Is the DSA a Threat to the Democratic Party (with Jake Altman)?

[00:00:11] Hello and welcome to Blue City Blues, a podcast about what's broken in blue cities and how to fix it. I'm David Hyde with Sandeep Kaushik and Sandeep listeners to this podcast will know that when it comes to how we feel about mayors and other local elected officials, we tend to be a lot more interested in results than ideology. So we were both, I think, impressed in some of the interviews that we've done about the work that more moderate mayors like Daniel Lurie in San Francisco is doing or Matt Mahan in San Jose.

[00:00:41] But we've also had nice things to say about progressive mayors like Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and even here in Seattle, Mayor Katie Wilson, who is a self-described socialist. But interestingly, Katie Wilson did not get the endorsement of the Democratic Socialists of America. You know, as I understand it at the time, basically, she didn't really reveal that much, but that she just wouldn't commit to some of the DSA's more orthodox views.

[00:01:07] So in stuff like removing illegal encampments, she said something like, well, that's stuff that we may have to do. As a matter of fact, now she's getting criticized by some of the left because she hasn't stopped the sweeps, even though she may be standing up more shelter than her predecessor. But the point here I'm making is that she wasn't able to get the endorsement of the DSA because she wasn't willing to sign up for every piece of the platform, it sounded like.

[00:01:33] Yeah, I'm not 100% sure she even sought out formally the DSA endorsement. She did. She did. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yes, she certainly didn't get it. I mean, Zoran Mamdani in New York ran, you know, under the DSA banner in some sense, but he also did repudiate much of, you know, significant chunks of their national platform very explicitly while he was running. Right.

[00:01:56] I mean, he said, I don't want to, you know, I'm not on board with like, you know, defunding the police and stuff like that, which, and, and, you know, Cuomo, his opponent tried to make an issue of the DSA's platform. And so he, he did distance himself from, from some of the more, you know, kind of what I would call radical chic elements of their, their ostensible political commitments. Right.

[00:02:22] So there's, I mean, what you're saying, David, is there's maybe a difference here between quote, democratic socialism, unquote, and the DSA itself as an organization of what it believes. I mean, it seems like there, there might be, and our guest today, Jake Altman has a lot to say about that. He's a former union official, former member of the DSA and the author of a book called Socialism Before Sanders, the 1930s moment from romance to revisionism.

[00:02:51] And also a piece in City Journal called I Watched the DSA Go Crazy, The Democrats May Be Next. Jake Altman, thanks so much for joining us. Oh, yeah. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Big fan of the show, I have to say. That's exciting. That's exciting in of itself. If anyone else is a big fan of the show, write us and we'll have you on as a guest. All three of you. Yeah, exactly. So, so you were a DSA member for years and think that the DSA kind of lost its way.

[00:03:21] But before we get to that, I just wanted to hear a little bit about your personal story, kind of like what drew you to the DSA in the first place? And what did you think it was all about back then? Yeah. Yeah. I was actually in a union, a graduate employee union at the University of Iowa. And, you know, so I was kind of involved in left-wing politics. We had some people from various groups who were involved in our union. One of our union organizers was a member of a group farther to the left than DSA.

[00:03:49] And it just seemed like a good fit for me at the time. You know, I actually liked it in the beginning. I moved to Boston. There were some older guys around. It was like a nice camaraderie. They were very chill and supportive. And so, you know, I thought that that part of it was just, it was lovely. They had great stories. You know, they knew Michael Harrington. They had been to conventions. And they were all kind of involved in left-wing politics. But it was pretty low key. That's one of the things that the younger generation didn't like.

[00:04:15] And yeah, that's really how I got involved through the union and into left-wing politics. What years are we talking about here? When was this? We're talking about like 2012, 2013. And then I remained a member after I moved to Michigan for several years. I think I left when the Ukraine statement came out that was like, you know, Putin apologism. And I had been troubled for quite some time about a number of things I'd seen.

[00:04:41] Like I represented the organization in a debate, I think in August 2015. And I had emailed one of the national leaders and said, hey, I don't think I'm a good person to represent the organization in the debate. I see the way things are going. They were already flirting with these ideas, even in 2015, 2016. Like Leninists were being platformed and welcomed in. And I, you know, and I was told in response, it's not a big deal. It's a few people clustered around Jacobin Magazine. It's, you know, I agree with you. Right. Huh.

[00:05:11] Flash forward 10 years. And I mean, they're not endorsing the socialist mayor of, right? Yeah. Because she's not left wing enough. Yeah. Because she's not left wing enough. And I would say the West Coast DSA, I think probably has a reputation of being less pragmatic than New York City DSA, for instance. Well, that's interesting. Interesting. So, so, so let's, before we get into all of this stuff around the evolution of DSA, kind

[00:05:39] of what happened and how the organization evolved, a little more on, on, on your evolution, right? You're, you're, you leave the DSA 2015-ish, wherever, wherever it was, right? And sort of post the, the Russian invasion of Crimea and, and the, as you say, Putin apologia, which I've seen a lot of that, you know, that, that basically the United States is responsible

[00:06:05] for all bad, you know, things that happen in the world because we are, you know, the agents of Western imperialism and therefore we should ally ourselves with all of these regimes that are fighting Western imperialism and apparently look beyond their own, you know, autocratic or authoritarian positions or, or, or beliefs. And I have seen that, that, that stuff on the left, which does seem to be increasingly prevalent, but, but talk a little bit more about how, about your breakers.

[00:06:35] From DSA and how you've involved, evolved now to be really a public critic of where DSA has ended up. Yeah. So I was a, you know, I studied history and I wrote the book about sort of a similar generation in the 1930s, forties and fifties. I kind of followed them through their own evolution. And I mean, it was very similar in some ways they were, you know, it was 19, the 1930s, they saw the world was on fire. They wanted to, you know, go have a revolution.

