How the left can build (and control) a truly democratic party.
Form an organization, present the message, choose the candidates, write the platform, raise the money. Do all the things that are necessary to have an independent political identity. And then, on a case-by-case basis, based on the most pragmatic way of getting a candidate on the ballot with the best possibility of winning the most votes. That's the way we should approach this issue.
Jacobin's Seth Ackerman explains why the Democratic Party is neither of those two things, and sketches the blueprints for a working class political party - from the need for the left to organize and exert power beyond the constraints of restrictive ballot laws, to the surprising new opportunities to influence politics and elections in the wake of Citizen's United.
Seth wrote the article A Blueprint for a New Party in the latest issue of Jacobin.
Guest
Seth Ackerman
Seth Ackerman is on the editorial board of Jacobin and a doctoral candidate in history at Cornell.
Related Interviews
Danny Haiphong
Apr 13 2020
This was always going to happen: Lessons for the left on the loss of Bernie Sanders.
Yekaterina Oziashvili
Mar 19 2020
