Latest / Gimme a Break! / Post-Midterms: Why so many “socialists” libbed out and What to do now?

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Post-Midterms: Why so many “socialists” libbed out and What to do now? · Gimme a Break!

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not a Democrat.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: I've never voted in my life for the Democratic Party, and I never voted the Democratic Party.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's racist and it's capitalist to the core.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is understood.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I shed my blood.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: I shed my blood for the vote now.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: I want to make that clear.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Some people get confused.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: The vote for me has never been the road to uh liberation.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's only the means of organizing my people.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: I know that I've seen I was a young man in Harlem when they uh disbired uh Adam Clayton Powell.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Harlem had no representation.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: We continued to eat and sleep and take drugs and continue life just like always when Julian Biden was elected.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: When we were young and snake in Atlanta, Georgia, and they refused to see them because it's against the war in Vietnam.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: The Africans in that area, his congressional district, continued life just in we've not been having any uh mayors, and we've been having life, and even with the mayors now, the quality of life is starting to know the voters never.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: You vote for once in four years, and that's your political responsibility.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's the height of bourgeois propaganda, making the people politically irresponsible.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Thinking their irresponsibility is limited to a one-day vote.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Politics is every day of the every minute.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be aware of what's going on.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Not voting on one day.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: So the vote has never meant anything.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not a Democrat.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to another episode of Gimme a Break, the official podcast of the Just Breaker A Caucus in the DSA.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Lee Tall, here with my co-host Edward.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, and the audio you heard at the beginning was of Kwame Turay.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: And he's describing the bitter experience of the 1964 National Democratic Party Convention, when the Johnson Humphrey machine crushed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party's attempt to unseat the all-white Jim Crow Mississippi delegation.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Learning from that experience, Touray, then Stokely Carmichael, and other militants of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC, advocated a break with the Democratic Party.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: And recently, Black Red Guard, DSA's resident Maoist, posted that clip in late October, and he incredulously tweeted with it every fucking word.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, people pointed out that he, Black Red Guard, has supported Democrats, including Corey Bush most recently in her primary that she lost.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, he's against a clean break with the Democratic Party.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: So this is really a good example of DSA left's posturing.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: But that quote from Torrey is a useful reminder as the Democrats just did a historic sweep of Congress and Senate that their win is not our win.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's not actually a win for working people, for black people, for immigrants, for trans people, and it's definitely not a win for socialists.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: So this episode is about the midterm elections and what their significance was.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: We all know by now that Trump very deservedly got his ass handed to him, and that Democrats won, including in places like Texas, which hasn't had a Democratic Party governor in over 30 years.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it also has the first Mexican-American governor ever in Texas.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: And DSA was also ecstatic about the Blue Wave writ large, but of course for their wave of capitalist quote socialist electeds.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: They added six congressmen and two mayors.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: So let's start with the big picture of what is really happening here.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then we'll talk about how the DSA electeds fit into this picture and the actual independent socialists that ran.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: Mainly, this was a protest vote against Trump, which Vice President Vance stated himself.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: Lots of Republicans came out to vote.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: In the midterms, they just voted for the Democrats against Trump.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's pretty accurate, actually, what Trump and Vance had been saying in terms of what it is that caused the blue tsunami.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: In his tweet, his post-election tweet, Vance was saying Republican voters had turned out and they had been telling them that they were voting for the Democrats because the Republicans didn't in the war, that they weren't focused on the cost of living or inflation.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: They were saying we need to put America first and change our relationship with Israel.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: Which sounds a lot like what the Democrats actually ended up running on in some form or another.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: A comrade on Twitter had described it as the Democrats ran on Trump 2024, a warmed over version of Trump's campaign promises, basically ending the forever wars, ending inflation, and not doing anything around the so-called woke cultural issues.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: You can see this in the big democratic campaigns that actually won across the country.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: So like Texas, right?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_02: Hino Hossa, she was literally just running on economic populism.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not a progressive.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: We're not talking about culture wars.