[00:07:04] A lot of them, one of the groups I studied just went and tried to start a commune, which would, I think would be a good place for DSA to put its energies, honestly. But, and so I just, I take a longer view of the history of the 20th century. And a lot of the socialists who lived that history became anti-communists for really good reasons. They fought communists in the union. They engaged with a lot of bad faith arguments that they were making. They saw that communists weren't necessarily representing their members in the unions, but

[00:07:32] were representing a party line dictated not by the membership, but by something else. Yes. Yes. And so I just, I come informed with that perspective and I just was very troubled even back in 2015 by some of the rhetoric and really this willingness to, and condescension towards the older generation as well, I have to say, who had a lot of life experience of their own. They were just kind of, I felt like they were just kind of brushed aside and minimalized

[00:08:02] by this new energy that was coming into the organization as a result of the Bernie Sanders campaign. But then also as a result of like, they were trying to build culture, like through Jackman magazine and other things, I think really brought a lot, a new cohort into DSA. And they had different ideas. I think ideas very disconnected with the old socialist party of America, with like people like Norman Thomas, Bayard Rustin, the people who came after them. And I guess probably I would have fit in better with that tradition than with DSA in the first place. But here we are.

[00:08:32] I wonder if you could say a little bit more about one piece of this. I was reading an interview where you talked about how in the 30s and the 40s, socialists largely abandoned ideas about the perfectibility of human beings, which seems like a pretty core belief for utopian movements and also for abolitionist movements in the United States. You know, we're going to perfect humans by getting rid of the police, by getting rid of prisons.

[00:08:59] If we reform these systems sufficiently, humans can become perfectible. It's kind of like a core, almost liberal Rousseauian idea too. But it's interesting to me that you track that history because I also studied history and I'm pretty familiar with Salvatore's book about Eugene Debs, but didn't know about this moment in the 30s and 40s where socialists started to kind of give up on that idea of perfectibility. So I wonder if you could just say a little bit more about like kind of what happened there. Yeah.

[00:09:28] So one of the examples I look at is a place called Highlander Folk School, which still exists in Tennessee. And originally it was envisioned as like a socialist commune. They got there and there were lots of problems. They were fighting with each other. How do we organize the work schedule? How do we get people to do what we want them to do? I think there was an incident where things were stolen. I mean, they had to deal with actually running something and with dealing with human people. And it was a similar story in the labor movement, right?

[00:09:56] If you work in a union, you can't keep these utopian views about the perfectibility of human beings in your brain for very long because it's just not how it works. You know, bad things happen and you got to fix them. It's messy. People cause problems. Sometimes it's just, I think this is the experience they had. They had life experience. They went to work in the labor movement. They tried to do a bunch of organizing and, you know, life. And also I think they saw that the New Deal and Roosevelt kind of softening the hard edges of capitalism.

[00:10:26] Like there's a quote I have in my book about a father who had been a socialist for a long time writing to his son who became a judge in Detroit later in life. And he said, capitalism is a mighty river. You know, we can channel it, but we can't damn it. That's not an exact quote, but that's essentially what he was saying. And so they came to this realization over a long period of time and like a life in the socialist movement. And I think it's really valuable. And unfortunately, I think the lessons of 20th century socialism and even the experiences of a lot of 20th century communists have just been forgotten.

[00:10:56] They're not really the right lessons have not been learned by this new generation. Well, clearly, Paul Pott was inspired by the idea that humans were perfectible through through some pretty radical changes, for example. But yeah, Sandeep. Well, yes, I mean, the great what I mean, I've often argued that one of the central if not the central lesson of the 20th century, right, is that, you know, these kind of utopian idealism, whether on the left and the right, you know, does not lead to some kind of collectivist

[00:11:26] nirvana, right? It ends up in either totalitarianism, you know, if you go the left wing route or fascism, if you go the right wing route and that liberal democracy and its institutions. As messy as they are, you know, and frustrating is, you know, there's no better, you know, there's no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, right, on these things.

[00:11:52] And I do think that's a lesson we've been rapidly forgetting as the 20th century becomes something in a history book as opposed to something that people have actually lived, right, and had that experience. And so, so yeah, so you say, and just to finish this thought about the, about kind of this turn within socialism in the 1930s, this sort of more pragmatic turn, turning away from the utopian idealism about human perfectibility.

[00:12:17] And, and they really become kind of, you say the left in the 30s really begins to come to term, you know, becomes a driving force really within the new deal movement. So, so explicate that a little bit, like how, and how does the left kind of channel that energy into creating the beginnings of the American, you know, social welfare state? Yeah, that's a really good, that's a big question.

[00:12:47] I'm just like thinking from like a practical terms and how it happened. I mean, obviously the Democrats embraced labor reforms and they got the labor movement on board, And a lot of socialists. The Wagner Act is 1935, right? Something like that. Yeah. So, and I mean, you get, and there's also situations where the Democratic governor in Michigan, like doesn't call the troops in on the strikers, right? So things like that, that really begin to, and, and during this time a lot, like the Ruther brothers are socialists, right?

[00:13:15] This is, these are the really like heavy hitters in the socialist party. And they're beginning to see, you know, that, that there's a future for them in the Democratic Party. And then they go in and of course there's like give and take back and forth in the Democratic Party. Like if you've ever listened to LBJ talk about union leaders on some of those tapes, but, you know, it was a, it was a very different Democratic Party that was, had a strong labor base was, you know, the labor movement was very instrumental in, you know, running the

[00:13:45] Democratic Party at the, at the grassroots level, right? This was the organizing base. And up until I think this last convention in Michigan, that was probably the case for years and years and years. And you just have to wonder then what are the implications of this? If we're really seeing the closing of this history now happen seemingly across the board, certainly in Michigan, I think. So, so yeah. So let me follow up. Okay. So let's move forward a little bit in history. The DSA itself forms in the early eighties, right?

