Don’t Abandon the Democratic Party, Take It Over
SMC Editorial Board Note: This piece is not an official caucus statement, but the opinion of the author. For differing opinions by SMC members published in The Agitator, see "Stay Dirty”, “Moving Beyond the Dirty Stay”, and “Two and Half Cheers for the Dirty Stay”, among others.
Earlier this month, Zohran Mamdani secured over a million votes to become the next Mayor of New York City. Receiving nearly 900,000 votes on the Democratic Party ballot line (and over 150,000 on the Working Families Party line), Zohran Mamdani’s success should serve as a strong message to DSA chapters across the country that running on the Democratic Party line works. Despite this success, there are still those who would question the efficacy of this tried-and-true method of electoral success.
Back in June, just three days after Zohran finished almost eight points ahead of Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary, the National Political Committee (NPC) released a statement saying the election results proved a “widespread desire for an alternative to the status quo, and the need for the working-class political party that DSA is building.” Additionally, many DSA members' analyses of the 2024 elections in both Bread & Roses and Reform & Revolution strongly advocated the creation of a third independent party.
“Rather than seek to break with an electoral system ingrained in our national identity, we should seek to exploit it. ”
Whenever moderate democrats fail to defeat fascist Republicans or DSA-backed candidates fail to win a Democratic primary, there is no shortage of leftists opining about the need for an independent alternative. But looking at Zohran’s election, it’s clear in both the primary and the general election that voters have firmly rejected the political status quo, but they did so not on a third party on an independent ballot line but on the Democratic ballot line.
Despite this, and other notable successes of the DSA electoral project, many on the Left still cling to the idea that we will one day create an independent labor party akin to the early British Labour Party. Given the Democratic Party’s abysmal polling and continued antagonism toward our project, the attractiveness of this proposal is clear. But despite a few independent victories at the local level, we must confront the reality that the Democratic ballot line is the only place our political project has seen regular success. At the federal level, independent and third-party candidates have, for the most part, been shut out of power. More than the billionaire propaganda machine, the strength of the Democratic establishment, and any other political force we might face, the simple fact is that our voting system inevitably leads to two major parties. Rather than seek to break with an electoral system ingrained in our national identity, we should seek to exploit it.
Confronting The Limits Of Our Electoral System
The biggest obstacle to forming an independent socialist party isn’t the capitalist class but our electoral system. Nearly every member of Congress, most state representatives, and the vast majority of local government officials are elected through a First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) system. Under FPTP, whoever gets the most votes wins the election. Throughout history and across the Western world, this system has naturally whittled fledgling multi-party democracies down to the two-party system that exists not only in the United States but also, to varying degrees, in democratic nations across the globe. To understand how a new democracy can shift from a multi-party system to a two-party duopoly, we need to examine the logical process FPTP creates.
In a fictitious newly democratic country, eight candidates are vying for a single seat in a legislative body. The Centrist Party candidate claims victory with just 30% of the vote in our fake election because the crowded field divides majority support, with the Green and Socialist candidates respectively coming in a close second (22%) and third (20%).
In the next election, supporters of the Green candidate abandon their chosen champion and support the Socialist candidate, and propel them to victory. In this instance, there are many reasons why Green supporters may jump ship, from dislike of the Centrist candidate to new campaign tactics from the Socialist candidate designed to woo new voters. Whatever the reason, voters in FPTP democracies have been shown to shift their support toward more viable candidates and build broad-based coalitions. This process has been shown to continue over successive elections until the field narrows to just two candidates, both vying for a simple majority and campaigning to capture the broadest possible support. This naturally inclines parties to cast wide ideological nets and moderate their stances to offend few but also excite few.
In countries like Germany, New Zealand, and Ireland, which use some form of proportional representation (where seats in the legislature are awarded based on their share of the national vote), voters are encouraged to support their first preference, and then parties, after an election, build a functional governing coalition with a broad ideological spectrum. But in our system, these coalitions are formed at the ballot box, not in government. In Ireland, socialists, liberals, and environmentalists vie to form a government after voting, but in the United States, socialists, liberals, and environmentalists must choose the candidate that best represents them or stands the best chance of beating a candidate they hate.
