I was a no vote, even though I enthusiastically support Bernie in his campaign for the presidency in 2020. But I also support Elizabeth Warren (and would have supported Sherrod Brown, had he run). And & and I would have supported Barbara Lee over any of them had my former Congressperson decided to run. But I felt that the either/or choice posed by the DSA election – Bernie  yes or no – was way too simplistic, an effort really on the part of the Bernie campaign to contain Warren’s support early in the contest. And I think socialists have a responsibility to do things better.

There several important realities at play here. One is that Bernie and Warren both represent the left and represent the left well. A second one is that representation matters. One reason that the Democrats lost in 2016 was the ticket-so-white team of Clinton & Kaine told many voters of color that their interests were not being taken seriously. Clinton got support roughly comparable to that of Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign in terms of percentages, but the urban turnout declined and was more than offset by a resurgent rural rightwing vote. Cisgender white males may play well with the pundit class – which itself leans in that direction[i] – but frankly should have higher barriers to endorsement from the left. This is true for Sanders, Biden and O’Rourke, as well as for several of the vanity candidates for the 2020 nomination. A power play aimed primarily at precluding DSA support for Elizabeth Warren is itself a pretty traditional male privilege strategy, and it is depressing to think that DSA has responded without more critical depth.

Another reality is that no centrist campaign has captured the presidency since 1996. Obama beat Clinton in 2008 by running to her left and his tragedy will always be his failure to govern accordingly. Now, to be honest, both Gore and Clinton did win the popular vote, but as the Vlad the vote-counter could tell you, the electoral college was the first gerrymander. Sadly, I think the run-left, govern center strategy is exactly what we can anticipate from the Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gilliland and Corey Booker campaigns, and outright centrist candidates (Biden, O’Rourke, and most of the vanity challengers) may well adopt the same strategy once they realize that the center-right has not held in the old Wall Street-Democratic Leadership Conference coalition. No question, the voters who wanted a left alternative to Clinton in 2008 are impatient – they  are insisting on a progressive candidate this time who actually is progressive. There were tells, as poker players would say, with Obama early on, Bob Casey signing up as one of his first and most ardent supporters, but that kind of red flag will get noticed this time around. Harris, for example, is already having to run away from her record as DA and Attorney General.

To be honest, I would vote for any Democrat  as an alternative to Trump, and if I thought that a centrist candidate would expand the Democratic Party vote, I would be more open to the Beltway/Wall Street whinging about how the base will push the party too far to the left. But that is a patently false argument – Trump and Pence offered the most unhinged reactionary extremism a major party has ever put up for election, got 48 percent of the vote, and still has 88 percent GOP support even after having been exposed to be an incompetent small-potatoes crime family with Russian Mafia support, if not outright direction.

This doesn’t mean that it’s a done deal that the Democrats are going to win in 2020. I still  think this race is Trump’s to lose but I see no sign that it will be well run, even though well-funded. If Trump does something smart, like dumps Pence for someone like Nikki Haley, who could mute the Dem’s POC support, then it will be almost impossible to defeat him. Fortunately, betting on Trump to do anything smart is a longshot at best. But articles that his campaign is as well organized as his clown car administration is not frankly scare me.

The pro-Bernie DSA argument is pretty straightforward. Sanders has been willing to use the S word going back to at least his days as the mayor of Burlington. Warren still talks around the question. AOC she is not. And Warren  has not always been as far to the progressive side as she has evolved into over the past 15 years. But Bernie has never played well with others and is still technically an independent, and up until the past few weeks he has been tone deaf on issues impacting people of color. Cultural politics has never been his thing, to the degree that it has become part of the brand, the charm of the Grumpy Grandpa persona.

But but but – we are over 18 months from election day and you & I both  know that whoever is the front runner in this campaign is going to be hammered long and hard, with the full electoral arsenal of corporate capital and the Kremlin. In ought 8, Clinton, Obama & everyone else knew that coming out of Iowa the race was going to telescope down into Hillary and the Anyone-but-Hillary candidate. Clinton was ready to shine against any white male she might find herself up against. There was only one problem with that strategy – against Obama she no longer looked like change, like the promise of new politics. Indeed, she looked like round 3 of a very problematic center-right Democratic administration.