[00:14:14] With, with Michael Harrington and it's the, it's the combination of two different socialist groups and strange. So Jake, tell us a little bit about that. What was, what was Michael Harrington up to? What's the DSA committing itself to in its early formulation in the 1980s? Yeah. So I think, um, you had DSOC, um, and the new American movement, the new American movement merge.

[00:14:40] Um, one was really sort of, uh, the left of the old socialist party of America, which had split off and then an organization that represented the new left. And so I think you had, you've always had both of those groups within DSA and there was probably always some tension there, but so it's very much a sort of a fusion or it was back in the, back in the day. And then Harrington's idea was that you had to be the left wing of the possible. Uh, that was, you know, that's like the famous phrase from him.

[00:15:10] Um, and when I was in DSA, you know, I, in the early days, I saw that, right? These, these guys were turning up to fundraise and, uh, hand out leaflets for progressive Democrats, right? It, that was what they were doing. And I, and if you look at Harrington's own career, like he had a relationship with Edward Kennedy, this is sort of how DSA was engaging, always trying to push the democratic party, but sort of recognizing the limits. And, and also I think there was a hostility towards those groups on the left that were

[00:15:39] sectarian extreme. Yeah. Harrington explicitly said no, no communists in the party, right? That I think is actually a little bit complicated. Um, so I talked to some of these guys, I used to talk to some of these guys more and more. And yes, there was a prohibition on democratic central and democratic centralism. You know, you were not supposed to be along to one of those organizations and then also be in DSA, be acting on the orders of some entryist, you know, Leninist Trotskyist group.

[00:16:06] Um, but I think there was a more, there was certainly a tolerance and a welcoming of people who had sort of been through the 20th century and had a variety of different views and it evolved over time. There was a tolerance for that. So just so the DSA heads out there don't come after me, I just want to add a little bit of nuance there. Sure. Um, yeah. Sure. There were plenty of people that were enamored with communism in the 1930s, right? As a, in the United States and Britain, right?

[00:16:33] We, we saw those movements and then, and then Stalin, I mean, at least some of them see the experience of the Soviet union and Stalinism and what it was and, and sort of broke from that. Others didn't. Right. I mean, the other person that I'm thinking about in this context is somebody who actually went to read college like Sandeep and I did Barbara Ehrenreich, who co-founded the DSA, I think around that same time and actually came to read at one point and talked to some

[00:17:00] of the lefty people on campus, including myself, uh, probably not Sandeep. No, I was not there. Uh, but, uh, author of Nickel and Dime is the book that she's best known for. And she was a feminist, you know, for sure is a big part of her work. So, you know, interested in identity politics, but Barbara Ehrenreich also was very skeptical of like the professional managerial class kind of turning its nose up at working class attitudes and behaviors.

[00:17:30] And so, you know, kind of married her views of socialism and feminism to that, like skepticism towards, uh, college educated elites, which seems like the big thing or one of the big things that the DSA seems to have lost in part, like starting around, you say 2010 or somewhere in that, in that decade. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what was happening in, where were you like Boston at that point?

[00:17:56] Um, what was going on there when some younger folks were getting involved and, and the Jack and the folks were getting involved when it came to, to, to sort of moving away from material questions to more questions about identity. If you're enjoying this podcast, can you please do us a favor? Spread the word, tell your friends, your family, your coworkers, anyone who's interested in the future of blue cities and better governance.

[00:18:23] Basically anyone who thinks that the conversation in blue cities is kind of stagnated and thinks we need to be hearing from more smart people, even people that we might disagree with about many things. And one more favor to ask, if you want this podcast to continue, can you take a minute right now to give us a five-star review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts? Because the way the algorithm works, it's the five-star reviews that give other folks a chance to discover the podcast.

[00:18:51] And finally, we want your feedback, positive, critical, whatever. Please send that to us directly. You can email us, bluecitypodcast at gmail.com. That's bluecitypodcast at gmail.com. And send along show ideas, guest ideas. Sandeep and I would really appreciate that as well. Okay, back to the show. That's a really good question.

[00:19:18] And I think it's even, it's pretty complicated because I think a lot of the people, the older people in DSA were also professional managerial class. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Including Barbara Aaron. Yeah, they just had a lot more life experience, I think. My recollection is that it was almost like parallel structures. The older DSA guys and me were kind of doing our thing. And then the Jacobin guys were kind of doing their thing. And occasionally we would cross or meet or they would come to a meeting when there was something we could work on together, like around the Bernie campaign.

[00:19:47] But it seemed to me like they had almost written off the old DSA, I would say. And maybe not entirely because there were, I know there were some good relationships like between older national leaders and some of the younger group who are still around DSA. But it did feel like they sort of viewed the older DSA as people who hadn't accomplished very much in terms of movement building. And that's what they were, you know, they were young, fresh on the street, ready to build something, ready to make change, ready to meet the moment.

[00:20:16] And Sanders presented the moment for them in a way that, you know, there hadn't been an opening like that in a very, very long time. How does the, so elaborate on that a bit. How does the Sanders campaign now change the trajectory of DSA? Obviously it's a, it's a, you know, it's a call in some sense that Bernie Sanders makes in the 2015, 2016 campaign for quote unquote revolution, right? And he gets pretty far, right?

[00:20:43] In a, in a democratic primary nominating contest and obviously energizes a lot of stuff. I can tell you here in Seattle that the local democratic party legislative district structures, you know, after that campaign, the Bernie people run insurgency, take over what were, you know, pretty reflective grassroots organizations of sort of, sort of the, the, the general populace

[00:21:08] of Seattle and they become much more ideological and move left right at, in the wake of that. So, so that's been my experience of it within the democratic party here in Seattle, but talk a little bit about more broadly nationally, how the, how the Bernie campaign in 2016 changes DSA. I think it gives it a clear mission and that, you know, that this is actually doable and possible in a way that, you know, there's not really a precursor in living in the memory of young DSA.

