DSA platform vs. DSA politicians

**Brian Lehrer** (0:05)
From WNYC Studios, I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my Daily Politics Podcast. It's Monday, August 17th.
Earlier this month, we launched an occasional series that we're calling America 251, Dialogue, Not Die a Tribe. America 251 because after the polarized bitterness of the country's 250th birthday year, let's actually listen to each other in year 251 Dialogue, Not Die a Tribe as a perennial value of the show and of public radio generally as we will continue to try to be a place where people who disagree with each other in good faith do actually listen to each other and interact in a constructive way. As it turns out, the divisions in this country are not just Democrat versus Republican, or right versus left, or even insider versus outsider, or rich versus not rich. Today, tomorrow, and Wednesday, we'll explore, we hope in a smart way, some current divisions within the conservative movement, within the Democratic Party, and within DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, and that's where we'll start. Even as DSA politicians like Zeron Mamdani, Melat Kyrgios, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others rise in prominence and influence, the DSA is engaged in determining exactly what it wants to be as it tries to actually win elections and then to actually govern rather than just be a kind of left wing think tank or activist group. For example, Axios had an article a couple of weeks ago called The DSA has had unprecedented success. It also has serious internal divisions. The New York Times this month had a story about the DSA National Summit in Chicago where members quote debated whether socialist candidates should be free to distance themselves from goals like abolishing prisons as they chase more seats this fall unquote from the Times. Maybe you've heard this 45 second clip of DSA National co-chair, Megan Romer being widely shared on social media now after her appearance on Fox.
So we're going to put up on the screen a few of the things that are part of your platform.

**Eric Blanc** (2:13)
And I want to ask you just give me sort of a true or on these.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:16)
Abolish the Senate.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:18)
True. Okay, replace the presidency and Supreme Court as we now know them.

**Eric Blanc** (2:24)
Yep.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:25)
Abolish ICE.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:28)
Absolutely.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:29)
Abolish borders and give amnesty to anyone currently in the US illegally. As a long term plan, yep.

**Eric Blanc** (2:36)
Defund the Pentagon. Absolutely.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:41)
Abolish prisons, at least in large part.
Yeah, again, that is part of a long term program. Yeah. Okay, so no prisons. Government or public ownership of most large corporations. Yeah, absolutely.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:57)
Megan Romer, DSA national co-chair with Fox's Shannon Bream. Certainly, you haven't heard words like most of those from Mamdani or Ocasio-Cortez, for example. In fact, and many people don't know this, the national DSA withdrew its endorsement of AOC two years ago. We'll explain why. So let's explore the dialogue taking place within the DSA right now, with Eric Blanc, Assistant Professor of Labor Studies at Rutgers, author of several books including We Are the Union, How Worker to Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big, published last year and his 2019 book Red State Revolt, The Teachers Strike Wave and Working Class Politics. He writes the Substack newsletter, Labor Politics, and is a member of the DSA's Bread and Roses Caucus, which caucus of the DSA he is in will be relevant during our conversation. Eric, always good to have you on with us. Welcome back to WNYC.

**Eric Blanc** (3:53)
Yeah. Thanks so much for having me on. As a disclaimer, I should say that this is me not speaking in name of Bread and Roses, but in an individual capacity.

**Brian Lehrer** (4:01)
Fair enough. We'll try to get to the viral Megan Romer clip in just a minute and its implications. But, and I know you gave us that disclaimer. Can we establish first where you are within the party? I see you are a member of the Bread and Roses Caucus. You acknowledge that. Would you describe what that is and its role in DSA as you see it?
Sure.

**Eric Blanc** (4:23)
I think the most useful way to frame the divisions in DSA is, there's broadly speaking a right wing and a left wing, and this was within the context of DSA, so it's just a very relative terms, right?
Overall, I would consider myself mostly sympathetic to the right wing. Bread and Roses is a center current, but I'm on the right wing of Bread and Roses. This gives you a sense of how complicated it is. Broadly speaking, on the right, people, they would self-identify more as mass politics, trying to reach out as broadly speaking in a way that makes as more legible, maybe to the broader numbers of people. I think on the left, the way they would see it is that they would see themselves as maybe more consistently revolutionary and more consistently socialist, thus they would look less prone to co-optation. That's how I think they self-identify. Those broadly speaking, I think the big divide is between the left and right, and some of the internal nuances are a little bit secondary to that.