Eight DSA members will be in the new Congress and their mandate is unmistakable. Tens of millions of people did not vote for a blue tsunami just to go back to the pre-Trump capitalist status quo under Joe Biden.
Support for universal healthcare, ending all US military aid to Israel, abolishing ICE, a nationwide moratorium on all data center construction, and other key parts of democratic socialist candidates’ platforms is extremely high. But despite relief that Trump was trounced in the midterms, everybody knows corporate establishment Democrats aren’t going to deliver on those.
That’s why the newly elected democratic socialists should absolutely NOT vote for Hakeem Jeffries to be the new Speaker of the House. Instead, they need to use their positions of authority in Congress to build a mass movement outside Congress to win the progressive demands they campaigned on, alongside working-class people who have made it clear that we’re done with business as usual. With mass struggle, both Trump and the Democratic establishment’s corporate agenda can be defeated.
Priority #1: Build A Movement
No amount of moral appeals or clever arguments is going to convince Chuck Schumer or other establishment Democrats to support Medicare for All or abolishing ICE. The only power that democratic socialists and progressives in Congress can rely on will come directly from the strength of our movement.
The first order of business must be building a fighting movement for the basic things that working families and young people need. The democratic socialists should identify a few key priorities and publicly outline a clear plan to fight for them, beginning now. They could include a nationwide moratorium on data centers, a federal $25/hour minimum wage, transition to 100% renewable energy, free universal healthcare including gender-affirming care and abortion, abolishing ICE, cutting police budgets to fund public education and affordable housing, and ending US military aid to Israel. These are not things that socialists can merely “deliver” but through building a mass working-class struggle can help to win.
If they hold sit-ins in corporate Democrats’ offices and even on the floors of Congress, if they hold rallies outside the Capitol when what’s happening inside is indefensible, it will serve as inspiration for ordinary people to fight outside the halls of power, in the streets, their schools, and their workplaces. But if they cower in the face of the Democratic establishment, it will only serve to demobilize and demoralize the movement outside.
A first step can be mass organizing meetings in every major city called by democratic socialist and progressive elected officials, alongside labor unions, DSA chapters, and other community and student groups. Coming out of these meetings, the first day for the new Congress could be marked with rallies in DC and across the country. This could be the launch of a mass organizing campaign against the billionaires and for our working-class demands, to make clear that the democratic socialists in Congress have hundreds of thousands behind them if they are prepared to fight.
Don’t Bend To The Establishment
While the Democratic establishment is under pressure to pay lip service to “affordability,” they wholeheartedly oppose the type of movement needed to pry any meaningful concessions from the billionaires and the bosses. To win the things working people need, democratic socialists need to operate independently from corporate politicians. The new DSA electeds should form a “Socialist Bloc” and agree to strategize, organize, and cast votes together as a unit. Left-wing union leaders, DSA chapters, and representatives from movements like those against ICE, war, and data centers should have a formal say in these decisions.
The formation of a “Socialist Bloc” would be a step toward building the new working-class party we so badly need, linked to a mass organizing campaign for key demands involving fighting unions, DSA, and other community activists and organizations.
Taking a class struggle approach in Congress means no backroom deals with the Democratic establishment or with Trump. The post-election victory lap for the Democrats has been interrupted by debate over whether Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer should hold the top positions for the party in Congress. Over a million people, clearly fed up with the corporate Democrats, have signed a petition calling on House Democrats to reject Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker of the House.
Don Leonard, a newly elected Congressman from Ohio, reported that Democratic Party leaders threatened to make his life “a living hell” if he didn’t vote for Jeffries. This has pulled back the curtain on the mafia-like methods that the party establishment uses (and will continue to use!) to enforce their pro-corporate rule. Committee assignments will certainly be withheld from those who don’t fall in line. But gains for the working class have never been won because the right people are on the right committees. They’re won because our movements are strong.
Meanwhile, eleven House Democrats did not even show up to the vote regarding impeaching “Secretary of War” (war criminal in chief) Pete Hegseth. The reality is Jeffries and the rest of the establishment are more concerned about crushing left-wing opposition within their own party than fighting the right.
Democratic socialists should never vote for corporate politicians and instead they should run one of their own for Speaker. Even without winning, it would put the party establishment on notice that the democratic socialists are not just going to roll over and act as left cover for corporate Democrats. Other red lines that socialists should never cross are voting for a single dollar more in military funding or a dime in cuts to social programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Further red lines should be democratically discussed and debated in DSA and wider movements.
