First Published: Frontline, Vol. 4, No. 15, February 2, 1987.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Prominent members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the main organizational expression of left-wing social democracy in the U.S., are debating the position DSA should adopt toward a likely Jesse Jackson presidential candidacy in 1988. Their exchange of opinion is found in the November-December 1986 issue of Democratic Left, DSA’s bimonthly discussion bulletin.
In 1984, most of DSA was conspicuously absent from Jackson’s Rainbow bid for the Democratic Party nomination. A few DSA activists, especially among the organization’s small minority membership, did take up the Rainbow banner. But the organization as a whole did not endorse Jackson – or any Democrat – in the primaries, and the most visible contingent of influential DSA figures were found in the Mondale, Hart or Cranston camps, or officially “neutral.”
This stance left DSA largely isolated from the electoral effort which galvanized the bulk of progressive energy in 1984. It especially cost the organization a chunk of what little influence it had held in minority communities. Concern about these problems has been periodically expressed within DSA ranks since that time and over the last two years a number of more positive overtures have been made toward Jackson and his supporters. But any decisive move toward the Rainbow camp has bumped up against central features of DSA’s outlook and strategy: the constantly expressed need to be cautious and “realistic” in any effort to nudge the Democrats to the left; a marked hesitation to explicitly confront racism justified by the specter of “alienating” whites and driving them into the arms of the Republican party; a strongly held desire to stay in the good graces of the AFL-CIO’s top echelons and the Democratic “mainstream.“ The dilemma all this poses for the DSA comes through clearly in the current debate.
The lead-off article in the Democratic Left exchange, by DSA political director Jim Shoch, articulates the position which predominates within the organization’s top leadership. Shoch is extremely straightforward, arguing that the main criterion for evaluating a Jackson bid is whether it helps or hinders the Democratic Party from recapturing the White House in 1988. “The victory of a moderately liberal Democrat is necessary to stop Republican realignment and prevent the destruction of the democratic left,” Shoch writes, and therefore “we have to use a critical yardstick in evaluating a Jesse Jackson campaign”
That “critical yardstick” boils down to whether Jackson and the Rainbow are prepared to be sufficiently cooperative with the Democratic hierarchy. No matter how that hierarchy moves politically or racially, a Jackson bid is only seen as positive if it subordinates “the goals of the Rainbow” to “the wider context”:
“On the one hand, a Jackson candidacy could help to build the Black movement and the wider left .... On the other hand, Jackson could divide the Democratic Party, weaken the eventual Democratic nominee, and risk throwing the election to the Republicans .... If, in his anger at the current rightward drift of the Democrats, he strikes a hostile stance, he could be disruptive of the party’s ability to build a working alliance of middle and lower income voters.”
Shoch’s conclusion is essentially that if Jackson appears to be heading in a sufficiently unitary direction, his bid should receive a measure of DSA support; if the Rainbow standard-bearer looks like he is going to take a hard line against the party’s continuing backward and racist drift, than such support should be withheld.
A contrasting view is put forward by Shakoor Aljuwani, chair of DSA’s Afro-American Commission. Aljuwani emphasizes the Rainbow’s accomplishments in 1984 and targets its continuing political potential: “The Rainbow Coalition showed that it is possible to build a broad and powerful constituency of the ’locked-outs and drop-outs, the poor, and working people .... Building a broad, multi-racial, multi-class coalition with a strong, militant movement for Black empowerment at its core is a sophisticated new development.”
Aljuwani also criticizes, if in a low-key manner, the various prejudices on the left that rationalize abstention from the Rainbow. He refutes the arguments that the Rainbow’s call for Black empowerment is a “veiled threat to whites” or the argument that Jackson is “anti-labor.” Aljuwani concludes that the DSA can and should “play a major and possibly even a key role” in convincing “the three major liberal constituencies – labor, feminists and Jews – of the seriousness of [the Rainbow’s] vision and rhetoric.”
The third article in the DSA debate, by Wesleyan University assistant professor of government Jerry G. Watts, presents itself as a critique of the Jackson effort from the “left.” According to Watts, the Rainbow project is flawed because it is only an “electoral mobilization” and not “a mass-based, grassroots political formation.” He claims that the Rainbow “is mired in the belief that electoral politics is the only political option” and consequently represents a dead-end for left activism.
But whether this is Watts’ underlying point or not remains dubious, as he uses his article to pillory the Rainbow from every direction. According to Watts, Jackson is in the grip of “deep ethnic pariochialism”; his candidacy in 1988 “will almost certainly weaken the eventual Democratic Party candidate”; Jackson “hinders the ability of progressive Blacks to emerge within various Black polities”; and Jackson’s style of “charismatic” leadership “elevate(s] personalities and celebrity status by definition undermining the possibility of serious political discourse.” Watts does argue that “we must be especially vigorous in highlighting the centrality of racism in American life, which is downplayed by liberals and neo-liberals (and some white leftists) as too ’divisive’ an issue.” But he does not see the Rainbow as a way to advance that fight against racism.
Not surprisingly. Watts concludes that “Jackson’s strategy is not viable” and that his candidacy should not receive left support.
This policy debate within DSA is ongoing; as Jim Shoch put it when concluding his opinion piece, “a Jackson candidacy presents DSA with its most important current challenge.” Unfortunately, so far the indications are not good that this challenge will be adequately met.