[00:21:37] Like before Bernie, this is, this is the show we can do it. We got very, very close. If we keep working at this, we're going to be able to do it. There's a lot of very talented people who are ideologically committed and ready to organize. And I think that's really the key to their success. And, you know, I can say then moving to Michigan in about 2016, uh, I was a little bit involved here, um, in my labor work, knew some of the younger DSA guys, they were not having a lot of luck, but they were doing things.

[00:22:04] They were endorsing candidates and they were running candidates and losing. But if you keep doing that, you're going to get better every time. Right. Um, and I think that part, partially that's what happened. They were getting organized. They were actually trying. Uh, I also witnessed like the democratic party here, which is it's old and there's, you know, not a ton of energy in the democratic establishment.

[00:22:29] It's like, you know, it's some staff members and some, some volunteers, but there's not much there. So it doesn't take much organizing to come in and do something really big. And, you know, I, I worked with a firm that both of the people who were running it were DSA members. They did one of the campaign ads for AOC, one of the early ones, one of the big ones. And they helped us with an anti-privatization ad at AAUP. It was really, they did a great job. Privatization at the university was a terrible light.

[00:23:00] Privatization of parking, uh, at a university that serves working class students was a terrible idea. And they did a great job with the ad. We lost the campaign. Uh, but then now the university has just bought parking back from the, uh, from the private company cause it was such a disaster. So, uh, but so they're out there doing things and they're building infrastructure. And I think now we're seeing the, the fruits of that. Yeah. So they're super successful. DSA is like, I don't know, 10 times as big as it must've been.

[00:23:28] It's got over a hundred thousand members now, I think. Yeah. And when I joined my goodness, there were maybe 6,000 members or something. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, hugely successful kind of organizing, but at the same time, uh, things are kind of starting to go off the rails and, and how does that, how is that happening as a parallel issue? Yeah. So I think anytime you're having success on the left, there are going to be groups that

[00:23:56] look at that and say, we will, we want a piece of that success. And I think part of that is what has happened. And so you had all these left, you have all these left-wing groups that pre-existed, you kind of have more springing up. And I know for instance, the ISO, um, the international socialist organization, I think is what the acronym stands for. They are now defunct. And I think a lot of their members have gone into DSA. That was something that I was concerned about in, you know, 2015 when I did this debate with them. Um, so I think that happens.

[00:24:25] You, you're just beginning to get more of these really committed people who come from a different tradition, an explicitly Leninist tradition inside DSA. Then you have this proliferation of caucuses. You know, I don't know how many there are exactly now. There are some DSA members who've done really good maps of like how, how the caucuses fit into the political spectrum. So you don't have to take my word for it. You can find these. Um, but they, they map it all out, you know, all the way from Maoist to, to democratic socialists

[00:24:55] to old Harrington to, you know, the old Harringtonite remnant, um, is sort of how it would probably be described. And so I think that's really, you begin to get this like intense internal warfare happening even in 2017. I think that's when I was first really starting to have some major concerns. There was a guy who was an organizer for a police union at one point in his career, and he had got elected to the DSA national, um, that they call it the NPC, but it's basically their governing board.

[00:25:22] And he was run off, essentially run off the governing board because people had found out that he had had this past experience working for a police union, the lifelong labor organizer had, you know, for years and years and years with a whole host of different unions, but they went after him over this and they pushed him out of the board. And I think you all, part of that is that there's a shift in tactics taking place in the organization before there had been generally a lot of tolerance. As I said, like one of the local leaders had encouraged me to stick to my guns.

[00:25:51] I think was his quote when I was talking to the national leadership. Um, you begin to see, I think groups that are operating with much less tolerance, perhaps with an agenda to get control of the board. But so I think, and then there was a lot of board turnover, um, from that time to present. And I think there's still a lot of toxicity and dysfunction on the board. Sometimes board members will talk about it on X. And so I think a lot of this comes from these organizations that are very well organized internally, acting in unison to try to get their way politically.

[00:26:19] And we just saw that with the big AOC blow up, uh, over whether DSA was going to do an early endorsement for the presidential election. A lot of people were pushing that they stick to what had been apparently decided at the last convention, that they do a poll of all the members that would have likely delivered AOC as the overwhelming favorite. And so the far left caucuses blocked that. And they said, instead, we're going to decide if the next convention, the convention before the presidential election, I think in 2027.

[00:26:48] And of course, these very well organized groups have much more power at convention because they are very well organized. They have very committed members. They, you know, they will send the party line out. People will vote according to the party line. And so they might be able to run the table at convention. Whereas if there was a poll of all the members, they would be in a situation where even if they disagreed, it would look really bad if they said, no, we're not going to endorse AOC. Um, or we're going to use this as leverage to get AOC to agree to our whole, uh, our whole

[00:27:18] platform. Right. Which sounds like what they were doing with the, uh, with Katie Wilson. Right. Yeah. I think, I think that kind of explains the current politics and the current situation that we're seeing in DSA, I think as they get more power, it's going to get more dysfunctional, which is kind of the silver lining of all this. The, the infighting is going to continue to spill out into the public. Yeah. I saw this, I saw this story in the New York times, but like who do, it's funny for folks

[00:27:44] outside the DSA to think like, oh, AOC is not like socialist enough. She's not left enough, but who do they want? And why did, why is there this, uh, uh, you know, um, dissatisfaction with AOC? My personal opinion is that she is too independent minded and she has been willing to go against them and they want somebody who will tow the party line and do what they say. Somebody who's owes, owes their political career to DSA.

[00:28:14] Um, so, you know, I've heard all kinds of names floated around. Um, they were talking about Graham Plattner in Maine is a potential 2028 presidential, this is, yeah. And then now they're talking about Abdul El-Sayed, uh, is a potential 2028, um, democratic candidate. I think there's a group that would like to see the congresswoman from Michigan, Rashida Tlaib be, uh, there. Um, there. So someone who has no chance of winning essentially, we're, we want to make sure a hundred percent sure there's no chance. Yeah.