Now, it’s important to note that the previously mentioned thought experiment assumes voters behave rationally. In the United Kingdom, millions vote for the Liberal Democrats in every election, despite their last majority in parliament being almost a century ago. In Canada, millions of people also regularly vote for the New Democratic Party despite that party never winning a single federal election. There are many reasons a voter might choose to vote for a candidate with no chance of winning or making a meaningful impact on policy, yet the FPTP system has been shown to naturally herd voters into two camps.
“Here lies the problem for those in our movement who wish to build an independent party: voters simply don’t see anything outside the two-party system as viable, because no one beyond it has reliably won elections. ”
We have seen this play out time and time again in American electoral history. From the short-lived successes of the Wisconsin Progressive Party and Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party to Ross Perot’s failed presidential runs (in 1992 and 1996), momentary third-party success is eventually squashed as voters return to their natural homes. While poll after poll suggests that voters are dissatisfied with this current electoral regime, year after year, they return to the ballot box to register their tacit consent for our two-party system. In a national crisis, an insurgent third-party may win a handful of local seats in progressive strongholds across the country, but the Democratic Party's legitimacy and the ingrained nature of the two-party system will soon throw them out of power. However, this is not a resignation to Democratic hegemony, but an understanding that they simply hold a mantle that is up for grabs.
When voters went to the ballot box on November 4th, their vote for Zohran wasn’t a vote for the Democratic Party per se, but the vision for the Democratic Party and for New York City that Zohran, and our movement, put forward. Zohran became one of the two (or, ironically, in this instance, three) primary political choices voters are used to, which can help explain why he won historically Democratic constituencies in the Bronx and Southeast Queens that he had lost in the primary.
Understanding how FPTP narrows the political terrain makes clear that the duopoly in the United States isn’t based on political parties but on choice. Voters make this choice not only based on what party they feel best represents them, but also who they feel has the best chance of winning. Despite the WFP being far more closely aligned with Zohran’s politics than the Democratic Party, he received nearly nine times more votes on the Democratic line. Even in a state like New York, with fusion voting (where a candidate can appear on multiple ballot lines), voters still overwhelmingly punched their ballots for Zohran on the Democratic line, despite their strong ideological allegiance to the WFP line. Here lies the problem for those in our movement who wish to build an independent party: voters simply don’t see anything outside the two-party system as viable, because no one beyond it has reliably won elections.
The socialist movement’s main roadblock to seizing power isn’t our platform, but our perceived inability to win. This cycle of contesting power and losing is why voters turned out in droves to vote for Zohran on the Democratic line more than the WFP line; people know the Democrats will win. While there have undoubtedly been notable upsets to this established logic, the core point is that the task of winning power is nearly impossible without having done so previously. So rather than focus on building a new political party that needs to win legitimacy in the eyes of millions, we should continue to contest the Democratic Party line in primary elections to become the Democratic Party. Such a task might seem lofty, but it’s been done before.
Lessons From The British Labour Party
For much of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the United Kingdom’s democracy was controlled by either the Conservative Party or the Liberal Party (now known as the Liberal Democrats). Much like our political system today, these two parties represented two sides of the same coin (with the Conservatives holding the center-right position and the Liberals the center-left) and traded off holding power. This duopoly was not the first in British politics (with the Whigs being the first party opposite the Tories), but the FPTP system's natural herding tendency eliminated several third parties that had attempted to take power during the first half of the 19th century.
However, the turn of the 20th century and the aftermath of the First World War saw a new political force enter the House of Commons that was not shaken off by FPTP’s natural vote herding. The Labour Party, a relatively obscure political movement of working-class people and trade unions, won its first two seats in 1900 and formed a minority government only a few decades later in 1923. The Labour Party was not a short-lived political phenomenon—its successes not only capitalized on power but also stole the mantle of one of the two major parties in the United Kingdom from the Liberals (ironically, Labour has moderated in recent years and is more akin to the Liberals they once challenged for power).
How did this happen, and how can DSA learn from this victory?
First, the key to Labour’s success was its alliance with organized labor. Before its entrance into electoral politics, elements of the Labour Party, trade unionists, and small socialist organizations worked to radicalize workers in industrial districts. But in 1900, those trade unionists and socialists made an official entry into British politics through the Labour Representation Committee (LRC), which later became the Labour Party. This alliance between socialists and unions won two seats in the 1900 general election and slowly peel off union support from the Liberal Party. While trade unionists and socialists had previously worked to agitate inside the Liberal Party through radicalizing workers, the electoral party born out of the LPC steered institutional and working-class support away from liberal electoral choices by offering a bold socialist option in the British general elections.
