There are cur­rent­ly 7,383 state leg­is­la­tors in the Unit­ed States. Nine of them are affil­i­at­ed with the Ver­mont Pro­gres­sive Par­ty. One of them is an inde­pen­dent from Alas­ka who cau­cus­es with the Democrats.

This is the grand sum of the left pres­ence in Amer­i­can state leg­is­la­tures out­side the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. There has been a sin­gle instance of fed­er­al-lev­el vic­to­ry in my life­time — Bernie Sanders’s elec­tion as an inde­pen­dent to the U.S. House, then Sen­ate, in Ver­mont. No one else has even come close. And Sanders, after thir­ty years as an Inde­pen­dent, elect­ed to seek the pres­i­den­cy through the Demo­c­ra­t­ic primary.

In my state of Penn­syl­va­nia, many tal­ent­ed can­di­dates have attempt­ed to make a go of it run­ning for office through the Green Par­ty. Fifty-one of them have run for state office since 2000. Their vote totals ranged from 1.39% up to 19.26% — very impres­sive for a Green but still low­er than what even the more worth­less Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lengers reg­u­lar­ly pull in a pri­ma­ry. For com­par­i­son, less than a quar­ter of Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry chal­lengers for these state leg­isla­tive offices in Penn­syl­va­nia failed to achieve 20% of the vote in 2014.

On the oth­er side of the ledger, we have the recent record of left chal­lenges with­in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. We can look at the bot­tom, where the Cal­i­for­nia state par­ty has seen a Sanders sweep in del­e­gate elec­tions. We can look in the mid­dle, where Work­ing Fam­i­lies Par­ty (WFP)-backed chal­lengers swept a slate of incum­bents out of office in Rhode Island leg­isla­tive elec­tions in Sep­tem­ber. Or we can look at the top, where 22 statewide elec­tions were won by Sanders, an open demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist, includ­ing hot­ly con­test­ed pri­maries in New Hamp­shire, Wis­con­sin and Michigan.

Hav­ing proven that we can win statewide elec­tions both at the bot­tom and top of the tick­et, as open demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ists, the Left should be sali­vat­ing at the oppor­tu­ni­ties pre­sent­ed by the 2018 pri­maries, bare­ly a year away. But this would involve strate­gi­cal­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­maries, which, despite the Sanders expe­ri­ence, remains a bridge too far for some.

The expe­ri­ence of the can­di­dates endorsed by the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of Amer­i­ca in the 2016 cycle reflects this. I worked on the cam­paign of Deb­bie Med­i­na, who, despite fac­ing a major scan­dal in the mid­dle of her cam­paign, won 40.56% of the vote in an elec­tion where 6,000 votes were need­ed to win. Had she run as a third-par­ty can­di­date in the gen­er­al, vic­to­ry would have required con­vinc­ing rough­ly 40,000 peo­ple to vote against a Demo­c­rat in deep-blue Brook­lyn — a her­culean task.

Com­pare this to Ian Schlak­man who ran for Bal­ti­more City Coun­cil on the Green Par­ty line. He ran a sol­id cam­paign, with sup­port in the com­mu­ni­ty, but still end­ed up with just 13% of the vote. Three thou­sand votes would have won the pri­ma­ry hand­i­ly, where­as the gen­er­al was won with over 9,000.

These are stark num­bers, and point to a real­i­ty for any­one in a Demo­c­ra­t­ic area: Pri­ma­ry cam­paigns pro­vide real oppor­tu­ni­ties for left­ists to com­pete and win. Cam­paigns off the par­ty line, in all but the rarest cas­es, do not.

Pri­ma­ry challenges

Long­time labor writer and Labor Notes co-founder Kim Moody’s recent piece in Jacobin, ​“From Realign­ment to Rein­force­ment,” argues against engag­ing in Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­maries, cen­ter­ing large­ly around an exten­sive tax­on­o­my of the monied forces that con­trol the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. One can­not argue with Moody’s con­tention that those cur­rent­ly in con­trol of the par­ty are rich, pow­er­ful and odi­ous. They are also, as Moody points out, firm­ly deter­mined to repel left chal­lenges with­in the par­ty. These same inter­ests poured mil­lions into the Hillary Clin­ton cam­paign, and pour mil­lions more into incum­ben­cy pro­tec­tion every cycle. These argu­ments are being ampli­fied in the wake of Kei­th Ellison’s defeat in his run for DNC chair.