This time around, I think we’re in for a long bruising series of elimination bouts. I think that Kamala Harris has some serious advantages in the faux-progressive lane, an intelligent, well-spoken woman who is both Asian and black and a former prosecutor. California will give her a big victory on Super Tuesday in March. And if the race should telescope down to just two candidates, she’s a more reliable bet to be one of them than is Sanders.

Which is why I want Elizabeth Warren still in the race all the way. And having the largest socialist organization in the past half-century double down on Bernie doesn’t advance his own campaign very much except insofar as it hurts hers. And that hurts us all.

We do need to keep the S word up front and center in 2020. There is no better or quicker method for spelling out the dramatic changes this country must have if it is going to turn this Titanic state away from several potential disasters before it becomes too late. It’s not that socialism is going to happen overnight, or even in under half a century, but its unrelenting critique of capital is the one widely available diagnosis not only as to what is wrong with the world, but as to which principles need to be put forward to change the rapidly worsening status quo. EVERY – repeat EVERY – major social problem of our time can in one way or another be tracked back to its roots in an economic model that privileges power and competition, demands ever expanding markets in the face of fixed natural resources and fundamentally divides one group of humans from others in order to accomplish its goals. That all has to change, and to change now.

The entire purpose of walls is to prevent any distribution of resources from becoming equal. The invention of race – a sociohistorical reality rather than a biological one – has everything to do keeping the conditions between groups different. As with white privilege, so too with male privilege, straight t privilege, Christian privilege, etc, etc. A pseudo-liberal Democratic party that “plays nice” with Wall Street and the tech billionaires – Clinton’s neoliberal sellout – does so at the expense of the lives of the vast majority of citizens. Even when a billionaire gives away the bulk of his wealth – Bill Gates is a case in point – doing so through philanthropy removes that altruism from the clear light of review and prioritization. Obama may well have reduced the number of troops engaged in Bush’s wars abroad, but he failed to initiate the national discussion we need to have about how to walk away from global imperialism before the rest of the world pulls us under out of its own self-defense. Every empire fails – it is what they do, and usually they impoverish the very nations that to enrich themselves by casting their nets of power to the far corners of the globe. It’s a lesson China will be learning down the road, but we have to act far sooner.

Thus we have to talk about capitalism, what it has done to this world, what it is still doing. And the best, surest, quickest way to connect ALL the dots from Putin’s kleptocracy to that of Wells Fargo and Mark Zuckerberg, from the suppression of Islamic tribes in western China to the sale of slots at Ivy League academies, from the cost of healthcare to the immiseration of the Palestinian people, is to throw the S word in everyone’s face. Further, as I think Representative Ocasio-Cortez has demonstrated repeatedly, I think we are ready for it. A centrist will lose to Trump. A socialist will ultimately have a far better chance. Therefore I want Bernie AND Elizabeth Warren to lead the debate toward 2020, not to have the race collapse in a simple Biden vs. Bernie vs. Kamala Harris three-way King of the Mountain. Because that I think sets Bernie up to be roped off and contained. And I don’t think we can wait until 2024 or 2028 to have the serious discussion we need. Otherwise we won’t be discussing who lost Afghanistan or Iraq in those later races, but rather who lost Manhattan and Miami Beach.

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[i] Consider that MSNBC floods the final seven hours of its news day with six white men and Rachel Maddow. And while Chris Hays and Lawrence O’Donnell are among the finest commentators on television, Ari Melber’s faux hipness, Chuck Todd’s fawning incorporation of rightwing commentators posed as “balance,” Chris Matthews’ interruption of every single answer to any question he ever poses, and Brian Williams’ servile superlatives toward any guest willing to stay up long enough to still be wearing clothes during his time spot, is not precisely a ringing endorsement of available talent. And that’s just MSNBC.