Bernie is a dream come true for those of us in DSA (Democratic Socialists of America). One of the things that is so heart warming about all this is the fact that we have been there working toward this for quite some time. This is a great article in Salon by Eric Lee (MAY 8, 2015) that you may have missed.The socialist revolt that America forgot
What bears mentioning about Sanders’ run, however, is that it is not the first time a prominent socialist has considered a bid for the Democratic nomination. To understand the significance of Sanders’ candidacy, it’s worth flashing back to the summer of 1978, as liberal Democrats were growing increasingly disillusioned with Jimmy Carter’s presidency.
It is time to remember one of the greatest American Socialists of my lifetime
Michael Harrington
By the early 1970s, the governing faction of the Socialist Party continued to endorse a negotiated peace to end the Vietnam War, an opinion that Harrington increasingly believed was no longer viable. The majority changed the organization's name to Social Democrats, USA. After losing at the convention, Harrington resigned and, with his former caucus, formed the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee. (A smaller faction associated with peace activist David McReynolds formed the Socialist Party USA).
In 1982, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee merged with the New American Movement, an organization of New Left activists, forming the Democratic Socialists of America. This organization remains the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International, which includes socialist parties as diverse as the Swedish and German Social Democrats, Nicaragua's FSLN, and the British Labour Party. Harrington was the Chairman of DSA from its inception until his death.
I am a charter member of DSA and when I joined I was already a "veteran" of the struggle since 1965.
History is a tricky item at times like this. The changes in attitudes among people who consider themselves "liberal" or "left" is always something that is of interest to those of us who have been there all along. If you care at all about how we got here maybe a little history is in order. Read on below.
It was never easy to be both a democrat and a democratic socialist. The problem has always been not so much the red baiting but the expectation that we would have to move right rather than the democratic party move left.
So as the 1980 presidential election drew near, many were hoping that Senator Edward Kennedy would step in, as his brother Robert had done a decade before, and run against a sitting Democratic president. But Kennedy was cautious, despite some polls that showed him with a significant lead over Carter.
At the time, Harrington, a social critic and author of “The Other America” – a book widely credited with convincing President John F. Kennedy that poverty was still an issue in America – was trying to build up an explicitly socialist wing of the Democratic Party. Harrington and his supporters had won over the venerable (and tiny) Socialist Party a decade earlier to the view that if they were serious about politics, it was time to stop running independent candidates. Their argument was a simple one: The Socialist vote had declined from a peak of around a million in the years around World War I to just a couple of thousand by the 1950s. If socialists were ever going to leave their mark on the country, it would have to be done through the Democratic Party.
So we have been there and we have been working hard to build a democratic party that would actually serve the people rather than swindle the people for the benefit of the oligarchy.
The DSOC wanted Kennedy to run against Carter from the Left, but until he made up his mind, the possibility was floated of a Harrington candidacy. To many of us, it seemed the next logical step, once you’d decided to work inside the Democratic Party. At a DSOC National Board meeting in November 1978, its leaders gathered in Philadelphia to discuss whether this was a good idea.
Harrington himself seemed enthusiastic. A brilliant public speaker, he discussed where and how the campaign might be launched. He imagined standing in the rubble of the South Bronx and there proclaiming the need for a new vision for America. (A similar idea was embraced decades later by John Edwards, who announced his 2008 candidacy standing in the ruins of post-Katrina New Orleans.) We imagined Harrington’s announcement, giving the speech of a lifetime, getting press coverage as we’d never gotten before. It was exhilarating.
Things had been in a kind of muddle after the movement was co-opted by the electoral campaigns of Gene McCarthy and George McGovern. It is hard to convey how it was to live through all this but suffice it to say it was rough. The events of 1980 had that as their context among many other things.
Harrington made it clear that he was not intending to take DSOC into the political wilderness and that he would withdraw his candidacy the moment Kennedy announced. But that weekend in Philadelphia he was persuaded to not take the chance, to keep the organization united, and the idea was dropped. For me and many others, it was hugely disappointing.
Kennedy did, in the end, challenge Carter, but he entered the race too late and Carter won re-nomination. Carter’s defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan ushered in an era of conservative dominance of national politics that lasted for decades. Less than 11 years later, a still youthful Harrington died of cancer.
For those of you who shared these times with me you may have a different perspective. For those of you who were not aware of this history, it may be of help to you to understand part of the story of how we got here.