DSA and The Challenge of the Elections

 
Paul Garver
The Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) helped organize the pro-Palestinian encampments on several university campuses.  DSA elected officials in several cities across the country continue to advocate pro-BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) resolutions on Palestine.
The final push to pressure Biden to drop out of the Presidential race did not come from the Party’s Left, but from major Democratic donors, and from Centrist Democrats terrified that their own reelection campaigns in ‘purple’ districts were endangered with Biden at the head of the ticket.  Sanders and AOC, along with most of the Squad, have been focused on trying to persuade any Democratic candidate (now officially to be Kamala Harris) to campaign on a more forthrightly pro working-class and progressive platform, including cutting off unconditional military aid to Israel.
Not surprisingly, DSA elected officials at the national level have been targeted for defeat by pro-Israel lobbyists. Crippled by drastic redistricting to remove most of his African-American constituency, Jamaal Bowman lost his seat in a congressional district outside New York City to an opponent heavily funded by the American-Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC).  Bowman has also been the target of negative campaigning from ultra-left sectarians within national DSA, who regarded him as insufficiently pro-Palestinian, though New York City DSA did endorse and canvass for him. 
On August 6, another incumbent Squad DSA member, Cori Bush, a working class African-American nurse and Black Lives Matter activist, narrowly lost in a Democratic primary in St. Louis to an opponent heavily funded by more than $8 million by the United Democracy Project, associated with AIPAC.  Despite strong fundraising from the Justice Democrats, phone banking by the national Working Families Party, and the united canvassing and phone banking organized by local and national DSA, she could not overcome massive negative campaigning against her that never mentioned her strong support for Palestinian rights, the real reason for AIPAC recruiting and supporting her opponent.
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However, DSA played an important role in helping to organize the campaign to persuade Kamala Harris to select Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her vice-presidential running mate.  Young activists from DSA launched a negative social media campaign of their own against the selection of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, primarily because of his denunciation of the pro-Palestinian campus encampments and positions favoring private charter schools.   Shapiro had been supported by much of the Democratic Party establishment and mass media, and had been considered the front-runner because it was thought that his candidacy would help the Democrats win the battleground state of Pennsylvania.  But Tim Walz already seems to be an excellent unifying choice for the Democratic Party.  He has been an effective governor, winning major gains for working class people in Minnesota despite a very slender legislative majority.  Walz also “speaks American,” in a way that should be accessible to alienated white male dudes, particularly in rural areas of the Midwest, who are not necessarily prone to vote for women of color.
The first reactions from the young DSA media activists to Harris’s choice of Walz as a running mate were quite positive. [(https://x.com/NoGenocideJosh/status/1820928441539088520?t=B3tpDPYWj8imL7O_88_5cA&s=03]. For those whose major issue is Israel/Palestine, they will of continue to demand a clear and effective break by the Biden/Harris administration from the genocidal and aggressive policies of Netanyahu.  This will be the major focus of the inside and outside protests at the upcoming Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The 30 Uncommitted delegates have already decided to vote “Present,” all that is allowed by the DNC rules, but each of them separately chose to nominate a child, woman or man who were killed by the Israeli offensive in Gaza.  https://t.co/b7ckx3BcTS
DSA will support the large Palestinian diaspora communities in the USA in what are hoped to be large non-violent demonstrations in Chicago outside the Convention.