[00:28:43] So like they have this moment where they do have a candidate who has a national reputation and would be competitive. And what are they going to do? They're going to do everything they can to undermine her chances of success. Wow. Yeah. And, and, and I do think, you know, even obviously their greatest success story is Zoran Mamdani, right? In New York city getting elected. And, uh, you know, he is an incredibly, I think, charismatic and talented politician

[00:29:10] and, and, and a smart politician in a lot of ways. And I think his first six months in office, he's demonstrated some, some savvy, right? And some flexibility in how he's actually governing the city. He's not some kind of rigid ideologue governing and some, you know, Trotsky sort of, uh, you know, extreme DSAs kind of way. And there's been tensions about within the DSA about that too, right?

[00:29:36] The New York city DSA about how, you know, Zoran is not delivering exactly what at least some of the folks in DSA expect from him. Yeah. And I mean, he did roll back. There was this police headcount thing. They were going to raise the police headcount and then he received pressure from DSA and he did roll back on, on that. He received pressure from one of the more pragmatic caucuses though, in that instance.

[00:30:02] And I think a lot of the no anti, um, Zoran noise that we had been hearing was coming from the left of DSA, which does have a presence in New York city, of course. But I think in general, it's the more, the two more pragmatic caucuses that, uh, control DSA. And there's been questions now as a result of the AOC thing, what there's been some kind of veiled threats of a split. Right. And I think this, this is something that absolutely could happen. I think they've learned the wrong lessons from the 20th century though. One lesson they learned is don't split.

[00:30:33] And I think that that necessarily isn't going to do them a lot of good given some of the people who are now inside the organization and controlling the national governing board. You know, one of the issues that we've talked about, you know, on this podcast and everywhere else since 2020 is abolition. We mentioned it earlier. And it's one of the things that the DSA is still basically calling for, right? In its platform. I wanted to ask a little bit about how that works exactly when it comes to candidates and

[00:31:00] do they have to sign up to that to get the nomination essentially, but just, you know, for folks who don't realize like there's a really small percentage of the population at this point that supports the concept of abolition, even if it had a moment a few years ago. And like, like almost no working class people, we're talking young college educated, you know, folks who live in Seattle basically, or, you know, Brooklyn and stuff.

[00:31:28] That's where the support for abolition is for the most part. So it's just a, it's just a dumb idea to have in your platform. If you want to have any success of building a working class movement, that's based on improving the material conditions of working class people. And yet there it is, you know, and so just, but how does it work? Like, does, if I don't sign on to that, like, I'm not going to get the endorsement. How does that, how does that work with DSA? So I think it really would probably depend on who's in control at the local level and

[00:31:57] like how there are smart, pragmatic people in DSA who know that that's, even if this is a sincerely held belief for them, they know that it's an election loser. Right. But, but I, a lot of the organization, a lot of these people really believe that this is a good idea. I don't know. I think, you know, back to the AOC thing, like you have to wonder what they want to use, what they want to use the endorsement as leverage for. Is it to get some commitment on this?

[00:32:23] I mean, it's probably a whole host of things, but they clearly want to use the sort of, they believe that the name has all in the, and really the organizing chops that are there are really worth something. And so they are going to increasingly try to hold candidates to pledges. You know, like I know a pretty progressive candidate in this area who was endorsed by the DSA at one point and today they would not touch her.

[00:32:50] And that's just, I think part of the, you know, the organization has changed too. But I do think it's, I don't think there are enough pragmatic people in the organization, frankly, they really do seem to believe this stuff and think it's a good idea and want to carry it forward. In the piece, Jake, that you just published in City Journal, you basically kind of ring a warning bell in some sense for the Democratic Party about DSA in that piece and say, hey,

[00:33:20] man, they're coming for the Democratic Party. So explain what your concern and your criticism is about where you think DSA is headed in its relationship with Democrats. Yeah. I just, I really worry that they are going to be able to push an agenda that includes things like abolition onto the Democratic Party. And already we see like they can, I think high propensity Democratic voters have been radicalized

[00:33:48] in a lot of ways by the last several years. And so I'm quite concerned that they will be able to stretch beyond the DSA base. You know, like I am engaged in other organizations beyond the labor movement and DSA. And I can just tell you, like, I just hear people talk about things like open borders and stuff,

[00:34:11] like with no knowledge of what the practical realities would be, like high propensity, very affluent Democratic Party voters of a, you know, of an advanced age. It concerns me that like the stars are aligning to sort of hand the keys over to DSA in part because we also see that they are very ruthless. They will target individual candidates. They will target allies who go against them. And they seem to be able to, you know, get away with it and keep doing it.

[00:34:40] And we're also I think we're seeing like the Democrats have this conundrum. Well, do we try to hug these people tight and hope that they'll change or do we stand up and fight them? And too often, I think the instinct is to hug them and hope that they'll change or just hope that this movement blows over in a year or two. Just on that point. I mean, what's what's wrong with that idea of the big tent, right? We're the Democratic Party. We've always been a big tent. We're a big, messy coalition.

[00:35:06] Sure, we're going to have some, you know, your normal mainstream, you know, pro-capitalism kind of don't rock the boat too much, you know, Josh Shapiro kind of Democrats. And then why not? Like also welcome, you know, I don't know, you know, these deep, these, you know, crazy DSA kids. And like it's all one big happy family. And, you know, we're all going to get along. Like what's wrong with that, that in your mind with that kind of approach to how the

[00:35:36] party should engage with DSA? I mean, that's the very terminology that was used in DSA when they were making this argument to bring the left in. They use the big tent language. And so we just saw it play out over 10 years. And what happened is those people who were making that argument, who were the left of DSA in 2015, 2016, they are now the beleaguered right wing of DSA. And they're trying to hold all these crazies at bay, hoping that they can get enough members

[00:36:03] in New York City to take the organization back at the next convention. And so you can just kind of see the same process could very easily play out in the Democratic Party. And I also think they are not going to play, they're not going to play nice and they're not going to play fair and they will not be as tolerant with other Democrats as other Democrats would be with them. It seems like what you're saying is that they don't really mean they want a big tent. They want a smaller and smaller tent that skews further and further left, you know, that has no chance of winning.

