I must admit, I was naive. In my earlier piece, “In the Wake of the Election, Who Will Democrats Blame?” I noted how the Democratic establishment hadn’t blamed the left in the immediate aftermath of Harris’s defeat. Which was remarkable, because it had become old hat for the Party to insinuate every loss was due to the left menace. I did leave some wiggle room, though, when I wrote, “There is no blaming of the left to be found in these early reports from insiders and analysts. […] This doesn’t discount the chance that the Left will be blamed in part later on” [italics added]. Well, later on has arrived.
On November 19th, Newsweek ran an opinion piece by none other than Daniel Lubetzky, CEO of KIND snacks, whose net worth is estimated to be 2.3 billion dollars. In the wake of the Democrats’ failure to win the Presidency, keep the Senate, or even win the House, Lubetzky shared his point of view: it was the Left’s fault. And not just the Left in general, but specifically the Democratic Socialists of America. In his view, “the Democrats, a party of over 40 million registered voters, have been too eager to court the DSA’s fewer than 100,000 members. The party has allowed the DSA to set the terms of engagement on key issues like immigration and crime, with slogans like ‘open borders’ and ‘defund the police,’ making it all too easy for Republicans to tar their opposition.” This is a lie. If the DSA had been able to set the terms on those issues, we would have seen legislative movement from the Democrats. We haven’t.
Lubetzky, a billionaire capitalist, went on to excoriate the DSA for its wins within the Party by electing people like AOC, Rashida Tlaib, and more. He was frustrated that “the DSA’s people on the ground have shaped local Democratic Party platforms. In Denver, for example, a chapter of the Democratic Party endorsed the Marxist idea that ‘the economy should be democratically owned.’” Yes, the dangerous idea that the economy should have democratic input from the communities who contribute to and are affected by it. I wonder who is more afraid of such an idea, folks in the working class, or Lubetzky’s capitalist elite? Who would stand to lose and who would stand to gain from such a radical systemic change?
Finally, we get to Lubetzky’s specific accusation. The “DSA’s unpopular stances on immigration, crime, and Israel sank Kamala Harris’s bid for president, because she was perceived as weak on these issues.” I’m not sure how she could be portrayed as “weak” on immigration and crime, issues which she expressly took a hardened stance on; or Israel, as she continued to tow the Democratic line of basically saying, “it’s messy over there, however we will always send weapons to Israel.” But, Lubetzky isn’t alone in making this assertion that the Left is to blame for Harris’s apparent policy weakness. A former chief of staff for John Fetterman blamed the Democrats’ desire to “please all interest groups,” and cited the A.C.L.U., Sunrise Movement, and Working Families Party by name. But overall, Lubetzky’s argument is in the minority when it comes to post-mortem analyses of what went wrong for the Democrats.
The fact of the matter is, the vast majority of analyses looking back at Harris’s campaign still hold to what we’ve known from the jump: she was never able to differentiate herself from the Biden administration, her staff had serious internal disagreements, they spent funds extremely poorly, and she failed to offer any positive vision (especially when it came to the economy). So then why this sudden attempt to pin the Left as the bogeyman?
For one, Lubetzky is an extremely wealthy political centrist who probably flinches when he hears so many recent critiques pointing out that the Party was weak on a pro-working class economic message. As the CEO of a highly profitable corporation, he likely doesn’t want the Democrats to shift left on economic policy. He’s perfectly happy with the exploitative system that has afforded him two billion dollars, thank you very much.
Then, there is the other elephant in the room: Israel and Palestine. Throughout his piece, Lubetzky constantly refers back to DSA’s unwavering criticisms of Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, at one point calling DSA “anti-Semitic” and “pro-terror.” His conflagration of Israel—the state—with Judaism—the religion—is a common fallacy shared by many centrists and conservatives. Nevermind the fact that millions of Jewish people across the globe have criticized Israel, protested the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians, and demanded an immediate ceasefire. Are those Jewish people anti-Semitic, too?
Lastly, he blames DSA for inserting “identitarian” politics into the Democratic Party. According to our billionaire, that doesn’t play well with today’s audience. To this I say, he’s half right. Identity politics—when it’s portrayed as a competition between specific interest groups—doesn’t play well with a large swath of the electorate. There are convinced racist, transphobic, anti-immigrant, pro-life bigots who care more about cutting taxes for the rich than they do about funding public education. Trump can have them. And there are people who believe that it’s enough to sport kente cloths and kneel in the Capitol after George Floyd’s murder, instead of passing legislation to combat police brutality. Nancy Pelosi can have them. But socialists can walk and chew gum. We fight oppression in all its forms without settling for diversity in corporate board rooms. And we recognize that some of Trump’s votes were cast by black, latino, and white workers who are so desperate that they are hoping against hope that Trump “can fix it.” He can’t, but unless the Left can speak to the economic alienation driving them to the right, while simultaneously fighting each and everyone one of Trump’s attacks on oppressed people, we’ll have one hand tied behind our back.
After reading and considering Lubetzky’s piece, I’m starting to see it for what it is. It’s a desperate shot in the dark. A capitalist billionaire who represents a small elite clique who is afraid of how the overall narrative is playing out. He aims to downplay the rising interest in left-wing politics and socialism by striking up the tired old tune of “let’s blame the Left.” Talk about tone deaf: a billionaire writes an article telling the working class to shut up. The DSA (and the Left movement broadly) are growing. The next four years will be filled with fascistic policies and attempts to oppress rising interest in leftist theories and struggles, but the fact of the matter is the center cannot hold.
The Democrats will have to decide, do they keep painting the Left as the bogeyman, as an excuse to keep sliding rightward in a doomed attempt at winning elections? Or, as Bernie Sanders called for in his recent op-ed, will the establishment relent and admit that winning back portions of the working class they lost to Trump will require a more left-populist economic vision, one that offers actual change rather than the continuation of the gray drab neoliberalism that got us into this mess? I can’t say I’m hopeful, and if the Democrats refuse to budge, then who can blame elements of the working class for jumping ship to look for something different? In that case, the Left needs to be ready with its own independent alternative.
Pine & Roses is a volunteer working class publication supported by the Maine DSA. If you would like to learn more about the Democratic Socialists of America, and potentially get involved in its fight for greater equality, equity, social justice, and working class power, you can check out their website here, and visit their join us page to sign up!