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: We're past that, which of course is a big contrast to the New York City DSA representatives.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: But at the same time, you have Mam Dani came out the day after the election, and he was quoting Ronald Reagan, it's morning in America again, right?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: Which is pretty awful on every level here.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: And within the DSA itself, this is being pushed, the Democrats winning in the midterms being pushed as an example of the Mam Dani model winning, right?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: He is just talking about affordability and that this is the way forward, this is the way to rebuild the Democratic Party, which all of the DSA electors are very clear.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: This is what they are doing, right?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's not socialism, it's we are in this civil war within the Democratic Party and we are trying to take it over.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: The Democrats, whether it's the Mamdani wing or Hakeem Jeffries and the leadership, are already talking about, oh, we're not out for revenge, we're out to make America great again in the very own way.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: Mamdani has been doing this bromance with Trump for months now, and it seems like the rest of the Democrats are getting ready to fall in line and give Trump whatever he wants.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: Another example, I think, of like that this is not some kind of gigantic wave shift to the left, which a lot of people would argue, Keisha Lance Bottoms, who's elected as governor.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: This is one of the people who was pushing Cop City.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: We should all remember Tortuguita, who was gunned down in a hail of 57 bullets by Georgia State troopers during an attack on a stop Cop City protest encampment way back in January 2023, when I will remind everyone the Democrats were in charge at that time under Joe Biden.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: This is not a shift to the left.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: I think if anything, this is a confirmation of a political shift rightward in every sense of the word.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: The Dems ran on Trump's old slogans.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: The DSA right is seeing itself as vindicated by this victory of the Democratic Party politicians.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: The DSA left is basically just repeating the same kind of talking points, like, oh, this is a big win for us, this is a big win for socialism, blah, blah, blah.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: I think another big example of this that kind of shows this is all these anti-trans ballot measures passed the same day that you had this big blue tsunami.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: We used to hear the argument that the Democrats are the only thing that are going to save abortion rights.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: That's not happening.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: Who's talking about abortion anymore?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly, right?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody's talking about that.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: The DSA is talking about, oh, the DSA is going to stand up for trans rights.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't seem to be the case given that all these anti-trans ballot measures happened at the same time.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: Jacobin had an article the other day, and it was like, this is the end of the Donald Trump era.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's actually the beginning, right?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone is a Trumpist.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's just that you can have Trumpism without Trump is the lesson of the 2026 midterm elections.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think really who embodies that is Tal Rico, because literally after he won, was like, I want to work with Trump to get the best of the MAGA agenda implemented.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: You really see that with all of these Democrats that won governorships.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: They're not progressive Democrats.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: They do not talk about anything, quote, progressive.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's all about let's just focus on.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: Honestly, it's true.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Mamdani's economic delialism.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: Let's just focus on that and bread and butter and not talk about all these other things.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Now, of course, the truth is they're not gonna deliver on any of it, including the bread and butter.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Abdul al-Sayed won in Michigan.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: Nitya Rahman won for the LA mayor.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: These candidates literally say they're capitalist for one.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: So there's nothing socialist here.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: And people telling you that it's socialism are just lying.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: They're setting up the masses for the coming slaughter.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: There's already austerity.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: There's going to be more austerity.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: These are going to be the inspiring, smiling faces that will be doing it.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: I saw a tweet that had pictures of all the diverse new electeds.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it said, our imperialism is intersectional.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought that kind of captured it.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: AOC got re-elected, and she's a DSA Dem elected.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Her and Mam Dani are supporting APAC Jeffreys.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: So what's the point of quote socialists winning if it's going to lead to the same establishment status quo and lies?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's the same with New York State, where Mam Dani totally salivates over Kathy Hokel, who's just a total strike-breaking Zionist ghoul.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: He made a deal with her, and again, in the guise of this deliberism.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so to carry through with that, he promotes her as a fighter for workers and for working class people.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: Workers in New York City know that's a total lie.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's a total roost.