[00:36:32] A big tent would include, you know, all kinds of people, including candidates who, you know, don't want to defund the police or what have you. I mean, all the various platforms. So it just seems like, you know, yeah. I think they've really convinced themselves that they have winning ideas. I think there are a lot of true believers, if I'm being honest. And I think they get wrapped up in it and caught up in it and caught up in the successes. And we'll see what happens in swing states.

[00:37:02] But I also, you know, part of it is that they want to have the big tent. They just want to be the dictator in the big tent. And well, that's not going to work. They want everybody to fall. They want a big tent, but everybody falls in line behind. Exactly. Yes. But I mean, of course, you can win in New York City or Seattle, but like you're not going to win working class voters in Western Pennsylvania or whatever. And or probably not. I mean, like, I guess we'll have to see. Yeah.

[00:37:28] I mean, I think that they're hoping for victory in Michigan in the Senate primary. And, you know, I'm I am nervous about it. If he does win, it's going to be very interesting to see what happens in that general election. Right. And, you know, and obviously, if he wins the general election, there's going to be a massive momentum behind the idea that, you know, the world has changed. Right. That that the Democratic Party can go to the DSA left and win a statewide election.

[00:37:58] That would be that would be something. I mean, I kind of share, Jake. I don't my more than kind of I share your, you know, foreboding that this is electoral suicide if the Democratic Party does go in that direction. I mean, I you know that there was a whole wave of idealism, too, that led to the you know, that fueled the the new left in the you know, into the McGovern campaign in 72.

[00:38:23] And I grew up my first election was I phone bank for Walter Mondale in 1984, right when he lost 49 states like it was a searing defeat. And I didn't I was so searing I didn't vote again in another presidential election for 20 years after that. Like I was like, why bother? Right. Like and so my youth was all an experience of like Reagan and America and all of that stuff,

[00:38:50] which I I don't think America's changed all that much from that era and it's sort of fundamental politics. Right. And so but but, you know, obviously, the kids don't don't agree with that. Well, it makes sense that the DSA wants to get rid of the Electoral College because I mean, that's that's that's part of why I mean, the country, however conservative, not conservative is certainly more conservative with the Electoral College in place. Although, Jake, you're skeptical that that ought to be in the platform as well.

[00:39:20] Yeah, I I just I don't know. You know, the older I get, the more I like some stability and thoughtfulness when we're making big changes. Yeah. I have to say, though, that I think the ultimate consequence of this DSA insurgency is that we're going to see the progressive wing of the Democratic Party eaten up. I think they're the ones who are really going to suffer the most. Really? Explain that. Explain what you mean by that. Yeah. I think in these deep blue areas where high propensity Democratic voters have been radicalized.

[00:39:51] I think that I think it's just going to be very easy for DSA members to come in and challenge longtime incumbents who, you know, have some ties to the Chamber of Commerce because they have to to get business done. And, you know, they're weak on and then they're going to be portrayed as weak on these issues and as old and, you know, part of the machine. And I really think this is where we're going to see the success for DSA. And I mean, there's a DSA person running for mayor of Ann Arbor and he could very well win.

[00:40:20] And, you know, they link up all these campaigns as well, which is something they're very good at. Right. So you've got the mayor appearing with Abdul El-Sayed, appearing with the city council members who are kind of running behind this mayoral candidate. So right. And you saw Mallory McMorrow drop out in Michigan. Right. That space is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. And I think the DSA is taking a lot of that energy or DSA candidates aligned with sort of the DSA, the new emerging DSA wing of the Democratic Party are taking that energy. Right.

[00:40:47] I mean, they're often competing in districts where they're targeting not squishy centrist Democrats, but actual progressive elected officials. Right. We're seeing that in Seattle right now. We have a very high profile legislative race where the Senate majority leader, you know, like a gay veteran Democrat who just passed a millionaire's tax. Right. Which is I'm involved in that campaign to defend it right now. But but, you know, he's he's, you know, and was a champion of gay rights and gay marriage

[00:41:17] during that those battles. And so he's hardly some kind of, you know, milquetoast D and he's widely considered the most progressive Senate majority leader we've ever had in Washington state history. And yet he's facing a challenge from a 30 year old young woman running to his left and saying he's too much of a of a. It's not good enough. Yeah, it's not good enough when the and the right is basically saying like, oh, there's

[00:41:44] all these millionaires leaving the state as a result of the tax increases that he just, you know, ushered in. Right, Sandeep. So, yeah, it's just it's completely it's like it's like FDR being denounced by people on his left, which happened or Lyndon Johnson, you know, with the Great Society. I mean, this this has happened throughout our history. And, you know, yeah, it's the bluest district. People haven't really paid much attention to it is the problem.

[00:42:10] It's the heart of of of inner core renter Seattle, the 43rd legislative district. It's the bluest district probably in the in the state. Right. And and yeah, apparently, yeah, the Senate majority leader, at least for some folks, is not blue enough. Right. Or red enough or something. Right. So just to kind of close out the DSA part of this conversation, I want to move on and talk

[00:42:36] about the concept of democratic socialism kind of more broadly, because I think there's a difference there that's worth teasing out. But but I mean, literally in 2025, last year, the DSA repeals, didn't they have an explicit rule against Leninists being, you know, part of the party? What happened there, Jake, with this? Essentially, yeah, it was I think the language was democratic centralism, like people who are

[00:43:02] under discipline of of one of these democratic centralist groups were prohibited. So, for instance, here in Seattle, we had a we had a firebrand Trotskyite city council member named Shama Sawant. For a while, she was maybe the most famous, quote unquote, socialist in the country. Right. She would actually deliver her own response to the state of the union. It makes me laugh to think about it. But but literally, you know, she had those kind of kind of national ambitions in some sense,

[00:43:30] a national following on the on the socialist left. And but she was part of a party socialist alternative, which is a very explicitly Trotskyite party where they. She answered to the to the party, they told her what to do. Right. She eventually split with them over that. But but but that's where while she was in office for much of her time in office, the party would make call the shots. Yeah.

