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The far left wages an internal fight: Help Democrats or reject the establishment? – NBC News
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A progressive organizer backed by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a good shot at winning a congressional special election in Rhode Island on Tuesday — and some on the left are not happy about it.
The local chapter of Democratic Socialists of America issued an unusual anti-endorsement of former state Rep. Aaron Regunberg, urging supporters to “reject ‘progressives’ at the polls,” saying Thursday it was “disappointed in AOC and Bernie but not surprised” after the New York congresswoman endorsed Regunberg and the Vermont senator held a rally for him.
The Rhode Island chapter is unusually aggressive, but the local split reflects a larger divide among Democratic Socialists of America and other far-left groups as they debate their forced marriage with the Democratic Party several years after a surge in membership spurred by Sanders’ presidential campaigns made socialism politically relevant in America for the first time in decades.
“DSA was reborn after the first Bernie campaign, and the state of socialist politics can feel stuck or even declining considering we were thinking about a socialist becoming president of the United States,” said Micah Uetricht, a DSA member and editor of the socialist magazine Jacobin, who co-wrote the book “Bigger Than Bernie: How We Can Win Democratic Socialism in Our Time.”
“It’s tempting, especially in a moment of downturn, to say the reason why we’re not as successful as we should be is that we’re not adhering to a political doctrine as strongly as we should be,” said Uetricht. “There’s both a need to criticize left-elected officials if and when they stray from basic leftist principles, while also having some kind of understanding that we have just a toehold on power and that it could all go away.”
Some on the left worry infighting in the name of purity like that in Rhode Island could lead to a vicious cycle and help return the left to the wilderness of the pre-Sanders era.
“A lot of chapters would not endorse Aaron Regunberg because he’s not running as a socialist, that’s fine. But to issue an anti-endorsement of the most progressive candidate in the race? That’s bizarre,” said one Rhode Island activist who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “All these people do is yell on the internet.”
The tensions are familiar to any student of radical movements in history. And ideological movements often stagnate when their allied party wins the White House, and the unifying effect of a common enemy is replaced by the inherent messiness of governing.
Justice Democrats, the insurgent group that recruited progressives like Ocasio-Cortez, slashed its staff this year after a mixed record in Democratic congressional primaries, while prominent leftists have used words like “crisis” and “purgatory” as they debate their future. The problems facing far-left groups have led some to focus more on organizing among labor unions and tenants, rather than inside electoral politics.
The national DSA has criticized and even threatened to expel its own members elected to Congress for apostasy on issues like support for Israel and a 2022 vote to end a railroad strike.
In July, state Rep. Mike Connelly left his Massachusetts DSA chapter after he was threatened with expulsion for, among other things, endorsing Democratic Gov. Maura Healy’s re-election and appearing at an event with the Prince and Princess of Wales.
“The ‘charges’ were, essentially, that I demonstrated a willingness to work with and support elected leaders and activists who are delivering results for working class and marginalized communities. I am guilty as charged, and proudly so,” Connelly said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
In Rhode Island, a one-party state that was until recently run largely by moderate and conservative Democrats, the local DSA chapter has been more aggressive than most others in deciding not to endorse Democrats in the future.
Another left-wing group in the state expelled several members it had helped elect over what critics said were routine votes.
“What changed in 2017,” after the Bernie bump and Trump’s election, “was that DSA members began running for office as open socialists and winning high-profile races,” said Daniel Crowell, spokesperson for the Rhode Island DSA. He added that while it was exciting to finally be running, “after a couple years, some DSA members were disappointed by the performance of DSA-endorsed politicians. It often seemed like they were joining the Democratic establishment rather than seriously challenging Democratic Party leaders.”
At the DSA’s national convention in Chicago earlier this month, questions about whether the group should form an independent political party and how vigorously it should discipline members in elective office were front-and-center, with strong opinions on both sides.
But a resolution for a full “clean break” with the Democratic Party fell short and a Rhode Island DSA member who ran for the national political committee on an anti-Democratic Party platform did not succeed.
Renée Paradis, a member of the party’s National Political Committee said opinion inside the DSA ranges widely, including those who want the group to be more active inside the Democratic Party.
But the consensus coming out of the convention, she said, remains that DSA should keep running candidates in Democratic primaries while building its own outside campaign infrastructure.
“Most working-class voters still heavily identify with the Democratic Party,” said Paradis. “Bernie’s campaigns and DSA’s own electoral campaigns have shown that we can build socialist power while tactically using the Democratic Party’s ballot line.”
Ari Rabin-Havt, Sanders’ former chief of staff and deputy campaign manager, said that while the public debate may be messy, it demonstrates the group’s commitment to democratic and transparent decision-making.
“Would I rather the Rhode Island chapter support Aaron? Of course,” he said. “But is it good that a democratic organization is having a public debate about how they’re going to create power and use power? Yes.”
“But there’s a choice that ultimately has to be made. Because there’s no way you are going to elect somebody and they are going to be 100% responsive to you all the time,” he said. “If you’re turning up the amp to 11 on everything, then nothing is 11.”
Alex Seitz-Wald is a senior politics reporter for NBC News.
© 2023 NBC UNIVERSAL
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In Israel's fight for survival against tech savvy Hamas terrorists Biden seeks to micromanage the war – Fox News
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FOX News White House correspondent Peter Doocy has the latest on the Biden administration’s response to the Middle East conflict on ‘Special Report.’
