Endorse AOC? HELL NO!

NYC-DSA is holding a vote on whether or not to re-endorse Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for the November elections. Her seven years in office are evidence enough that no socialist should support this Democrat under any circumstances—she voted to spike the rail strike and couldn’t even get to the left of Marjorie Taylor Greene on defunding the Zionist killers. She campaigned for Genocide Joe and told the world he and Killer Kamala were working “tirelessly to secure a ceasefire,” while they gave Israel bombs to kill Palestinian babies and brutalized pro-Palestinian demonstrators at home. Endorse AOC? HELL NO! This imperialist Democrat should be driven out of DSA!

AOC’s recent pledge to vote against all arms to Israel is a classic case of too little, too late. It’s as if she suddenly woke up from a deep sleep to discover a genocide is going on, but we know better. Ever since October 7, she has time and again aligned herself with the Democratic Establishment. Now that she spots an opening to snag the party’s presidential nomination, she is looking to capitalize on shifting public opinion against genocide and war and carve out a lane for herself.

But don’t be fooled: support for Israel is a red line for the Democrats, because the Zionist state is a linchpin of U.S. interests in the Middle East. AOC wants to play in the Democratic big leagues. She is not preparing to declare war on the Zionists in her own party, much less the Israeli theocracy. Her equation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism tells you as much. Instead, she is preparing to lure voters disaffected with life under Trump into going for the Democratic Party of economic ruin and Palestinian genocide. It’s even conceivable that her Establishment peers will not give her too much hassle about how she votes, to save her the embarrassment of tears. They would do so knowing full well that Israel will get its arms and in recognition of her service to the party and its push to return to power. Once at the helm again, the Democrats will oversee the continued strangulation of the Palestinians by whatever means suits them at the time.

What kind of victory is it for socialists that the strikebreaker and pro-imperialist fraud AOC is primed once again to be the face of “socialism” for working people and the oppressed in Congress? It is no victory at all. AOC is not some unknown like Zohran was; she has been a prominent figure in the liberal Dems for years now. Workers hate liberal Democrats like AOC, who proclaimed that things would get better if working people cared more about others and voted for Biden, setting them up for a big fall. Continued association with AOC will further discredit socialists as little more than liberals in the eyes of workers.

AOC’s trajectory from widely touted socialist wunderkind to kept oppositionist should be a graphic warning to every DSAer: there is no way to oppose imperialism or Zionism while a representative of a party of the billionaires. They pull the strings and set the party agenda. Socialists who want to remain true fighters for the workers and oppressed must not ensnare themselves in this sticky web. And AOC is so tightly wrapped in the capitalist spiders’ silk at this point that she is a lost cause. To prevent socialism from suffering further setbacks as a result, the best thing the DSA can do now is to cut all ties to AOC, beginning with voting NO on her endorsement.

DSA Left on AOC: When Cynicism Passes for Politics

For years, the DSA Left denounced AOC’s betrayals, wrote resolutions to censure her, argued against endorsing her nationally, and then…went gaga for her the minute she made this meaningless pledge. Predictably, AOC wasted no time making her position clear: she praised the Iron Dome for saving lives and claimed that Israel is perfectly capable of funding it themselves, putting her on the same page as arch-Zionist Rahm Emanuel. Then much of the Left quickly backtracked. The DSA Left has no principled criteria for whether or not to endorse a candidate, as shown in the seesawing between praise and perturbation, generating whiplash among the Left caucuses’ supporters. For now, it seems like many will vote against endorsing AOC, but they’re only one well-worded tweet away from getting duped again.

The “standards” the Left has discovered to justify not endorsing AOC after initially heaping praise on her and claiming a victory reveal the cynicism underlying the whole “dirty break” project. She didn’t endorse a whole host of Democrats DSA is also supporting? That is why socialists shouldn’t support her? It would be funny if it weren’t such an obvious political dive. The Left wants to have its cake and eat it too. They want Dems they can call socialists in high places and claim these electeds are paving the way for socialism, but they also want to be able to keep their r-r-revolutionary street cred by proposing one resolution after another about opposing Zionism, supporting socialism, etc.

Real standards are needed for socialists to even consider endorsing a candidate. When Zohran was running for mayor last year, we proposed the following minimal criteria: no financing from or affiliation with the Dems, oppose Zionism, fight for black liberation and open all police archives! Any real socialist should be able to abide by these standards without a second thought, and each of these draws a class line against capitalist interests. Contrast this with the cynical reasoning of “she doesn’t meet with us” and “she won’t campaign for Democrat XYZ.”

To its credit, the DSA Left set something of a standard at the last national convention, when passage of the resolution “For a Fighting Anti-Zionist DSA” made support for Israel an expellable offense. But despite all the celebration, nothing has ever come of it. In effect, the DSA Left picked a fight outdoors with the schoolyard bully, only to pray for rain and leave before the start time. This might puff up the Left for a moment, but it does nothing to advance the fight for a free Palestine or to transform the DSA into a fighting anti-Zionist organization. In fact, it is an invitation to the Right to keep walking all over the Left. Unless the Left takes the plunge to break unity, it risks losing itself to the Right, and Zionism will remain the public face of the organization. That must not be. Let’s have the courage of our convictions and signal that we will actually fight for anti-Zionism by voting down AOC’s endorsement and taking steps to enforce the convention resolution.

Where is the DSA Left going? The Left caucuses wouldn’t break with the Dems while they carried out a genocide in Gaza. They found every excuse in the book to condemn actual working-class candidates running independently of and against the Dems (see the ridiculous arguments against DSA endorsing Kshama Sawant in Seattle). They dropped any pretense of “accountability” entirely to elevate Zohran. Now they rehabilitate AOC, then get cold feet and backtrack, all the while engaging in the basest sophistry to lay the groundwork for supporting an AOC presidential campaign in 2028. Unless there is a sharp course correction, the Left will continue shifting to the right and the aspirations of those who joined DSA because they saw it as a vehicle for building a socialist movement will continue to be dashed.

The only people who can fundamentally stop the Left’s shift to the right are the rank-and-file members of the Left caucuses themselves. DSA Leftists: Fight in your caucus for a NO vote on endorsing AOC! While minimal, this would present a real opportunity to stop the slide to the right, allow coordination between leftists on a principled basis, regardless of which caucus they are part of, and open the door to real debates on what kind of strategy is needed to go forward.