[00:43:58] And some of those people have gone into DSA is my understanding of the socialist alternative. I think so. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. And I mean, she's being she's being platformed by some of the DSA sort of media landscape out there like she was. I just saw she was on current affairs with Nathan with Nathan J. Robinson. So, right. These people are. Yeah. In the tent in the big tent. She's running for Congress right now, I should mention here in the ninth congressional district. I don't.

[00:44:27] Well, and she has denounced not just very progressive members of her own party, but the DSA itself, like, yeah, she didn't ask mom, mom, Donnie, like after he won the primary. Yeah. Yeah. She did a whole bunch of podcast interviews where she basically said, well, it's great that that, you know, we got this win in New York City. But mom, Donnie is, you know, pretty weak team. So, OK, we got DSA.

[00:44:53] Yes, they're they're kind of radicalizing going farther left and becoming factional. Yes, they're getting some traction within the Democratic Party. But more broadly, it seems to me, it's just there's a complex of ideas, somewhat mushy ideas that we might call democratic socialism. It's, you know, as a as a set of ideological commitments or beliefs that's in some sense distinct from from DSA. And the version of democratic socialism we're getting from Katie Wilson, our mayor in Seattle

[00:45:23] or Zoran Mamdani in New York City looks different from like Leninist, you know, orthodoxy. Right. And so. So, yeah, Jake, what's your take on that? Like just the kind of broad set of how would you I guess maybe I'm going to ask it this way, how would you define democratic socialism and and and how do you see that complex of ideas itself playing out?

[00:45:50] And do you see those ideas as a threat or maybe or or a positive for the party? I kind of think it's a phrase that doesn't have a lot of meaning. I think when you look at practice, it either it either tends towards social social democratic pragmatism or you get the, you know, the hardcore Leninism. Right. And that there's not really a lot to social or to democratic socialism. There just is not. And, you know, they always like to point to these thinkers who never really had power. Right.

[00:46:20] Like Rosa Luxembourg. And I just don't you know, I just don't see it. Some people would say, well, look at look at the UK after 1945. And my response to that is like Clement Attlee was pretty clear that the people's flag is palest pink. It's not blood red, but only ink. It was social democracy. Right. And that's what it evolved into by the certainly. So I'm a skeptic. Yeah.

[00:46:48] And you see social democracy is essentially I mean, that's still something you would like to see more of in the United States. Right. A kind of more social democratic polity. So it does seem, though, like Jake, that sometimes when these folks get elected, they don't follow through on all of the wackier ideas and end up focusing more on the stuff that is either politically possible and might actually even be popular, possibly much to the disappointment of folks within the DSA.

[00:47:15] But that's just kind of what it means to actually be in office and try to govern. Yeah, I think that's right. I think they're going to run up against a brick wall of reality very quickly. I think we're seeing that and I think it's going to create more tension between, as you suggested, between these like hardcore, what they call the cadre members and the people they've elected or helped get into office. We're going to see a lot more fireworks from DSA internally. What is the most annoying thing anybody ever said to you when you were in the DSA where

[00:47:45] you were just like, at a certain point, you just go like, you're rolling your eyes so hard. You're like, I'm going to have to leave. I mean, was there a moment? Was there a turning point? I mean, just some of the statements that the national organization was making. I really didn't like it when they went after this lifelong union organizer because he had worked for a police union. I'm sorry, but being a police officer is a difficult job. And I've worked for a lot of unions helping a lot of employees. And sometimes employees need representation. And I can imagine when your freedom is on the line that you really, really need reputation

[00:48:14] representation. I think that was like, that was the beginning of the end for me. I was a union guy. I'm still a union guy. I have my concerns about the labor movement, about public sector unions. But ultimately, I've been in enough just cause cases and won them to know that sometimes people get railroaded, that sometimes manager, it's easy for the managers to try to put the blame on somebody who's really not to blame.

[00:48:39] And so it's good to have an honest advocate in your corner to make sure that you are getting the justice you need. So that really rankled me the wrong way. And then on top of it, like all of the stuff about the boycott divestment sanctions, the Ukraine stuff. Really, I think we've seen just this increase in anti-Americanism inside the DSA that some people call third worldism. And it's a phrase I've used, like any enemy of America is my friend. Venezuela.

[00:49:09] And I think, yeah, I think there are a lot of great things about this country, you know, and we got to defend it. Freedom is good. Liberty is good. We don't want to crush that. We want to. Yeah, right. We want to make sure more people get to enjoy it, right? Well, the Big Ten doesn't include being patriotic either. You know, patriotism equals nationalism equals evil, you know, from a certain kind of leftist perspective, as opposed to Eugene Debs was a fucking patriot. My God. Yeah, I find that I find those sorts of attitudes to be profoundly ungrateful.

[00:49:39] Like, look, I mean, my I'm an immigrant to the United States. I've mentioned this before. My parents emigrated in 1967, very soon after LBJ liberalizes the, you know, the Eurocentric immigration laws, in part, in part as a kind of Cold War hearts and minds sort of sort of thing. But but, yeah, my dad worked at the U.S. Embassy at the time, and they asked him to immigrate and gave him a job at the Library of Congress. That's how we ended up coming over. And like, yeah.

