Fetterman immediately was endorsed by two large unions (steel workers and food service) representing 80000 Pennsylvanians. Within just two days of announcing his candidacy he has received 37000 small dollar donations from all 67 counties in Pennsylvania and all 50 states.
Fetterman was endorsed by Bernie Sanders in all of his election cycles and was one of the only people elected to high office in Pennsylvania to endorse Sanders for president in 2020.
Oh course! I'm way past expecting electoralism to directly bring us material gains at this point, but every failure of demsocs/socdems only brings more people to our position. How many fewer people would be here had Bernie not run?
there are many people who also burn out or just shrug their shoulders when this shit happens.
Bernie's campaign wasted millions of dollars. imagine that in a strike fund.
Bernie didn't win, but his campaign wasn't a waste. Look at where the leftist ecosystem (people, non-electoral organizations, elected officials, media outlets, etc.) is today vs. where it was before Bernie's first campaign. There's no comparison. And it's not solely attributable to material conditions deteriorating, either: people getting the short end of capitalism don't automatically become leftists. There's real value to having someone force leftist ideas into the political mainstream and put forward leftist ideas that desperate people can buy into. The number one thing the left needs right now is tens of millions of more leftists, and the Bernie campaign was great for starting people down that path.
And as cool as Bernie's war chest would be as a strike fund, we're not at the point where people would donate that sort of cash to that sort of project. It's not really useful as a comparison.
But, they did. They had the money. Then they used it to run a basically traditional electoral campaign, instead of a symbolic communist one. And after all said and done, I believe most of the leftover cash went to democrats in other races, correct me if i'm wrong.
He ran substantially to the left of mainstream Democrats and managed to put together a serious campaign while doing so. Considering no one's managed even that much since -- What, the 80s? The 60s? -- I don't think "he should have ran as a communist" is a very good criticism.
As for his leftover campaign funds, there are laws about how he can spend them, and he had good reasons to follow those laws instead of flouting them.
No, you misunderstand what I meant by that, or I miscommunicated. I mean that, he should have ran with the same rhetoric, but instead of spending money, just funnel it into a fund, and then use that fund for other purposes after he loses.
Most of the money came from small donors. A lot of it would have still come in regardless of whether they had spent the money the way they did or not. The movement for bernie assembled because there was pre-existing resentment from obama's failures, not from bernie's political acumen or the people directly running the campaign.
As far as those laws....I think there's ways around that, the president just flouted them and it seems it's legal.
It's all of the above. Organizing people takes real effort and skill even if they're primed to hear your message by the failures of capitalism. Consider how many people hate the symptoms of capitalism but don't spontaneously become leftists or spontaneously form leftist organizations.
As for why it's not smart for Bernie to just openly break campaign finance laws: First, capitalist reaction to someone who generally serves capital (Trump) will not be the same as capitalist reaction to someone who challenges it (Bernie). Look no further than how laws are enforced against BLM protesters vs. how they're enforced against right-wing cranks. Second, a lot of the people Bernie (and his successors) appeal to don't want someone who wipes their ass with the law, even if it's for a good cause. Trump's base doesn't care when he does this stuff because they already know he's a piece of shit; Bernie might not get the same pass because he comes off as a generally decent person.
It does look like it's theoretically legally possible from my layman's POV, but also I'm pretty sure the book would have fallen on any leftist that tried to do this.
I think a lot of you are just shitting on this alternative history because of continued attachment to electoralism and a refusal to question bernie as a public figure.
Honestly thanks for bringing it up because it's very possible, it's something I actively try to fight in my analysis. Canvassing as a new leftist for Bernie has an undeniable emotional attachment to the project.
But I also think we need to look at it as a reflection of the weakness of the left today. We're just witnessing the beginnings of class consciousness. In a country like the US, it's pretty expected that this beginning will take the form of not-really-that-anti-imperialist soft democratic socialism / social democracy. The fact that we had that at all was surprising to me.
But yeah I think it's important to decouple our Bernie support from our material analysis. To have more far-left politics and supporting Bernie, it was definitely silly to describe him as "hiding his power level" etc, but I think it was still a good unifying factor of many tendencies in a time when the far left has 0 power. I understand the historical danger of allying with imperialist socdems, but I do think it's the only thing possible currently in the US. Hakim brought some of this up in V*ush's stream from his ML standpoint, that social democracy in the US is worth fighting for even if you're not a socdem, as long as the end goal is anti-imperialism.
I don't know, I think getting roped into the big ol' chess game isn't...worth it. i'd rather focus my energy on building solidarity outside of the political system, rather than convince working class people to engage with it (eg, canvassing for social democracy). but i mean, it's just my personal opinion.
