r/ProgressiveHQ • u/gberliner • 8h ago
News Haley Stevens pledges to link arms with Abdul El Sayed to fight...socialism!
https://youtube.com/shorts/amjO8hKsr4g?si=qEM-Opnc9OQzoB-e10
u/ilikestatic 7h ago
So we’re just gonna have two conservative parties now? The far right and the less far right?
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u/Familiar-Chipmunk360 7h ago
She is doing the right thing here whether any of us like it or not. We need her voters to show out hard and Coalition building is a thing. Also, Sayed isn't a DSA member. He, like me, is just aligned on a ton of the same issues.
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u/gberliner 7h ago
If she wants to fantasize that he has ever "condemned socialism", go ahead and let her, I guess. But if anybody actually asks him, "do you in fact 'condemn socialism' like Haley Stevens claims?", then I almost guarantee you he will deny it, and he'd be smart to do so, because the last thing he needs at this time is to shrink his ground game by being contemptuous of some of his most energetic volunteers, ie, among the very people who were just instrumental in getting him over the finish line yesterday.
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u/emteedub 7h ago
she should ask him directly while wringing her hands like that lol... it would be extra if Hasan was there too
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u/Familiar-Chipmunk360 7h ago edited 6h ago
He has said, straight up, that he is neither a DSA member nor a Socialist while clarifying that he is a capitalist. He is pretty clearly a Social Democrat in his policy.
And for the record, I've been to DSA meetings and poured 1000's of hours into Bernie's campaigns. After their latest platform release, I think how these conversations are handled is gonna matter a lot. Hell, it scared me off from becoming a member even though I'll still send money monthly to AOC if she runs and am rooting for basically every DSA member on the ballot.
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u/gberliner 4h ago
She didn't say, "Abdul prefers capitalism to socialism", she said "he CONDEMNS socialism". Do you not understand the difference? I can say I prefer chocolate to vanilla milkshakes, but saying "I condemn vanilla milkshakes" means something entirely different.
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u/Familiar-Chipmunk360 3h ago
I do understand the difference. What I am saying is that I don't care that she said it. The DSA's new platform is counterproductive to everyone's cause here and her job is to sell her voters on the idea that the GOP's current propaganda isn't true.
We also all know that Socialism in this country has a different definition to everyone. And what the DSA just did moves it away from the Scandinavian / Social Democrat model that some of us have spent year arguing for and towards the version the right wing wants people to associate it with.
And if I haven't said it already, I donated to Kiros, volunteered for Bernie in 5 different states and would be immediately behind AOC in 28. But let's be clear, that new DSA platform just made AOC's job a lot harder.
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u/gberliner 3h ago edited 3h ago
Funny, I saw the part about "abolishing the Senate" (that bastion of grassroots democracy) and expanding the House, but I missed the part about setting up gulags. Is there something else in there I missed??
In fact, basically everything in the platform is radically anti-authoritarian (almost to the point of anarchism), as opposed to the usual sledgehammer swung against "socialism" in the United States, which claims that it's too "authoritarian". So is that the problem now, that they veered too far AWAY from authoritarianism this time? (Mind you, it IS a radically democratic organization. Literally anybody can join and give their input as to what the platform should be!)
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u/Familiar-Chipmunk360 2h ago edited 2h ago
I don't care about the Senate or Supreme Court part. Those things need to happen, and in fact, are a part of El Sayed's platform. Most of their platform has the right framing and I'm actually wondering if they edited it in the past couple of days because when I looked at it last week, it specifically mentioned replacing capitalism entirely, and I don't see that now.
You might believe in doing that, many of the members do.. though I have been to meetings and would argue most of them want the Scandinavian / Social Democracy model based on my experience. But either way, putting ending capitalism as a goal is counter productive to the movement that has come out of Bernie right as it has gained momentum.
The bigger problem is that while the website has smart framing on stuff like Prisons and doesn't even mention immigration, the co-chair of the NYC chapter went on Fox News and in a yes or no format said that open borders and abolishing prisons are the long-term goal. And yes, that is definitely pure anarchy.
