Laura Wadlin is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and a leading member of its Bread and Roses caucus. She spoke to Green Left’s Susan Price about the challenges in building a political alternative.
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What is the political situation in the United States leading up to the election in November?
Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestinians continues to be on the minds of many, although the activity of the Palestine solidarity movement has been in a lull since June when the last of the student encampments dispersed or were dismantled.
Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party presumptive nominee for president after Joe Biden dropped out, which upended the liberal malaise and made the competition with [Donald] Trump competitive again. On the national level, issues that weigh heavily are immigration (both candidates are trying to seem “tough” on border policy), inflation, abortion rights and transgender rights.
The left wing of the labour movement continues to make gains, and exciting drives like Starbucks Workers United (SBWU), the United Auto Workers’ (UAW’s) campaign in the South and Teamsters’ Amazon organizing are still expanding.
But most of the labour movement — both the more conservative business union leadership and the more progressive reform leadership — united around Biden and are now pivoting to supporting Harris. Like most liberal voters, they see the Democrats as the only way to block viscerally anti-labour Republicans from destroying labour’s gains, despite Democrats’ tepid support for labour.
What threats does a second Trump presidency present for working-class people?
Like any Republican president, Trump would make appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and other federal agencies that would roll back the already-modest regulations we've had under Biden. It's also likely Trump would enforce “tough on crime” and anti-immigrant policies as well as stoke violence and discrimination against trans people and deny them access to healthcare. “Project 2025” is the comprehensive vision for how the right can consolidate power under a Trump presidency, primarily through the expansion of authoritarian executive action.
The biggest impact to working class organising would be a widespread feeling of demoralisation and the fear of repression. Although Trump's victory in 2016 brought about a period of intense politicisation that was a huge boon to socialists and liberals, I wouldn't expect it to have that same effect again, or at least not with the same magnitude.
Many people believe a second Trump term will mean “the end of democracy” in this country. That fear is understandable, but it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if people lose hope and are less willing to fight. If Trump is president, our role as democratic socialists will be to model bravery and prove that the working class can win even under right-wing governments, much like the teachers’ strike wave in 2018‒19 showed.
What has been the impact on Trump's campaign since Harris became the presumptive nominee? Is Trumpism in retreat? What does this mean for the "uncommitted" movement?
Currently Harris’s campaign is benefitting from a surge of enthusiasm among liberal voters, especially now that she chose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her vice presidential running mate. Despite their mixed records in office (especially on Harris's side), they have solid progressive credibility among likely voters. Harris is polling better than Biden had been, and socialists are noticing organic interest among our family, friends, and coworkers in supporting her campaign. People believe she can win; it feels like a new race. But anything could change between now and November.
But even before Biden dropped out, Trump’s campaign wasn’t quite as energetic as it had been in 2016 or 2020. His social media presence isn’t nearly as strong, and there are hardly any right-wing demonstrations from groups like the Proud Boys anymore. It makes sense, considering the dissipation of QAnon, the federal prosecutions of January 6 protesters, Trump’s convictions and the lack of any particular triumph from his term in office to brag about.
That all said, he’s still a formidable opponent and his victory could be a boost of energy to the “populist” right wing. The reactionary ideologies that he represents are still alive and well, and the organised forces of capital and bigotry are using his candidacy as a vehicle for their ambitious agenda.
As for Uncommitted, their strength has been in their independence from the Democratic Party establishment, and we need that to stay strong. It may be tempting to believe that Harris will bring an end to Israel’s crimes, but support for war and Zionism is thoroughly bipartisan.
Harris reportedly made assurances on Palestine that were sufficient to garner the endorsement of the UAW, a union that has been on the leading edge of supporting a ceasefire, but she's already signaling she'll betray those assurances, maybe even before November.
It will be up to anti-genocide organisers to call attention to those betrayals so that there isn’t a false impression of Harris’s politics and a retreat from the grassroots pressure that has gotten us this far.
How is growing political polarisation and distrust towards traditional parties being reflected in US politics?
Identification as an “independent” is at a record high, “Democrat” identification is at a record low, and “Republican” identification is low and stagnant. RFK, Jr. [Robert F Kennedy junior] is the most popular third-party presidential candidate since 1996.
Young people are particularly disinterested in the major parties. It’s not difficult to see why: both parties have failed to implement virtually any major positive change in people’s lives in the past several decades.
But this poses an opportunity for socialists. Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaigns helped teach newly-radicalised young people that we can earn trust from other working-class people with a consistent message that calls out the elites and encourages people to demand dignity and a quality of life.
People want a team that will fight and can’t be bought, and we can be that team. But to do that, we will have to differentiate ourselves from the disappointments of the Democratic Party. And we will have to earn that role over time and with an organisation that persists beyond any individual candidacy.
How is the DSA orienting to November's election and to endorsing candidates? How are you organising your members?
DSA almost certainly won't make an endorsement in the presidential race. Our message is that “we need a serious alternative to the Republican Party’s proto-fascism and war on unions, immigrants, women and transgender people, and democracy itself — and an alternative to the Democratic Party’s complicity.”
The tireless efforts of the Palestinian solidarity movement set the stage for Biden to drop out, and it's absolutely a victory that his career is ending in disgrace. But Harris won't be much different unless we turn up the heat of left-wing pressure. It's our responsibility to build an opposition to capitalist establishment interests; few others will.
For congressional, state and local races, we are endorsing mostly our own members: DSA candidates like Rashida Tlaib who will energise chapters on the local level and will be good representatives of our vision and our organisation. Some chapters are also growing their ranks by campaigning for local and statewide ballot measures, like the initiative in Florida to protect abortion.
But we aren’t only focused on elections. We are also doubling down on our rank-and-file labour organising and helping lead social movements. DSA members played a key role in the reform caucus that just swept Amazon Labor Union’s first leadership elections, and the new president-elect is a DSA member. Members of our youth wing, YDSA, are currently running an annual labour training and are preparing to lead a Student Strike for Palestine.
This work, in combination with our electoral campaigns, is an integral part of how we grow the constituency for socialist politics across the US.
How would you assess the struggle to build the anti-capitalist pole in the US?
Anti-capitalism and socialism are alive in the US in a way they haven’t been in decades.
Occupy Wall Street and the Sanders presidential campaigns revived class politics. Millions of people have become politicised by Black Lives Matter and the Palestinian solidarity movement. Thousands of college and university students organised encampments to protest the genocide in Gaza and demanded divestment from Israel.
Young people are unionising and striking, and we have several organisations dedicated to helping them do it with a class analysis (like Labor Notes, Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee and the Rank and File Project).
DSA chapters across the country are raising the profile of socialism by running dozens of local candidates and developing relationships with left-leaning, militant unions.
Relative to other periods in history, it’s a good time to be on the anti-capitalist left. But we have lost some momentum. Politicisation is ebbing and fewer people are being directed towards socialism specifically. The radical environmentalist left is not a major political force like it was a few years ago.
Socialist figureheads like Bernie and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have increasingly acted on poor instincts and haven’t kept up pace with the movements that supported them, leaving DSA with hardly anyone who has a national platform to champion our vision.
Tlaib is a DSA member and is universally adored on the anti-capitalist left, but she is known nationally more as a Palestinian activist and a member of “the Squad” rather than as a socialist.
We need champions and leaders, and we’ll have to use every opportunity of politicisation to create them.