By creating a political party explicitly with the labour movement, the Labour Party was able to quickly build electoral support and demonstrate strength and the ballot box. Additionally, the Labour Party's growth came amid growing labor militancy in the face of declining economic conditions. Labour’s demands, influenced by members and party activists directly tied to the current economic conditions, spoke to people’s needs and realities. This helped them build a strong base of support that could challenge the existing duopoly. It is no coincidence that the 1929 general election, the first one after the 1926 general strike, was the first to be won by the Labour Party.
Unlike in 20th-century Britain, labor in the United States is already organized. While there are some newly organized unions like those of Starbucks or Amazon workers that we could bring into the DSA fold, most labor unions already form the bedrock of the Democratic political establishment. While they are certainly not as militant as the early British trade unions, the lesson from the Labour Party's early years is that their alliance is key to any serious challenge to Democratic power as they provide legitimacy, financial support, and a built-in base of voters to a political project.
After Zohran won the Democratic primary, he immediately began courting union support because he knew their stamp of approval not only brought donations and votes, but legitimacy. If we are serious in our quest to contest power, we must continue our work to win over labor not just among the rank-and-file but among leadership as well. We should continue to run labor candidates like former UAW worker and now State Assemblymember Claire Valdez who can build bridges between our organization and unions. We must strategically coordinate with major unions on political decisions, like campaigns and candidates.
“ It’s not enough to just win elections as underdogs against well-funded moderates; to supplant the moderate majority, we must show voters they are irresponsible stewards of government. ”
We don’t have the same historical conditions to radically organize labor into a political project, but we also don’t need to. The labor movement is already overwhelmingly tied to a political party: the Democrats. We see through the early Labour Party how crucial labor support is to winning, and by continuing to court both the institutional unions and their rank-and-file members, we can show that it’s the socialists within the Democrats who will propel them—and their members—to power.
The second lesson we can learn is that essential to any real play for power comes from bringing in large numbers of new people into the political process. Labour’s second attempt at government came in 1929, after it benefited from a groundswell of new voters. Women’s suffrage in the United Kingdom was finally fully granted in 1928, meaning that the 1929 election (commonly known as the Flapper election) had millions of new voters without any previous electoral allegiances. While it was the Liberal party that saw the most substantial increase in their vote share (5.8%), Labour’s 3.8% increase (around three million new raw voters compared to the previous election) helped them win a plurality of seats. While every party in 1929 saw a significant increase in its vote share, only one party was able to translate that new support into a victory.
While at first glance this might not seem directly replicable in the modern American electorate, we actually have millions of people who sit out each and every election. From the millions who sit out presidential elections to the tens of thousands who don’t participate in local primaries, there is a real base of non-voters ready to be engaged. In Zohran’s election victory, he became the first candidate in over 50 years to take home over a million votes in the general election and increased turnout by 19% in just four years. Through a combination of both an engaging communications campaign and an unparalleled field operation, Zohran and NYC-DSA were able to bring their message directly to people’s phone screens and then connect that same message with a knock at the door by a real person.
Just as in the 1929 British election, this groundswell of enthusiasm also brought out hundreds of thousands of people to vote against our project, but like Labour, only Zohran was able to turn that increased turnout into victory. As we have seen time and time again, both internationally and here in America, any attempt at upending the status quo must come from bringing new people into the process. We have the roadmap; it’s just on us to find the right candidate and follow the playbook.
The final, and perhaps most difficult of the lessons to replicate, was Labour’s willingness to undercut their political allies to seize power. In 1923, Labour formed its first (albeit short-lived) minority government with tactical support from the Liberals to keep the Conservatives out of power. This was a rocky coalition with only 33 seats separating the Liberals (161) and Labour (191). With no majority and the possibility of a new election being called at any moment, each party played their cards carefully, providing support only when it benefited their own political future. During the nine-month Labour government, the Liberals worked hard to extract concessions from Labour and sought to undermine the government at every opportunity. But eventually, rather than fully capitulate, Labour called the Liberals' bluff and let their minority government collapse to pave the way for a new election. In 1924, the Conservatives returned to power with 412 seats (of the 308 needed to form a government), while Labour lost 40 of its original 191 seats. However, their former coalition partners, the Liberals, fared far worse. They returned to parliament with only 40 seats (and have not cracked a hundred seats since then). Labour wasn’t afraid of open confrontation with the Liberal Party in government and during the election, and voters rewarded them.