Fair enough. And yet Moody fails to make a strong case for why third par­ty activ­i­ty holds any more promise, or to actu­al­ly gauge the short-term prospects for left vic­to­ry in Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­maries. Much of the piece skirts this cen­tral con­sid­er­a­tion altogether.

“In gen­er­al,” writes Moody, ​“because they are already well-known, incum­bents at all lev­els are able to gain impor­tant endorse­ments, union back­ing, and sup­port from par­ty activists; attract what media atten­tion there is; and raise sev­er­al times what most chal­lengers can muster.” Moody fails to men­tion that these chal­lenges also apply to a third par­ty run, where they are even more pro­nounced. Unions, media atten­tion, mon­ey and endorse­ments may be in short sup­ply for left pri­ma­ry chal­lengers but it can be even hard­er to find them as a third partier.

This basic fal­la­cy sits at the core of Amer­i­can third par­ty advo­ca­cy. End­less ink is spilled on the strength and resilience of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic estab­lish­ment. But why would that tremen­dous­ly strong estab­lish­ment be any more vul­ner­a­ble to a third par­ty challenge?

The track record laid out above is sim­ple, it’s stark and there’s no way around it. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty estab­lish­ment is vul­ner­a­ble — to pri­ma­ry chal­lenges. The recent record of third par­ty com­pe­ti­tion in par­ti­san races in the Unit­ed States is one of unmit­i­gat­ed fail­ure at near­ly every lev­el. Thanks to the Sanders cam­paign, the case for left chal­lenges with­in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has nev­er been stronger.

Bizarrely, Moody points to the Sanders cam­paign as a case argu­ing against engag­ing with the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. ​“Of the 3,170 Demo­c­ra­t­ic state leg­is­la­tors,” writes Moody, ​“Sanders won the endorse­ment of 91, less than 3 per­cent.” True — and yet he received over 43% of the total pri­ma­ry vote. It would seem that the insti­tu­tion­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle clout among its own base.

The idea that the Sanders cam­paign proved that we need to aban­don the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry is among the most con­fus­ing on the Left. We all just par­tic­i­pat­ed in the most inter­est­ing (and cer­tain­ly the biggest) social­ist elec­toral project ever to take place in the Unit­ed States. But that project took place with­in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, and a vocal seg­ment of the Amer­i­can Left seems to believe that we should nev­er do it again.

We need to take this strate­gic gap between Demo­c­ra­t­ic and third-par­ty chal­lenges very seri­ous­ly. Thou­sands of local left-to-pro­gres­sive for­ma­tions are spring­ing up or grow­ing, from DSA to Indi­vis­i­ble to the Work­ing Fam­i­lies Par­ty. Many of them will, in 2018, have the abil­i­ty to draft and run can­di­dates for office. They will have two choic­es: one, run a can­di­date in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry, with a far low­er win num­ber than the gen­er­al, no spoil­er issue, no third-par­ty stig­ma, and a chance to win — join­ing the long list of left­ists elect­ed as Democ­rats. Two, go the inde­pen­dent route and hope that where hun­dreds upon hun­dreds of left third-par­ty chal­lengers have failed, they will succeed.

These local cam­paigns are use­ful as path­ways for left for­ma­tions to build coali­tions and recruit allies. The first ques­tion of any poten­tial ally regard­ing a local elec­tion run is one of via­bil­i­ty. A social­ist run­ning in a Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry can point to Bernie Sanders’ result in their dis­trict, or to any num­ber of recent pro­gres­sive chal­lengers. Should a can­di­date out­side the pri­ma­ry point to Jill Stein’s 1%? Nader’s 3%? The Labor Party?

Out­side of extra­or­di­nary cas­es, a good left third-par­ty can­di­date gets 15 – 20% of the vote in a par­ti­san race with­out a Demo­c­rat where­as they attain 3 – 5% in a race with one. A Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry chal­lenger can sleep­walk to 20%. Local activists need to under­stand this, and take a hard look at what can and can­not be done out­side the primary.

These num­bers are nowhere to be found in Moody’s piece. ​“It’s time for social­ists to build an alter­na­tive,” Moody argues instead. ​“The base is there in cities of all sizes. It is there among thou­sands of Sanderis­tas with no place to go. It is there in mil­i­tant unions and among union insur­gents fight­ing to change their unions — many of whom sup­port­ed Sanders — as well as among activists from Black Lives Mat­ter, Fight for 15, immi­grants’ rights groups, and work­ers cen­ters. It is there among the mil­lions of work­ing-class African Amer­i­cans and Lati­nos who have seen both major par­ties let their neigh­bor­hoods dete­ri­o­rate. And it is even to be found among those ​‘left behind’ white work­ers who vot­ed for Trump.”

