Democratic Socialists make headway in
U.S. after Trump's win
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[February 21, 2017]
By Justin Mitchell
DETROIT (Reuters) - For David Green, head
of the Detroit chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA),
Donald Trump's victory in November was both distressing and cause for
optimism in his quest to pull the Democratic Party to the left.
"We need a party that’s open to progressive forces, and that’s why we
have to elect progressive leadership within the party," Green said,
while attending the Michigan Democratic Party's spring convention in
Detroit earlier this month.
Membership in the DSA, founded in 1982, has surged since Trump's
election on Nov. 8, putting the movement in a position to make inroads
on the Democratic Party's energized left. The membership gains are
fueled by supporters of Bernie Sanders, the U.S. Senator from Vermont
who sought the Democratic presidential nomination last year.
The DSA is not a political party, but it supports many of the same
short-term policy positions as the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party:
a $15 minimum wage, single-payer healthcare, free college, and
opposition to free-trade deals.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2017/Feb/21/images/ads/current/brickey_sda_2017.png)
But unlike most mainstream Democrats, the DSA also has a long-term
vision of a democratic socialist society in the vein of countries like
Sweden and Denmark, where workers have a more direct say in how their
jobs and the economy are run, alongside a more robust public sector.
Since November, national membership has almost tripled to about 17,000.
Its leaders have said meetings are packed and new chapters are cropping
up nationwide, including in Rust Belt states such as Michigan, Wisconsin
and Ohio, where Trump scored upset wins over Democratic candidate
Hillary Clinton to take the White House.
The DSA's membership is tiny in the grand picture. In the 31 states plus
the District of Columbia where party registrations are tallied, the
Democratic Party alone has about 45 million members.
Hans Noel, a political scientist at Georgetown University, said while
the DSA's numbers remain small, its growth reflects a trend of the
Democratic Party's left wing gaining clout after Clinton's loss. Many
analysts said her defeat was at least partly due to her inability to win
over Sanders' supporters.
Noel notes the election this coming weekend of a new chair for the
Democratic National Committee, seen as a dead heat between Sanders
supporter Keith Ellison, whom DSA supports, and Clinton supporter Tom
Perez. Noel said it is not only a key inflection point but also a
demonstration of the progressive bloc's newfound power.
"They're doing more mobilization and organization within the party ...
all of the candidates now feel this is a wing of the party they feel
they have to take seriously," Noel said in an interview. "That kind of
action is probably going to play out in internal party conflict over the
next two to three years."
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![](../images/022117pics/news_s31.jpg)
President Donald Trump gesture as he walks on the South Lawn of the
White House upon his return to Washington, U.S., after a weekend in
Palm Beach, Florida, February 20, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas -
![](../images/ads/current/richardson_lda_090916.png)
GALVANIZING EFFECT
The surge has buoyed the spirits of DSA officials including national
director Maria Svart, who says the surge in new members began
immediately after Trump's victory.
“The day after the election, our membership coordinator turned to me
when she looked at her computer in the morning and said 'I can see
the moment when Donald Trump announced that he’d won,'" Svart said.
“People started joining online in massive numbers.”
Trump's election has galvanized not only the DSA but other
left-leaning political groups. Since the Jan. 20 inauguration,
protests against his policies and pronouncements have drawn tens of
thousands of people nearly every weekend, providing new
opportunities for the DSA and other groups to attract supporters.
“We’re not going to work within the Democratic Party, but we’re not
going to work totally outside it either,” Svart said in an
interview, adding that the DSA would eventually like to run its own
candidates for office.
At the Michigan Democratic Convention, Green and his DSA chapter
were successful in getting several members elected to the Michigan
Democratic Party's state central committee for the first time in
over two decades. In January, Sanders supporters in California
managed to elect a majority of delegates to that state's party
leadership.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2017/Feb/21/images/ads/current/mks_lda_new_generic_2016.png)
"State politics is where a lot of policy is done so it matters who's
running for these offices,” Georgetown's Noel said. “Control over
who gets to be candidates is huge and these people have control over
that in these positions."
(Editing by Frank McGurty and Matthew Lewis)
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