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: And there's actually a lot of big labor struggles coming up.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: AFSME 37, I think, thousands of city workers are in contract talks.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: New York City transit workers do not have a contract.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's Hokel who is going to turn the screws on them.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: The head of the International Transit Work Union, um, John Samuelson, recently put out a statement that was very hard against Hokel and the role that she plays in smashing workers' struggles in New York City.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a sad statement because this guy is not a progressive labor bureaucrat at all.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: But his stuff is to the left of what the DSA is saying about Kathy Hokel.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so Mamdanny was at Hokel's victory party the night of the elections.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: He's standing there behind him.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: It says Dems like a hundred times.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: And he's just like straight up like, this is about making the Dems for us.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: He said, quote, those who committed themselves to changing our party and changing who we put first, we have begun the work of transforming our party and making it belong to working people once it gets.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: He ain't talking about the DSA, he's talking about the Democrats.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's just very clear that this whole supporting, quote, socialists like Mamdani as a way to build socialism is just a complete hoax.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Nithya Rahman won in LA for mayor.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: That it was such a close election is really a statement because Karen Bass was just such a hated, discredited mayor, that it was even so close.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: It just really shows, I think, that a lot of people felt like there wasn't really much of an option.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: But again, I think it was also a protest vote against Bass.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: We talked about in our last episode about how the MPC, the leading body of DSA, was deliberating over whether to unendorse Nithia, have the LA chapter unendorse Nithia, and also to expel Nithia because she's a Zionist and a capitalist.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think like a day before the election, they voted not to unendorse.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: And reform and revolution, uh, Sarah Milner, she's on the MPC.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: She was the decisive vote against unendorsing.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: So this was really some traitorous cowardice right here.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: The MPC's decision really just turned RS-22 into just smithereens, means nothing.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Being a Zionist was supposed to mean that you couldn't be in the DSA.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: It was supposed to mean DSA wouldn't endorse you.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: Honestly, being a capitalist should be a condition also for expulsion and not being endorsed.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: But of course, then having that condition really honestly would mean a break with the Democrats, because the Democrats are a capitalist party.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of these contradictions are coming to the fore after this blue tsunami.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: All the right DSA right is talking about is why AOC is going to be our candidate, why she has a real fighting chance to have a socialist candidate for the Democrats for 2028.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: So, like right after groundwork, the right caucus and DSA put out run AOC run, 2028 is calling.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: Pretty much every word of their post was just false.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: They said last night a working class tsunami swept across America, sending a message loud enough to shake Wall Street.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: We are done with fascism, oligarchy, and billionaire rule.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: What?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then they said, but this wasn't just a rejection of Trump.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: It was a demand for something better.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: America is hungry for change.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: Not another establishment politician with recycled promises, but a champion who will unapologetically fight for working people and take on billionaire class.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: That champion is Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so that is just totally false, obviously.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Also, talk about recycled promises.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: That is literally what AOC has and Bernie and all of them have to offer right now.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: They did not fulfill any of them.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so it is true.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: We do, we do need something better.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I think American working people do are hungry for change and do want something better, but that's not coming from a sellout like AOC.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: What this is going to be is even more obvious after the midterms that an AOC campaign is just going to be a halfway house to endorsing like Gavin Newsome or whoever the Democratic establishment puts up as its candidate, because they are the people who just got the huge majority in Congress.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: If how they ran in 2026 is any indication, whoever they run in 2028 is not going to be AOC the way things are going.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: Last episode we highlighted the various independent socialist campaigns, which did pretty well considering the blue tsunami and the really, really deep uh political pressure.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: Vote for the Democrats is a protest vote against Trump.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_02: I think the best one that I saw was Greg Levy in Ohio, which if you've been following his campaign, not very surprising.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: He's a very effective campaigner.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: He got nearly 100,000 votes in Ohio, which was one of these close, close, close elections.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: One of the things about the Blue Wave is it seems to have kind of not been as much a title wave in the Midwest, but Greg Gallamy did pretty well.