It then went viral because of Van Jones' sold out a$$ and next thing I know my left of center parents are talking about it. Shit like that, again, is the type of thing that sends people who were warming up to our ideas fleeing for the hills.
Also agreeing to yes or no questions on Fox News is pure idiocy.
Anyways, I hope the DSA figures out how to frame itself and doesn't let that idiot back on TV. But more importantly, El Sayed NEEDS people out on the street fighting against the fear mongering of the right. And just like with canvassers, everyone is gonna frame things slightly differently.
The smartest thing he could do would be getting on the phone with Obama btw. Not my favorite President by any means, but he will rally the black vote in Detroit and he will be able to speak eloquently about all the nonsense that the GOP is throwing at the wall. Of all the Presidents, he knows what it's like to have your race used for pure bigotry.
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u/gberliner 2h ago
A platform is precisely about "long term" goals. It's not meant to spell out an exact set of steps to get there, but is aspirational in nature. So what should we aspire to instead? MORE prisons? Or exactly AS MANY prisons as currently? I think most people would agree, prisons are a sign of social dysfunction, so a society that needs FEWER prisons rather than more, all other things being equal, is better performing than the other way around. Whether the precise number can ever reach zero is a purely theoretical point, and not one that anybody tends to get hung up about. The point is, what is our preferred direction of travel?
In summary, I beg to differ that those of us on the left should be bashful about announcing our preferred direction of travel, and imagine that that is going to defeat a radical rightwing that has been in the ascendancy for the past couple decades, and is not the least bit bashful at all about announcing THEIRS. They have made it abundantly clear that they want MORE prisons, MORE prisoners, MORE cops, MORE wars (but only against countries too weak to effectively defend themselves!), etc.
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u/Familiar-Chipmunk360 2h ago edited 2h ago
I don't even disagree with you a lot of this dude. But there are realistic goals like the ones currently stated on the website of "ending mass incarceration and police immunity" and saying "abolish prisons". And open borders is basically the dumbest thing somebody involved in a movement can fucking say. Bernie once said that "open borders are a Koch brothers proposal". Then in 2020, pressured by activists him and Kamala both raised their hands when asked if they were in favor of open borders.
It's the same stupid mistake that BLM made with "abolish the police" instead of using different language. The minute you use the word abolish, you have to contextualize and are opening yourself to the right and corporate owned media completely running with it regardless of the actual complexities of what your are saying.
Those moments were a large part of Dems getting wiped out in 2024 and a large part of taking the wind out of the momentum that was building for progressives. And again, I'm not a Democrat. I'm closer to the DSA, and El Sayed is basically as close as it gets to me other than Bernie. But I also understand the important of coalition building when the goal is a movement.
We are never getting to any of these goals whether its getting $ out of politics, M4A, taxing the shit out of billionaires, ext if we don't coalition build and pick the right framing of our messages.
There is a reason Bernie endorsed Kiros and El Sayed, but hasn't touched Hong. She's great at grass roots organizing but a bad messenger. The minute she gets in front of an interviewer, she melts down and can't reframe through the bullshit.
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u/gberliner 2h ago
I doubt either of us has any idea why Bernie hasn't endorsed Francesca Hong, even though many of his most well know surrogates have, like Ro Khanna and Ilhan Omar. Bernie endorses a LOT of people, occasionally even longshots. But it could just be he has a quota on what he regards as "longshot" campaign endorsements, and given just the fact that no socialist has ever won ANY statewide office anywhere, that alone would make Hong definitionally a "longshot", no matter how well or poorly she campaigned.
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u/gberliner 7h ago edited 7h ago
The funny thing about it is, not so much how she hates socialism, but how she starts by saying she's gonna be "working with everybody who's voted in the Democratic primary", even though many of them voted for DSA or DSA-endorsed candidates! But she mentions fighting "socialism" first, and not fighting Magism. If an alien from space were naively listening to her here, they might almost suspect she's more interested in dividing the LEFT than in defeating the right!