Despite what I said above I do totally agree with this, and it's hard to square these ideas. For example in retrospect, the labor I spent on Bernie (wasn't a huge amount or anything) would have been better spent organizing and radicalizing my union, which I previously wasn't active in at all. But ironically the Bernie run is primarily what led me to this idea (tbf maybe not the Bernie run, maybe it's the general specter haunting USA) :gold-communist:
Sometimes there is a difference between knowin the path, and walking the path. but eventually, we must join the same road.
Excellent quote comrade Morpheus.
Bernie attempted to take over the Dem Party and destroy the donor influence in the party. Remaking the DNC would bring enormous change. I think it was worth the effort, but I just wish he had fully plunged the knife into the party instead of being consumed by it. The more people who realize electoralism is a dead end the better.
Those people aren't going to be organizing unions or doing mutual aid anyway.
I agree there are much more valuable places to direct money and effort. Unfortunately many people still believe in electoralism. Before they can come to a position where they reject electoralism in favor of more productive efforts, they must embrace socialism.
OK, how about this reasonable alternative choice the bernie campaign could've made:
spend as little money as possible, collect as much as possible, save it, know that they will lose anyway, and then use 80+% of those millions as a strike fund for unions that endorsed them.
This is the kind of campaign i would volunteer for. Not the one they ran. We need to take rich (which, to me, who makes less than a grand a month, is most everyone in the US) liberal's money and tell them it's for a good cause that makes sense to them. Just my two cents.
how do you think you collect the money without campaigning. do you think he would’ve collected so much if he wasn’t trying to win and if people didn’t want to make him president. i don’t think your idea really makes sense tbh
you campaign, you just don't spend much money while campaigning, and you tell people you're raising money for a movement not a campaign, so you can spend the money on something....actually important and lasting. i don't know how else to explain this? Whatever, it's irrelevant, elections are foolish wastes of time like, just like my ex. I'm going to go cry about her now.
Are you allowed to use campaign money like that?
Pretty sure the answer is a big no.
I understand OP's thinking that money was wasted on the electoral campaign, and part of me agrees w her - but there aren't really very smart ways to participate in electoralism with an intention to ultimately subvert it. I think running demsoc/socdem electoral campaigns is a good thing leftists are doing. Sure we could all pool our resources together to fund strike funds & mutual aid groups instead, and it would have resulted in significantly better material circumstances than an electoral campaign. But at the same time, participating in electoral movement building while agitating against the establishment is important training ground for leftist orgs. There's no reasonable hope that a Leninist can rise to power at the moment (look at PSL who decided to back Bernie, though I'm not sure if it extended beyond critical support into canvassing or anything).
I think at a time when socdems and Leninists completely lack power, an electoral campaign is a good idea for all of us. I definitely don't regret working w DSA to canvass for Bernie, M4A, GND etc, even though I don't consider myself a social democrat - I still think that's the kind of consciousness that needs to be raised, and I like to think I played a small role in that. I'm not convinced that there's a feasible alternative where we could have done more.
I'm not under any illusion that Bernie would seize the means - but I think Bernie in power would have at least done SOMETHING to limit US imperialism. Obviously in retrospect, the missing ingredient is an organized & militant working class, but I think that's the case with every possible scenario you could play out, including any kind of nation-wide strike fund. We can't rely solely on our own crowdsourced charity to sway large swaths of the working class, the same way we can't rely solely on an electoral campaign.
I'm still learning a lot so I'm not writing this with much confidence, but that's my DSA-aligned broad take on electoralism I suppose. Forgive me as I continue reading some Lenin.
i mean, trump just did that, but for his indebted businesses, and i don't see anything coming of that specifically for him.
And here's the thing; this money could have been used as STIMULUS CHECKS during covid.
It was perfectly timed for that. Imagine voters in swing states getting checks from bernie after he drops out, along with something inviting them to their local DSA chapter etc. There's a reason that Trump fought so hard to get his name on the stimulus checks, that shit matters politically when the economy does another oopsie.
Political instincts in the bernie camp were...bad. I'm sorry, but we can't improve it if we can't retroactively critique it.
I responded to you in another comment before you posted this - but damn I would really love to see the feasibility of this. Upon quick googling I found this on fec.gov
According to this what you're proposing would actually be totally possible. I'm 99% sure the state would find a way to ratfuck it of course, but it would have been worth it regardless.
Obviously this was never Bernie's aim so there's not much that can be applied in retrospect. But it's a very interesting idea and interesting critique.
Thanks for not immediately shooting down my point of view, it was nice to be validated that i'm not a useless idiot with no good ideas tonight. this has been a difficult week. i hope yours goes better than mine has, comrade.
I approach this website knowing that I don't know much, so I stay very humble during discussions. I pull everything out of my ass so I constantly fight my urge to be defensive. Your idea is half baked, but no more half baked than mine, so I'm glad you're being critical.
I'm sorry about your difficult week comrade. My DMs are open any time. Hope things are looking up for you today <3
thanks , you take care