Smash the Cycle
On the election, galvanization, and long-term struggle.
Whether you anticipated the results of the election or not, the morning after was likely sobering. Personally, despite having strong feelings that Democrats—first Biden and then Harris—would lose, the atmosphere still felt heavy.
I went to bed before the collapse and had two short dreams. The kind where you’re half-awake. I dreamt that I looked at my News app to a photo of a once pitch-black stadium now illuminated with blue glowsticks, signaling that Harris had won.
After realizing I was not, in fact, awake, I drifted back into near-sleep, soon opening my News app again to an image of an American flag hanging from a balcony, its backdrop an industrial-orange sky. The headline was that the race was too close to call.
Again realizing I was not lucid, I drifted back and woke up to my alarm not longer after. It was as if I had experienced two alternate realities before my consciousness had landed in the one that would see me open the news to the decisive defeat for which I had tried to brace myself for months.
A lack of nighttime rest compounding with a restless mind, I went to work. For eight hours, I felt dazed. Like my dog, it was only possible to shake off after I had returned home to the presence of my loved ones.
Acceptance
I paint this picture first because, before continuing, I need readers to understand that I am not immune to what happened even though I’m able to stay relatively level-headed. I may be a little steely in this post, yet it is not due to a lack of empathy for those who are suffering (including, perhaps, you) and those who soon will be.
Similarly, while I know feelings are raw, I think it’s important for people to come to terms with the fact those who sat out the election didn’t do so because they were so foolish as to misunderstand the risks, nor are they so dead inside as not to be pained at the outcome.
The fact is, using numbers available as of writing, while 4 million more people were able to vote in 2024 vs. 2020, Trump received only 2 million more votes than in 2020 while Harris lost 7.5 million as compared to Biden that year.
7.5 million people didn’t suddenly become racist and/or sexist. They didn’t suddenly stop caring about other people.
Whether it was because of a promise to continue arming genocide and belittling those who speak out against it, or because they saw an empty shell of a candidate focus on “orange man bad” and promise no change from an unpopular administration instead of addressing their real, worsening material conditions, or any combination of other reasons, they placed their dice in Fate’s boney palms and let it roll.
Agree with their assessment or not, scapegoating voters instead of focusing on the candidate or the party or the campaign is convenient and nothing else. It leads to nothing other than bourgeoise-stoked inter-class warfare at a time when we cannot afford it—at a time when we must organize ourselves and begin to organize those who were so heavily disenfranchised by the Democrats.
For further, more insightful analysis, I highly recommend Adam Johnson's In These Times article, "Democratic Elites Blame Everyone But Themselves for Historic Collapse".Same struggle, different terrain
Coming into the election, I would see people—within DSA and outside of it—declare that of course socialists should vote for Harris because organizing under Trump was a nightmare and this time it would be worse.
There is certainly truth to that. Trump aims to eviscerate the very people and rights that socialists work to champion. This new wave of red-scare tactics coupled with Trump’s violent rhetoric is troubling. Being a very public socialist [for deliberate reasons], my white-male identity armor could easily crumble.
Voting to organize under Harris would seem like the obvious choice. During the 2020 election, when I was a freshly carded DSA member, I made the argument in a meeting breakout discussion that the best thing to do is to hold your breath and vote for Biden despite how bad he was and how horribly the establishment coalesced to topple a surging Sanders. The idea was simply that it would be way easier to organize under Biden. He had already capitulated a little bit during the primaries, and if we got the chance to play offense, the left could win big.
But, I was wrong! Two points are always at top of mind:
First, I underestimated how disinterested the establishment is in actually doing the things for working people that they promise. Back in 2021 when Bernie tried to push key parts of Biden’s agenda through using the reconciliation process—most notably raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour—, Democrats were happy to concede to a ruling by the parliamentarian that they simply could have ignored. It was a convenient out—nothing more, nothing less.
Second, I discounted just how disinterested people who were once fired up to speak out and take action against the Trump administration became after he left office. I tried to give people grace for quite a while. People were burnt out and justifiably needed some time to recover.
A sizable chunk never bounced back. They got too comfortable, accepting complacency under a “return to normal.” That complacency manifested in inaction.
Others would find ways to get involved in their community by volunteering. I would argue, however, that many of the folks in this group stopped short of where our society needed to them to land.
