of the ruling classes. By then, the brand recognition of the DSA will have diminished severely. There is only so long a political organization can exist if its main form of activism is support for politicians whose policies it rhetorically opposes. That insoluble contradiction is weakening DSA, not strengthening it; the dirty break perspective cannot depend on a more advantageous time in the future.
Looking back on it now, the ideal years for this break were probably between 2016 and 2020. If DSA had timed it right, it could have transformed itself into a viable socialist party within those years. That did not happen, because even those who despised the Democratic party bowed to fear masquerading as pragmatism. Now the climate is closer to destruction, Palestine is suffering a genocide, cop cities are being built throughout the country, and the DSA is certainly no better off than it was when Biden was first elected. Today we have a second chance. For those who genuinely have hopes for reforming the Democratic party, this article will be meaningless. For those who see that someday we will have to leave this oligarchic party behind, I hope we can recognize that today, now more than ever, we have nothing to lose but our chains. We have a world to win.
-Noah Emke