[00:50:08] And so my thing is, man, some of us had to fucking beg to get in. Right. You know, and so I find like like people who have been born and grown up here. I mean, that was a big leap for my parents to take, but they saw the chance and they took it, you know, leaving India and their lives behind in their mid 30s because America did represent opportunity in this sort of profound way for them.

[00:50:35] Even if you have a hard time chanting USA, USA right now with Trump in office, and I actually kind of get that, you know, like it sounds a little like what do people mean the way they're saying it sometimes? It's like, you know, but don't cede that to the right. You know, if you cede patriotism, the right, if only strategically, it's like the dumbest thing you could ever do. Some people in DSA understand this, but they are losing the argument. And I think even they wrestle with it. So I think it's going to be a disaster for them.

[00:51:03] So let me give you a counter example here, because we had John Judas on Blue City Blues and, you know, John, he was at Berkeley in the 60s, you know, as a kind of young radical with a front row seat. He was writing for a Marxist publication in the early 70s. He's there at the, you know, at the New American Movement and been a man of the left.

[00:51:27] And I found you to be a kind of brilliant and insightful commentator and writer about American politics and the left. And it was a pleasure to have him on. But he's somebody who left DSA, as you did, Jake, but then recently rejoined, you know, and he's like, man, this is where the action is right now. And me as a man of the left, I got to go back there. They've been dazzled by success.

[00:51:54] There's other people of this generation who are maybe have not rejoined, but are certainly on board with Zoran. Yeah. And there's a counter example here. Right after October 7th, there's a letter. I think it got published in The Nation or the New Republic where a number of older, prominent DSA members resigned after the behavior, you know, and so Harold Meyerson, right? Writer, Maurice, is it Iserman, David?

[00:52:24] He's another Reed College guy, but wrote kind of the definitive history of the American Communist Party, right? Um, he was a signatory to that letter as they resigned over, you know, what they saw as kind of the crazy pro-violence antics of the, uh, of the organization. The thrill to violence is still there very much. And so that is a real red flag for me. And, you know, how do you get over something like that? Oh, what's a little bloodlust between friends.

[00:52:54] Yeah. Yeah. Um, that's just, uh, we don't want to open doors like that. I will say it. Judas rejoined, but like with, he told us with some criticism intact. Like he's still a skeptic. I mean, he, he, it's almost like, uh, I don't know how much he disagrees with you, Jake, because he's basically saying like, you know, God, you kind of have to admire the organizing and Mondami's election, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:53:20] That's the part I'm excited about, but I don't know this or that position, this or that candidate. Like I'm not on board with that. So he's like, I can still be a member of this organization and be a critic of it. Um, sort of from the inside, I guess is his perspective. I'm too much an old school social Democrat to goof around with these anti-anti-communists myself. Uh, so I will not be rejoining. At one point, I think I made an offer to rejoin if we could get some real resistance going. Um, but there's not, you know, there's no dialogue.

[00:53:49] It's not, it's not happening. Um, very much the groups that are sort of on the right of DSA are kind of a closed box. I would say like a lot of decision-making, you know, it goes on in these caucus rooms. Um, so you don't really know, like, why are they making decisions to accommodate this thing, but to fight back on this thing rather than to just say, look, we have these nuts in the organization. They're going to destroy it. Maybe we should have this fight out in public. That's what I mean. That's what I would like to see happen.

[00:54:19] Frankly, when you have people who are, you know, who are this extreme, let's have this, let's have this in let, you know, their AOC could lead it. Anybody could lead this, but let's have the fight. Let's get it over with the conversation. Yeah. As soon as you have that conversation, it's like, it's like, Jake, why are you red baiting? You're, you're, you're Joe McCarthy. Now you're, you're sounding exactly like Donald Trump. I mean, you can hear all of those arguments being made internally. And it's kind of like, I get all that, but like, if people on the left don't fix their

[00:54:48] own problems and can't have these conversations, what's the alternative to that exactly? That's where we are. Don't call me a red baiter when you are celebrating Mao, please. Is my, would be my response. Right? Like, I'm not, you are red. I'm not being you. So, so Jake, I do last question for me. So you've obviously become a public critic of DSA. You're publishing and, you know, center right spaces, like, like, like city journal and stuff like that.

[00:55:15] Well, first of all, what's been the reaction from, do you, do you hear from DSA-ers and, and, or former folks you knew is when you were part of the organization and what kind of, are they, are, are they denouncing you as a sellout and a knuckle dragging reactionary? What, what kind of reaction do you get? I mean, I took some pretty strong positions, uh, after October 7th, um, within labor circles. And, uh, I would say that very few people talk to me. Uh, some do. Yeah.

[00:55:45] Um, some of the older people talk to me and, you know, are very kind and, uh, gracious. I don't think a lot of, and some younger DSA members will talk to me, but I think they would not want to do it in public. I think I'm kind of persona non grata on the left in general, but. I mean, the reaction has been, I've had a lot of positive reaction. I feel like I'm telling the truth. I needed to tell the truth. I'm seeing this thing that I think is really damaging and horrible, not only for the democratic party, but potentially for our country.

[00:56:15] And you gotta, at some point you gotta, uh, uh, sound the alarm and, uh, and, uh, you know, you make new friendships along the way. There are a lot of very reasonable people on the center, right? Um, as I said earlier, I think, you know, there's not really that much distinction between social democracy and Christian democracy when it plays out in practice. We've got to be more kind to each other and build these relationships and actually get things done for people. And I'm happy to be on the center, right? I think city journal is doing a ton of great work. Uh, I'm it's a journey and I'm happy to be on it.

[00:56:44] I think that's a good place to end this conversation. So Jake Altman, thank you so much for coming on blue city blues with us. It's been a real pleasure to talk with you about, about both your evolution and the evolution of the DSA. Awesome. Thank you guys so much for having me on. Yeah. Thanks Jake. And that's it for another edition of blue city blues. I'm David Hyde with Sandeep Kaushik. If you want to contribute to this podcast and make it possible for us to make the difficult

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