That is, while it is wonderful when people give their time in service to others, volunteering doesn’t inherently force one to consider the systemic issues under capitalism that lead to a need for volunteers in the first place. Volunteers don’t necessarily work towards the dissolution of what they’re volunteering for in the first place.
In terms of election cycles, these volunteers stopped considering what actually brought us to Trumpism in the first place; how those issues might be addressed; and how to take appropriate, escalated action to prevent it all from happening again knowing full well that Trump would be the Republican nominee again in 2024.
Their radicalization lie incomplete.
The lesson here is a classic case of reaction versus prescription. Trump’s term was dangerous. The danger was clear and immediate. A mass of people reacted in various ways. But reacting to something inherently means something has already occurred. Action by reaction to something harmful is inherently based in harm.
Then, when the masses had the opportunity to be prescriptive—to commit to finding a way to prevent future suffering—society faltered. They let off the gas thinking that Trump was cooked. They failed to hold Biden—someone who we knew was not good when he was desperately elected!—accountable to his promises to the working class throughout the entirety of his term and to make steps towards the systemic change.
An aside: I am a forward-looking person. What’s done is done! The important thing is that we learn from the past and press on. I welcome you to the struggle with open arms.To circle back, my point is that organizing and fighting under a Harris administration would have been just as urgent as it is under a Trump administration, yet it had the unique threat of continued complacency when existential threats such as climate change demand mass radical action.
I’m not an accelerationist—I didn’t wish for this outcome—and I’m not pretending that this era is not going to be extremely bad and difficult to weather. However, we all need to recognize that government control under conservative Democrats is not what we need to fight for, and if it comes about again, we need to guarantee that the masses are prepared to continue the struggle on grounds that purported to be friendlier when the reality is anything but.
Marathon training
Now that the election is over we have already seen increased interest in people wanting to “do something.” Some of that interest is directed towards socialist organizing. This is good, though it is only a start. If we are to make real progress, we cannot repeat the sins of the past. We can’t burn bright at the start only to flame out.
New activists—a word I prefer not to use due to it having what I feel is an almost vapid connotation—will certainly come into the struggle as I did in 2016. I didn’t have any experience. I was hungry to do whatever I could and do as much of it as I could. Some of what I did was helpful; for example, my friends and I learned a lot about how City Council functions and our local political dynamics. A lot of what I did was not, such as thinking that mass petitioning was helpful and having a deference to people in power be my default.
It took a long time for me to develop my current worldview. I didn’t join DSA until 2020, and even then I had plenty of growth to do. Of course, I am still learning, growing, and honing my political beliefs and identity. I always feel behind and not as educated or solid on my convictions as I would like to be.
Just as we must be understanding of where new or potential members are in their political development, so must our new comrades come to understand that they would be part of a multi-dimensional project that is long-term. It is so long-term that while we dream of being a part of a thriving socialist society in our lifetime, odds are that we will not.
People may come to a DSA meeting searching for quick answers. We will not have them. What we have is an ideological framework through which to view the world, understand its issues, and consider solutions. This framework is directly opposed to the capitalist worldview that is thrust upon us from birth and manipulates our thoughts until we free ourselves from its control. It, alongside our dependence on mass democratic participation, is what makes a socialist organization unique from others that one may be tempted to get involved with.
Still, true to life, organizing has its ebbs and flows. There are indeed fast-paced moments of reaction and stretches where we are running hot for months on more forward-looking campaigns. But even more, among the skirmishes, there are lulls. Times we must ideate. Times we must plan. Times we simply need to take a breather and be in community with one another.
We will not have the answers, but together we will discover them through successes and failures, and through that struggle, we will build lasting solutions.
We try to run our organization as closely to the society that we want to see. DSA is member-driven. Our full-body membership is the highest decision-making body for local chapters. What we do is what we decide to do together. Our leaders help suggest, not command. They are the wheel, not the engine that powers, not the gas that fuels. For chapters to thrive, members new and experience must dedicate time with intention to think of solutions, bring forth ideas, make decisions, and actively participate en masse.
DSA is your home for the long-haul. We burn as embers, red hot with the potential to ignite in glorious blaze, understanding, too, that we will always return to a state of delicate glow with our comrades until we determine the next opportunity to catch fire.
Venceremos,
Greg