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: He got nearly as many votes as the PSL's presidential candidate got two years ago, just in one state.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: That's pretty impressive.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: If you go over some of the other PSL candidates who were running, uh Andre Eastend got 8.7% of the vote against Arch Zionist Democrat Richie Torres, over 10,000 votes, which is the most uh since 1940 for any independent socialist candidate for Congress from the Bronx.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_02: Fun fact the last person who uh got that many votes was Max Shachtman, who DSAers, of course, might know as one of the intellectual godfathers of DSA, um, but at that time was an independent opportunist after splitting with the Socialist Workers' Party.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um that was in the Bronx.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: That was in the Bronx.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: Joe Tashey in Massachusetts got like 50,000 votes running for Senate.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: Over to the Midwest.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: The results were respectable, I think, but no one's going to Congress, uh, of course.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Ed Hershey in Illinois didn't do as well as he did in 2024, but I think part of that was probably because there were more candidates on the ballot this time.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: He got almost 3.5% of the vote, um, which unfortunately in Illinois means you lose ballot access for the next election, so he'll have to try to get back on the ballot in 2028.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: Ben Davis from the Socialist Party of Indiana got almost 2.5%, which is pretty good for a statehouse race where it's a really low turnout election.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: Rosa Pepper Macias in Connecticut got almost 10% of the vote, which is really a good showing, once again, for a small statehouse race.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: The other candidate we were promoting was Aaron Rovellis for uh school board in California.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: He got 15% of the vote, which is pretty good as well.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: All things considered, given the amount of pressure coming down to vote for the Democrats, the independent socialist campaigns did fairly well.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: We're also going to talk about Brittany, of course, uh, but I'm gonna let Letal take that one on because that deserves its own special section.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Brittany Kubasek got almost 25%, um, which is honestly damn good for an independent socialist campaign.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: Rhode Island DSA put out a nice statement on election night, but they said that the campaign was their chapter's first effort to truly build a campaign from the ground up outside the two corporate parties, that they ran as socialists and didn't hide our politics behind a capital D.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: Brittany put forward bold demands:$30 minimum wage, statewide rent freeze, a public takeover of the energy grid, and health care free at the point of service.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: These demands won the support of hundreds of people in Brittany's small district.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Win or lose, our mission remains the same: build a working class movement that can actually win its most transformative demands and ultimately put workers themselves in charge of the government and the economy.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: I thought that was a pretty good statement, reiterating that the point of running socialists in these in elections isn't actually like, of course, we want them to win, but but it's really to get out the message that the working class needs its own party, it needs its own forces to fight in its interests, and it needs to be mobilized in the streets in its interests, not through electoralism.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: They put out a statement by Dan Crowell in the DSA magazine called Democratic Left a few days before the election, uh, called Socialism is on the ballot in Rhode Island.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's a pretty um interesting article.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: They say how, despite past efforts by progressives to take over the party in Rhode Island, Democrats remain thoroughly capitalist and unresponsive to the needs of the working class.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: The article talks about how, since Bernie's first campaign a decade ago, a lot of socialist and progressive candidates put forward demands for Medicare for All, Green New Deal.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: The article says we owe it to voters to be honest about what it will take to actually achieve these demands.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: It will require confronting the capitalist class and both the political parties that prop up capitalist rule.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: It will require a mass working class movement organized outside the halls of legislatures.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: Elections are useful if they help us build that movement.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: But as long as socialists are confined to a capitalist party, our progress will be cut short.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: They also end it, they make an appeal that DSA chapters should really take on independent races like Brittany's, and that while winning may be difficult at first, we will finally stand on our own two feet rather than rely on the brand of a capitalist party to borrow its voters.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: If we root our campaigns in class struggle, such as the battle against ICE, tenants' fights for lower rents, and the militant movements that DSA members are building within labor unions, we can make the party DSA aspires to a reality.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: You'll never read anything from any other like DSA chapter that reads like this.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: It really shows how Rhode Island DSA is exceptional in having their chapter broken from the Democrats.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: But since the election, there were just so many tweets just dumping on Rhode Island DSA.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: They're losers.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: Look at how many progressive Democrats won in Rhode Island.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody tweeted the DSA right should just take over Rhode Island DSA.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so, and I'm sure they're salivating about trying to do that because I keep seeing David Morales, he won for mayor of Providence as a Democrat.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: They keep saying, oh, he's another DSA mayor elect.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I think he might be a member of the DSA nationally, whatever, but Rhode Island DSA did not endorse him.