But as Adolph Reed argued thir­ty years ago, ​“no pop­u­lar base cur­rent­ly exists with­in the black com­mu­ni­ty for wide-scale polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion inde­pen­dent of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty.” Since then, noth­ing has hap­pened to prove him wrong. Con­jec­tur­ing ​“mil­lions of work­ing-class African-Amer­i­cans and Lati­nos” (and work­er cen­ters) as some sort of nascent base for a third-par­ty is based on noth­ing more than a wish, and one can­not build a win­ning elec­toral cam­paign around a wish.

This is, ulti­mate­ly, the weak­est aspect with Moody’s piece and oth­ers like it. It returns to the Left’s vision of itself as start­ing com­plete­ly from scratch, hop­ing to go from zero to hero, to ignite a ​“mass base” of mil­lions that is cur­rent­ly com­plete­ly inchoate. We don’t have to fol­low this script. We have the bench­mark of the Sanders cam­paign. We have hard num­bers, a sol­id gauge of our strength. It is much more plau­si­ble to build an elec­toral force from that than from nothing.

A time to win

The 2018 elec­tion cycle is an enor­mous oppor­tu­ni­ty. The mil­lions who have marched against Pres­i­dent Trump are look­ing to those elec­tions as the next great oppor­tu­ni­ty to stop him. Those on the Left, by tak­ing a lead role in push­ing our can­di­dates, can seize and direct this ener­gy. Choos­ing this moment to adopt elec­toral strate­gies that have vir­tu­al­ly no prospect of win­ning elec­tions in 2018 would squan­der the oppor­tu­ni­ty at hand.

At this point in dis­cus­sion around the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry, advo­cates of a new par­ty gen­er­al­ly assert that, while iso­lat­ed suc­cess­es may be pos­si­ble, the par­ty itself, to use Moody’s word, is ​“impreg­nable.” In this vision, the par­ty estab­lish­ment is a mem­brane. It may allow iso­lat­ed vic­to­ries (such as that of Sanders back­ers in Cal­i­for­nia) but will sim­ply flood the are­na with over­whelm­ing resources should there be any real pos­si­bil­i­ty of realign­ment. Giv­en this, goes the argu­ment, let’s not waste time putting resources into a par­ty that will nev­er be ours. Let’s build our own for­ma­tion, so at least we have a ban­ner for the long, long march ahead. In this for­mu­la­tion, par­tic­i­pa­tion in the pri­maries sim­ply delays this long march.

Let’s assume that they are right and that whole­sale realign­ment is indeed impos­si­ble — an asser­tion that may well be true. This is irrel­e­vant to the imme­di­ate tac­ti­cal ques­tion, giv­en that an inde­pen­dent force can be built and nur­tured while con­tin­u­ing to engage in Demo­c­ra­t­ic primaries.

Seth Ackerman’s Jacobin piece ​“The Par­ty We Need” right­ly calls for a new mass par­ty on the Left in which ​“deci­sions about how indi­vid­ual can­di­dates appear on the bal­lot would be made on a case-by-case basis and on prag­mat­ic grounds.” This mod­el is the best of both worlds.

A strat­e­gy of using Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­maries to win pow­er does not pre­clude oth­er orga­niz­ing out­side the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty in non-par­ti­san races at more local lev­els. Kshama Sawan­t’s suc­cess in Seat­tle as a Social­ist Alter­na­tive-backed city coun­cil mem­ber is instruc­tive for run­ning in these types of races.

But orga­niz­ing for social­ist pol­i­tics and a left agen­da should not be mutu­al­ly exclu­sive from build­ing pow­er through win­ning Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­maries now. We can form our new mass par­ty with­out a guid­ing prin­ci­ple that this par­ty must always have its own bal­lot line — a strat­e­gy that has already served to build third par­ties like the WFP that by and large make their bones in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic primary.

We don’t have to put all our eggs in the realign­ment bas­ket. We can adopt a strat­e­gy that takes advan­tage of the low bar­ri­er to entry of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry, and use those vic­to­ries to build our own forces — forces that, once strong enough, could plau­si­bly break from the par­ty. Let’s choose that strat­e­gy, and start elect­ing socialists.