in this case, as someone who spent 2018-2020 trying to push the org to hold electeds accountable at the local and national levels, the North Star position is actually the org policy. the org has decided that it will not and cannot threaten removal from the org if an elected deviates from the ostensible politics of the org. in our local context, the member in question took money from the Fraternal Order of Police and the chapter refused to even issue a reprimand. what do you know, once he won the election, he busted unions and shoveled money at law enforcement. shocking, really.

the reasons I heard for this basically cited the brand victory of an elected member of DSA. pragmatics demanded that electeds hew to the right so we just needed to accept that they were going to occasionally do things we didn't like - shifting "the Overton window" was enough reason to endorse bad candidates anyway. I hope I don't need to explain here why this position is so self-defeating.

I left the org once I was fully convinced that this was the majority position of the membership. it just can't accomplish much beyond winning a few seats so long as it insists on endorsing candidates without a care for how they behave once the endorsement is given. I'm not even saying they must go full democratic centralism - just set boundaries on how far right candidates are allowed to drift before they face sanction and expulsion. otherwise, the right is twisting their arms and the left is telling them "do what you have to".