While DSA candidates and electeds are more than willing to criticize Democratic politics and policies, we are far less willing to undercut their power. This conundrum puts our cadre officials in a difficult place because sometimes undermining our Democratic allies can mean empowering Republicans, a fascist party. Additionally, we have seen time and time again that Democrats are not afraid to exercise retribution against left-wing members who undercut their caucus (whether that be on a federal, state, or local level), many times putting more energy to fight our movement than the fascist right.
We must reckon with the fact that voters are unlikely not only to abandon the Democratic Party writ large, but most of its ineffective leadership, until there is a viable alternative. We can court unions and bring new voters into the fold for decades, but we cannot seek to truly supplant the traditional Democratic elite unless we can prove to their base that they are unable to govern. It’s not enough to just win elections as underdogs against well-funded moderates; to supplant the moderate majority, we must show voters they are irresponsible stewards of government.
This could look like withholding a speaker voter in a Congress with a slim margin of control, sinking a signature piece of legislation, or even declining to endorse the party’s preferred candidate in a critical election. If these are done strategically and in line with movement partners, union allies, and with a base of millions of new voters, we can undercut the traditional Democratic elite and take over the party apparatus. It’s important to note that these are not organizing tactics themselves, but strategies to win power. If done wrong, they could have enormous consequences for our political project. They are only to be deployed when the political calculus is in our favor to make us not look like spoilers, but victors at the right moment.
The Path Forward
From the historical lessons of Labour’s accession in the early 20th century, we can see a clear roadmap for how socialists can wrestle control of the Democratic Party apparatus from the traditional political elite. But while the roadmap is clear, we are far from landing the final blow, and as it’s been famously said before, “if you come for the crown, you better not miss.”
We are years away from peeling off organized labor’s support of the Democratic Party, and our efforts to engage nonvoters have yielded some results in smaller elections, but not to the scale necessary. Before we can ever begin to publicly undercut the Democratic Party, we must prove to voters that we can win statewide federal and gubernatorial offices to prove our governing power and the strength of our ground game. But while we might be a ways off from victory, we’re far closer to replacing the traditional Democratic elite than we are from creating a viable third-party.
While waiting is far easier said than done, Zohran Mamdani’s monumental success in New York City is a glimpse into what this sort of victory could look like. In an election that brought in thousands of new voters, buoyed by a chapter that had worked for years to court unions and a candidate who was unafraid to vote down bad state budgets, Democrats across the city dropped endorsements in the weeks after his win. Zohran didn’t just defeat the Democratic establishment in this election; he remade it in his own image. In his election-night speech, Zohran began with a quote from Eugene Debs. Debs was one of the first people to ever run for the American Presidency as an open socialist, contesting his last election from a jail cell after being imprisoned for his socialist organizing. Zohran’s victory is an example of how, by building a mass movement to take over the Democratic Party, we can remake it instead of destroying it entirely.
Over the course of his campaign, Zohran went from a relatively unknown assemblymember to one of the faces of the Left in America. His political organization, both on the campaign side and NYC-DSA, are now taken seriously both in New York City and nationally. This is just a taste of victory—achieving real power and real status in the political mainstream without having to run elections against every Democrat holding office in New York City. Taking over the Democratic Party doesn’t mean running a cadre candidate for every office in the country; it’s having socialists set the political agenda and supplant a national political organization that already has reach into every corner of the country.
The project outlined here might seem new, but it is a natural process that has occurred in American political history time and time again. The Republican Party began as an anti-slavery middle-class champion and is now a racist proto-fascist political lackey of the billionaire class. The Democratic Party was once the hotbed of American segregation, and within a hundred years, a Democratic president signed the Civil Rights Act into law. Time and time again, ideological struggles have remade our two main political parties, offering new choices to the American electorate. This has been done through outside pressure and organizing, as well as through internal victories that shift the ideological center of the party. The realignment of the Democratic Party isn’t just possible, it’s happened before and it will happen again.
The question for DSA is whether we want to expend enormous efforts building something new, or do we want to take over something that already exists. There's a roadmap for one already in our hands. It’s just about following it.