Eric Blanc

Great news: 1199SEIU has endorsed Zohran!

Here's a list of excellent books showing how doctrinaire rigidity rather than accommodationist opportunism has long been the US Left's biggest strategic stumbling block

Reading these with an open mind might change the way you look at US politics today

It would be great problem if DSA could grow big and strong enough for moderate opportunism to become our biggest internal obstacle

But unfortunately we're nowhere near that point yet

Obviously, external factors — two party system, racial-ethnic divisions, repression, etc. — weigh heaviest in explaining the US Left's marginality

But precisely because conditions have generally been so hard, sectarianism (not reformism) has been our biggest internal problem

US socialism's marginality was both a cause & effect of sectarianism

Unlike Lefts abroad, we've never gotten strong enough for the regime to have to try to integrate (rather than isolate & repress) us — or strong enough for our orgs to grow big conservatizing bureaucracies

Over and over, the biggest formations of American socialists —SLP, SP, CP, SDS, BPs— self-sabotaged themselves by prioritizing doctrine over pragmatic radicalism & by failing to flexibly adopt Marxism to America's concrete conditions

Can't afford to make the same mistake today

An openminded (rather than party line) reading of US history clearly shows that sectarianism rather than reformism has been by far the biggest flaw of organized socialists 🧵

"The core of NYC-DSA's campaigns is a deep belief, put into practice, that anybody interested in the campaign is able to doing almost anything for that campaign" — Grace Mausser

🙏🙏🙏

Grace notes that Zohran's campaign could not have scaled up with staff-intensive practices

Just as in worker-to-worker organizing, scaling up required training hundreds of field leads to take on tasks normally done by staff

Have confidence in the capacities of ordinary people!

Eli is starting to read Kessner's classic biography of La Guardia to think through how to make New York social democratic again

Just focusing on economic issues doesn't make you a populist

“It's the economy, stupid” was Carville/Clinton's slogan in 1992 & now ppl like Slotkin want to revive this bread & butter neoliberalism

Zohran is actually addressing workers' material needs by making the rich pay up

Big news: The NYC Central Labor Council - AFL-CIO just announced that it is endorsing Zohran

Getting all the unions on board with Zohran would go a very long way in preventing Cuomo or Adams from getting any real traction and it would make it much harder for the Democratic establishment to sabotage things

Fantastic news!

Every union that endorsed Cuomo (or remained neutral) should endorse Zohran ASAP

I asked my very smart lawyer friend how bad the SCOTUS decision is

It's bad BUT fwiw there are still some legal avenues to block Trump's illegal Executive Orders

Zohran has an amazing opportunity to show how a campaign's ground game can be sustained & deepened *after* an election

We'll need tens of thousands of New Yorkers actively organizing our neighbors & co-workers to demand the city council & governor support his 3 core policies

One of the biggest limitations of almost all electoral efforts—including Obama & Bernie's campaigns—is that they dismantle their volunteer armies after election day

Instead, Zohran could actively transform his huge GOTV machine into a deep organizing campaign to win his agenda

Glad that many centrist politicians/pundits & "anti-electoralist" leftists are now saying nice things about Zohran, but wish they'd also just admit the many ways this campaign challenged their priors

People who can't admit that are more likely to jump ship when things get hard

I honestly think it's good that people significantly to the right and left of Zohran and NYC-DSA are jumping on the bandwagon—it means we're winning, and we need as many people and as much support as we can get

Just spoke to 230 people on DSA's new member orientation, the vibes are impeccable 🌹

There’s a legit chance Mayor Mamdani could spur a unionization wave in NYC

Zohran's Historic Win: 16 Takeaways The oligarchy is not invincible

Zohran & NYC DSA spoke to millions & found ways to reach far beyond the echo chamber

After yesterday's win, the Left nationwide can make a real turn towards mass politics

If this campaign didn’t fit your ideological priors, maybe those priors are wrong

www.laborpolitics.com/p/zohrans-hi...

Leftists can’t defeat the old establishment — let alone overcome the Right — on their own. And mutuality cuts both ways: we can’t ally with liberals only when we’re in the lead

Zohran smartly adopted the best parts of the “abundance agenda,” cross-endorsed Lander, and framed his criticisms of Israel in the language of liberal equal rights

Pragmatic radicalism for the win

It took a liberal-Left alliance to defeat Cuomo. Big props to Lander for being a man of principle who refused to punch Left

At the same time, Zohran smartly rejected a widespread leftist tendency to treat liberals and liberalism only as ideological competitors to be fought

Zohran refused to drop his support for democratic socialism or his opposition to Zionist apartheid, but performative ultra-leftism was anathema to this campaign

Far from being a dogmatic ideologue, Zohran is actually a radical pragmatist

He couldn't have won had he not focused on bread-and-butter economic issues, spoken in a commonsense language, ran as a Democrat, dropped his support for defunding the police, & endorsed Lander 🧵

Zohran's Historic Win: 16 Takeaways The oligarchy is not invincible

The oligarchy is not invincible

www.laborpolitics.com/p/zohrans-hi...

This could've happened in the 2020 presidential primary had there been a similar liberal-left alliance around Bernie

Labor Could Swing NYC’s Election to Zohran How rank-and-file activists helped break their unions from politics-as-usual

Big props to the unions who took a risk and stood by working people by endorsing Zohran: DC 37, UAW 9a, Doctors Council SEIU, CIR/SEIU, UNITE-HERE Local 100, IATSE Local 161, PSC-CUNY, and Teamsters Local 804

www.laborpolitics.com/p/labor-coul...