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: He was not a DSA elected, actually, in that way.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: Rhode Island DSA should really hold the line here.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: If Rhode Island DSA goes the way of New York City DSA, that would be really such a crime.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: They really are like a beacon right now, you know, in the DSA.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: The very principled campaign that they ran is really a model.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it shouldn't die with this campaign.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: It should really be the beginning of trying to break the whole DSA from, as they say, this capitalist party.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: PSL, you mentioned they ran uh Greg Levy, they ran Joe Tashe, they ran Andre Easton.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: And these were campaigns that we supported.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it was really good that they ran against Democrats in all these places.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a real contradiction with PSL.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: For example, PSL LA, after Nithya won for the mayor, put on Instagram, Nithya Rahman was elected mayor of LA following an uptick in interest in socialism that's taking place across the country.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: This exciting development proves the working class are hungry for real change, but this change can only come from an independent mass movement outside.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: The two-party system.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: They want to have it both ways, basically.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: They want to say, oh, it's so exciting that this capitalist, Nithya Rahman, won and this shows interest in socialism, but we really need a mass movement outside.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: A JBA supporter replied on Instagram that a self-proclaimed capitalist won the support of the DSA and then LA is not a step towards socialism.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: Instead, workers and oppressed come to see, quote, socialism as nothing but the status quo politics they hate.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: We need to differentiate.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: PSL has rightly run candidates against the Dems.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: That should be the starting point.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: None of this, quote, have it both ways, nonsense.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought that was pretty nice.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: Comment to the PSLLA's basically giddiness, libbing out whatever, about Nithya's win there.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: Left voice.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I don't know, people might remember about actually, yeah, exactly a year ago, they had an article.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's time for a decisive step toward a socialist working class party.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: DSA must break with the Democratic Party.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it's pretty clear since then that they have people in DSA, they do work in there.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: But that is not what their people do.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: They are not openly fighting for that break in their post-midterms article.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, they criticize the establishment Dems and whatever who got elected, but they don't say a basic truth that the DSA electeds are Democrats.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's disappointing.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: If their title of that article about the DSA breaking from the Dems, if they really believed that or were going to fight for that, then they would have called in LA to expel Nithya and to unendorse her, which to my knowledge, they didn't do that.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I think you have in the context of these elections, you can see a lot of groups that work in the DSA that are part of the Marxist left are not actually fighting inside the DSA for a clean break.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: That is actually on principle to do work in the DSA as part of a Marxist organization that basically doesn't differentiate you, and you're basically just helping the DSA build up the Democrats.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, in terms of people who are not actually fighting for any kind of break from the Democratic Party, we of course have to turn once again to the DSA left caucuses.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: Now they're talking about various things that you know the DSA elected should do, right?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: I saw the other day our illustrious national political committee members like Sarah Milner were talking about, oh, we're gonna force a vote to make sure Hakeem Jeffries is not speaker, which is a complete fantasy, of course, because uh AOC has already said she's gonna support him for speaker.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_02: Mamdani's for him for speaker.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: We can already throw that one out the window.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_02: We have other members of the NPC, it's not just RR, it's also Marxist Unity Group, where Sid, who's on the NPC, was saying that our work as DSA's national political committee has just become harder in some tangible ways.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_02: We now have to convince the working people of the United States that a Democratic majority will not do the things it hopes they will, and that only we can save ourselves.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: After spending 24 hours celebrating the victory of every single one of these people, every single one of these Democratic politicians, now they say, Oh, we've got to convince people that the Democrats are going to deliver and that only we can deliver on our promises.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think they should take a long, hard look in the mirror, try to convince themselves first and foremost that the Democrats are not going to do these things, right?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: Every action the NPC and the DSA as a whole has taken in the last period has been to run candidates to help rehabilitate the Democratic Party.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_02: Every one of the electeds is completely clear this is what they are trying to do, right?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_02: So how in the world, which is something we tweeted, are you going to convince working people that the Democrats are not going to solve their problems when every single one of the electeds who is in office in Congress now is a Democrat and thus will be following the tune of the Democratic leadership in Congress if they want to have any kind of career, right?
