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.

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.