As Israeli Defense Forces resumed military operations to eradicate the Hamas terrorist threat last Friday, the Biden administration is inserting itself into Israel’s war planning process, teaching the Israelis – who’ve been fighting for their survival for decades – how to properly prosecute the conflict.
Washington warfare “experts” – who arguably haven’t secured a single clear military victory since 1945 – insist that Israeli military strategists alter their war plans to make their combat operations more targeted and their strikes more accurate, in order to minimize casualties, especially among civilians.
The Biden administration’s demands, while noble-sounding, are misguided and unreasonable. Implementing these requirements, at the expense of achieving the main mission of eliminating Hamas and its entire supporting infrastructure, will likely prolong the conflict, ultimately resulting in many more Israeli and Palestinian deaths. Here’s why.
LABELING CHINA, RUSSIA AND IRAN AS NEW ‘AXIS OF EVIL’ WILL NOT NEUTRALIZE THE THREATS THEY POSE
President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu participate in an expanded bilateral meeting with Israeli and U.S. government officials, Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023, in Tel Aviv. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Hamas is no longer your grandfather’s terrorist gang, the way it used to be years ago. Like many other non-state terrorist groups, Hamas has benefited from the democratization of technology, which has made access to weapons, military-grade components, and the know-how necessary for indigenous production, much easier across the board than it used to be.
Consequently, Hamas is now in possession of more deadly, more advanced weaponry than it had did even a decade ago. Its much more diverse weapons arsenal makes the terrorists look and fight more like a regular military force rather than a non-state terrorist group. This levels the battlefield a lot more than it did during the 2014 Gaza War between Israeli forces and Hamas.
The employment of drone warfare enabled Hamas to catch the Israelis off guard. During the initial wave of attacks on October 7, the terror group used small tactical drones to strike multiple Israeli military targets, disrupting infrastructure and destroying surveillance towers, cameras, and communications, as the terrorists were infiltrating across the southern border, killing some 1,200 people. This element of surprise enabled Hamas to seize, at least temporarily, what’s called in modern warfare, strategic initiative, leaving Israelis stunned and scrambling to defend itself.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei meets Chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau, Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Iran on November 5, 2023. (Photo by Iranian Leader Press Office / Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Hamas has modernized its drone arsenal, which now includes ‘Zouari’ suicide drone, named after Mohammed Zouari, the late Hamas engineer and drone pilot; Ababil-2 Iranian Tactical UAV; Misagh-1 with a high explosive-fragmentation warhead; AK-103-2 with aburst-fire setting, and RAAD-T, according to Army Recognition, OE Data Integration Network and DroneSec databases.
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Hamas has also significantly improved its indigenously manufactured rockets, called Qassam, having extended their range from 2-3 miles in its first iteration to 10 miles, with the Qassam 3. Today’s generation of missiles used by Hamas have a range of 150 miles, covering all of Israel.
Hamas also has been the beneficiary of Iranian weapons, technical assistance, and training. In 2020, the State Department assessed that Iran sends $100 million a year to Palestinian terrorist groups, arming and training them to attack Israel and murder its civilians as Hamas did on October 7.
According to the Wall Street Journal, 500 Hamas terrorists were trained by Iran Quds Force, the foreign-operations arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in special combat tactics, during the weeks leading up to the October 7th terrorist attacks. Hamas used combined arms tactics during the assault, synchronizing the attacks across air, land, and sea, a warfare style used by regular armies.
Members Hamas display rockets during a military parade on the Streets in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza Strip. (Photo by Yousef Masoud/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
During the 2023 campaign, Israelis are dying at more than twice the rate as in 2014, according to the Wall Street Journal. The upgrades in weapons and tactics are the likely reasons why Hamas is a much more lethal force than it used to be, posing a much more formidable threat to the Israeli forces.
On a visit to Tel Aviv recently, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken warned the Israeli leadership, about “the imperative to the United States that the massive loss of civilian life and displacement of the scale we saw in northern Gaza not be repeated in the south.” He demanded a “clear plan in place that puts a premium on protecting civilians as well as sustaining and building on the humanitarian assistance that’s getting into Gaza.”
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant (R) and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken shake hands prior to a meeting in Tel Aviv on November 30, 2023. Blinken told Israeli leaders on November 30 that a temporary truce in their war with Hamas was “producing results” and should continue. (Photo by SAUL LOEB/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
How in the world can the Israelis assure Washington that they will avert civilian deaths, given that Hamas is known for using civilians as human shields? How can the IDF avoid striking civilian targets if Hamas uses hospitals as operational command centers and storage facilities for weapons and combat gear?
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Whether intentional or not, what the Biden administration is doing is restricting the IDF’s freedom of action and flexibility of maneuver, as Israel is striving to eliminate the existential threat to its survival.
It is bad enough that Israel has to deal with a much more lethal and bloodthirsty enemy that is armed to the teeth. Now its defenders have to fight with one arm tied behind their back because Washington, almost certainly driven by politics, is hell-bent on micromanaging someone else’s war.
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Rebekah Koffler is a strategic military intelligence analyst and the author of Putin’s Playbook. She is Managing Editor of an e-mail newsletter for independent thinkers, CutToTheNews.com. Follow her on Twitter @Rebekah0132
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