The midterm elections are coming into sharper focus with each passing day. Before we know it, Labor Day will be here and the election energies in both parties will surge. 

Understanding what is at stake, both parties will spend tons of money and expend tons of energy either in hope of keeping control of Congress in the case of the Republicans or winning back control of Congress in the case of the Democrats. Allied groups and organizations on each side will do the same.

 Why? Because Republican control of Congress will give Trump, once again, free rein to impose his agenda, while Democratic control on the other hand will give Democrats leverage to rein in Trump, while fighting for their own agenda.

On our side, we can expect the labor movement, organizations in the Black and brown communities, women and immigrant groups, environmentalists, voting rights organizations, LBGTQ, and many more too numerous to mention to be engaged in this titanic election battle. 

On the other side is MAGA, which includes a motley amalgam, ranging from major sections of the billionaire class to christian fundamentalists to white people living in the suburbs, exurbs, and rural America to a section of white workers and trade unionists to white supremacist and neo-nazi organizations like the Proud Boys. All of them will join the effort to maintain Republican control of Congress and in doing so protect their “Great Leader.” 

What isn’t so clear is the attitude of the left, first of all, DSA and its 120,000 members, toward these elections? 

Will the left in its various interations lend its energy to the effort of the working class and people’s movement to elect a Democratic Party majority to the Senate and House. And, if successful, join the working class and people’s movement after the elections to restrain the autocratic, imperial president on the one hand and on the other hand, to press for a people’s legislative agenda, but now with the Democrats in control of Congress.

Or, will the left sit out the elections, assuming that if elected, a Democratic majority in the House and Senate will sit on its hands rather than address the crisis at home and retreat from a policy of peace and respect for national self determination abroad, especially the freedom of the Palestinian and Cuban people?

Or, will the left support only selected candidates who have unimpeachable left credentials, while at the same time taking pot shots at the “neoliberal” Democratic Party and its candidates, even though many of the latter don’t fit the category of neoliberal. And even if some do, is that sufficient reason to withhold a vote given what is at stake in these elections? 

Or, will the left, or I should say some on the left, insist that elections are a fool’s trap and that only mass actions in the streets will lift the fascist cloud that hangs over the country?

Even though I’m not optimistic that a majority of people on the left will make good on their popular front politics, I hope I’m completely wrong. 

I hope that the left dives full bore into this election, not selectively choosing only candidates with left credentials to support. I hope it throws its energy into electing a Democratic majority in the House and Senate, which would include (has to include) a good number of centrist, moderate, and liberal Democrats. Left and progressive electeds are a growing nodal of power in the House and Senate, but they don’t constitute a majority yet. 

That said, I have little confidence for now anyway that most of the left will meet the challenges of this moment, preferring in effect to position itself by its actions, if not its words, at cross purposes to the popular coalition fighting to elect Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. And, in doing so, strike a forceful blow against Trump, MAGA, and neofascism. 

I’m well aware that this assessment is negative, but if the past is prologue, I’m afraid I’m probably right. 

Not since the 2008 elections in which voters elected the first African American president has the left (or I should say some sections of the left) lent its energy to an effort to mobilize voters to go to the polls on election day and cast their vote for Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats. In 2010, the left was a no show and the racist Tea Party emerged on the other side of the aisle becoming a force to reckon with. Two years later, the left, largely speaking, were observers in Obama’s reelection effort and in the Congressional races was a no show again. 

As for 2016 when Trump narrowly beat Hillary Clinton the support from the left for Hillary and Congressional Democrats was hard to find. The same script played out in the next two presidential elections and the midterms.

I would like to hope this fall, we will see a change of script in which the left joins the larger people’s movement in its effort to elect a Democratically controlled Congress, but I’m not holding my breath though. But I will hope.

Whatever the weaknesses of the Democratic Party, a Democratic Party majority in Congress would constitute a badly needed restraint on Trump and Trumpism as well as provide a launch pad (or the beginnings of one) to move the country in a different direction. 

Not to see that, not to fight for that is politically shortsighted to say the least. END