Unfortunately, there are signs that many of the DSA and other progressive electeds’ instinct is to compromise—for example El-Sayed’s warm welcome to Obama and Harris on the campaign trail. Several of the newly elected democratic socialists in the House have expressed that they will or are open to voting for Jeffries as Speaker. Whether on this or other issues, the strength of the movement we build can push them to change course. If they are going to be effective in fighting for the interests of working-class people, progressives and socialists need to declare war on the political establishment, not cozy up to them. We should also not forget that it was eight years of Obama and four years of Biden that led to Trump’s two terms. It is precisely the corporate politics of the Democratic Party that provide fertile ground for the far right to grow.
Lessons From AOC & The Squad
The type approach that’s needed today flows directly from lessons of the past. In 2018, riding off the momentum of Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential primary bid, what became known as “the Squad” was elected to Congress: AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley. Today, we have something of a Squad 2.0 entering Congress, with four times the number of DSA members (in the first Squad, only AOC and Tlaib were actually DSA members) and a wider array of non-DSA progressives in both the House and the Senate. This includes people like Abdul El-Sayed who calls himself a capitalist but is widely associated with this wing of the party and shares a similar platform.
In 2018, AOC in particular entered office with a bang. On her first day in Washington DC after being elected, before even being sworn in, she joined youth climate activists with Sunrise Movement in staging a sit-in in Nancy Pelosi’s office to demand she support a Green New Deal. This would have meant running the country on 100% renewable energy by 2050. AOC’s spokesperson at the time explained her participation, “She was elected as part of the movement, she intends to govern as part of the movement.” This is exactly what we need today.
But despite this promising start, over the eight years that followed, AOC and the Squad strayed from these activist beginnings and from parts of the platforms they ran on. For example, in August of 2019, AOC and Tlaib voted for the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019 which raised the cap on “defense” spending by $90 billion. In 2020, the whole Squad refused to force the vote in the House of Representatives on Medicare for All, which would have compelled Democrats to pick a side on this widely supported reform, thoroughly exposing corporate Democrats to their base. In 2022, the Squad, with the exception of Tlaib, voted to make a strike by 115,000 railworkers illegal, siding with the corporate railroad bosses. And in 2024, AOC was a headline speaker at the Democratic National Convention and promised that Kamala Harris was “determined to get a ceasefire” in Gaza, after nearly a year of being second-in-command while US imperialism supported Netanyahu’s genocide, to the tune of billions of dollars.
The question of how to hold elected officials accountable has been a topic of much discussion in DSA over recent years, including with regard to Zohran Mamdani. Now, decisions urgently need to be taken, and forming a “Socialist Bloc” that is accountable to DSA, fighting unions, and social movements can be a first step. Sunrise organized a sit-in in Chuck Schumer’s office on November 12, and none of the DSA electeds joined, unlike AOC in 2018. This needs to change. Socialist Alternative’s own ten years in office with an open revolutionary socialist on Seattle City Council hold relevant lessons for socialist elected officeholders today and the movements they can build.
Fight The Billionaires, Fight For Socialism
The midterms have shown real enthusiasm to fight back against Trump and the billionaires, but we can’t let it stop there. Thirty-three percent of all voters in the midterm elections ages 18-29 consider themselves democratic socialists. DSA has grown to over 130,000 members and is officially the largest socialist organization ever in the history of the country. The lessons from the last wave of democratic socialists in office show there is an urgent need for a new approach, but it won’t happen without massive pressure from below.
If the DSA electeds adopt the kind of unwavering, fighting approach outlined above, it will put them into immediate and unceasing confrontation with the establishment. That’s because class struggle politics cannot coexist in the same party as the likes of Chuck Schumer. The attacks will come from Trump too, as the FBI’s recent raid of Ilhan Omar’s home shows. There will be vicious redbaiting, sometimes even combined with outright racism, but this can be overcome with an approach that unapologetically defends all working and oppressed people while clearly identifying the bosses and the billionaires as the enemy.
Regardless of the approach taken by those in Congress, working and young people will need a class struggle approach to fight for our demands. The huge enthusiasm for socialist ideas needs to be channeled into building fighting movements and a new thoroughly working-class party, not weighed down by corporate lobbyists and establishment sabotage.
Over the past two years, millions of people have gone out in the streets to fight back against Trump’s attacks. Now the election has given him and his cronies a much-deserved black eye. But we don’t have a second to lose in the fight to take down Trumpism for good, and to win the socialist future we desperately need. Socialist Alternative fights to build working-class movements now against right-wing attacks and for major reforms, while connecting these to the need for a revolutionary struggle for an entirely new economic and political system—socialism. If you’re ready to fight for unapologetic class struggle, not only in the electoral arena but in our workplaces, schools, and the streets, and for a socialist system democratically planned in the interests of working people and the planet, join us today.