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: Which we know that's what they care about.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_02: I just saw this clip on Twitter, right?
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_02: They're asking about workers deserve more, and Mamdani's like, Yeah, do you want to get rid of the Supreme Court?
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_02: Do you want to get rid of jails?
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: Even Mamdani, the cadre candidate who they have elected as mayor of New York City, is not standing by the DSA program.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: Best part of that clip was when the interviewer said, after he said no to everything, basically said no to the Workers Deserve More program.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: Then the interviewer was like, So is the DSA gonna kick you out?
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, no.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, why you know the whole Raman stuff, the Mamdani constantly flouting everything around Tish or whatever people have organized around us, like, yeah, we know there's not gonna be any accountability for any of the electeds from this NPC.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_02: And Ramon's win is just another guarantee of that.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's it's pretty clear that we're in for some rough times ahead.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the only thing socialists should be organizing right now is workers and the oppressed to fight independently in their own interests.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: New York City DSA, citywide convention is coming up next weekend, and that's on the table, endorsement of AOC.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: Half of the delegates are basically World to Win, which is the left quote opposition in DSA, in New York City DSA.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: But the resolutions they've put forward really just embody the contradiction here.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: They put a forward a resolution, suffrage for all.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it just, it just lies to workers.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: It literally says, we're registering you as Democrats.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna tell you we're really independent.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: Workers aren't stupid.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: Again, look in the mirror.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: Do you actually believe this stuff?
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: But that's on the floor as well for the convention.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: We've seen young people in rebellion, other parts of the world.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: There's a solidarity with the protest movement in Spain against evictions and for housing in New York City tomorrow.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: There was the 87-year-old woman, Marie Carmen, in Spain, who they literally evicted her on a stretcher.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: She died after that.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: She was basically killed by this.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: And here in New York City, that's literally the same thing facing people in the projects who are in the Fulton Elliott Chelsea houses, whose homes are gonna be demolished, but it's a co-socialist doing it, right?
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's Mamdani.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: This is also gonna be a big struggle that's happening right now and at the convention.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so I would encourage people to check out our statements for the convention, which are on our just break already link tree.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: Our upcoming episodes, we're gonna try to feature some of those struggles happening at the convention.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna have our next United Front for a Clean Break national Zoom meeting where we're gonna be discussing the midterms.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: And importantly, what can we do to strengthen our clean break forces inside the DSA?
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's clearer than ever.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: If there's not a struggle for a clean break that the left is united behind, the left is just gonna be headed to further irrelevance.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's really bad for any prospect for socialism, and it's bad for the struggles of the working class and oppressed.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: So everyone listening should join us on November 21st.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's gonna be again on Zoom at noon Pacific time, 3 p.m.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: Eastern time.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: If you're wondering what do we do now, come to our meeting November 21st.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: All right, that concludes this episode of Gimme a Break.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you can follow all the work of the Just Break Already caucus by checking out our link tree.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's Linktree.com slash DSA underscore just break already.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: There you will find all of our statements, petitions, resolutions, and everything we've been everything else we've been up to lately.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you could subscribe and get those sent directly to you at our substack, which you can find in the link at the top of the link tree.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_02: You can also follow us on our social media.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_02: We are at Clean Break Now on X and at DSA underscore just break already on Instagram.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: I am very happy to announce we've just passed over a thousand followers on our Instagram.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you everyone who followed us and share us with the friends.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_02: Share the podcast with the friends, leave us a review or rating in wherever you get your podcast because it does help us out the algorithm.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I believe that's all we've got for today.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: All right, next time.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_02: Till next time.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: Bye.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: Bye.