Which Side Are You On?

The Only Choice On August 4 Is Between Kshama Sawant Or Adam Smith

Gwendolyn Hart

The Democratic and Republican Parties are in a crisis. 60 percent of Americans say they want a new party. Working-class confidence in the Democrats has plummeted, and many are fleeing the party. In 2018, 66 percent of new voters registered as Democrats. In 2024, that figure fell to 48 percent. This is what happens when you fund a genocide.

A new gang of “progressives” has leapt into action to put the Democrats on life support. Graham Platner in Maine, who stumped a phony anti-establishment platform, is a great case study. 

Platner could have easily been concocted in a laboratory somewhere as a Yale political science student’s idea of what “working class” looks like. The entire progressive media sphere hailed the Maine oyster farmer like he was the second coming, thinking he could rehabilitate the party’s brand (without actually giving workers anything, naturally). That is, until Platner was recently forced to end his Sentate run, amid scandals of Nazi tattoos and sexual assault.

After Zohran Mamdani, there has been a wave of DSA triumphalism over their Democratic candidates like Chris Rabb, Claire Valdez, Darializa Avila Chevalier, and Melat Kiros advancing through their primaries. But they are all following in the footsteps of Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, of simply playing the role of yet more progressive Democrats like Platner. Their ultimate accomplishment by running as Democrats is to further sink the socialist movement into the Democratic Party. 

For those of us who don’t think we need “progressive” oyster farmers to rehabilitate a genocidal party, we have independent socialists running across the country to break the two-party stranglehold.

In Washington state, Kshama Sawant is running for Congress against Adam Smith, a 30-year incumbent who funded the genocide in Gaza, broke a railroad strike, and voted to create ICE.

Kshama won four elections to the Seattle City Council as an independent socialist. Her election emboldened workers to build a movement that won the first $15 minimum wage in the country (now $21.30/hr). Kshama is campaigning for free healthcare for all, national rent control, and to end all U.S. military aid to Israel.

Three other candidates have thrown their hats in the ring to stop Kshama and hand the election to Smith. The Republican candidate Doug Basler has openly stated he joined to try to prevent the socialist from reaching the general. Melissa Chaudhry is a second Democrat who has joined, not to wage a serious campaign, but only to split the progressive vote. She has raised only $1500 and admitted to deliberately excluding pro-LGBT stances from her campaign platform. A third candidate, Jacob Perasso, who is running under the misleading “Socialist Workers Party,” is even more pro-genocide than Adam Smith.

None of these other candidates has a shot in the dark of beating Adam Smith in November. The real choice on August 4 is between Kshama Sawant or Adam Smith.

United Front and individual organizations involved in Movement for Kshama have our own criticisms of Kshama. Chief among them is that despite her record of reforms, she did not use her council office victories to build lasting organization in the working class and train up new socialist leaders. After ten years, there is a startling void in this necessary task. Her own organization, Revolutionary Workers, has only about 35 members nationally, following a series of splits and expulsions.

Establishing a working-class socialist party is the vital task of revolutionary socialists today. A workers’ party is not a simple vehicle to run election campaigns against Democrats and Republicans. It is how we organize mass protests and strike actions that are united across industries, unions, and social movements. It is how we collect a common repository of knowledge and experience from past struggles for working-class militants to draw upon across the country and across borders. Without a party of our own, all of our struggles and fights against the capitalist system, even victorious struggles, lose 90 percent of their significance.

Democratic Party “progressives” like Platner exist to take people’s anger at the Democrats and channel it back into safe avenues that don’t threaten the party. DSA Democrats like Zohran Mamdani serve the same function. Kshama advancing to the general election against Adam Smith would show that socialists don’t have to stay trapped inside the Democratic Party. Building the confidence of workers to organize independently of the Democrats would be a major step towards building a working-class party.

The Democrats recognize this threat for what it is. That’s precisely why they are collaborating with the Republicans to trot out these scarecrow candidates into this race to keep the socialist from advancing.

All workers and socialists who want to see a new party should support Kshama’s campaign. Workers should not just vote for her, but mobilize to build up the political dynamic and turn out the vote. This is also true for workers who live outside WA Congressional District 9.

Whether Kshama wins or loses in the primary, this is a chance to find and connect with people who want to see a political alternative to the two main parties of U.S. capitalism and imperialism. This is an opportunity to build lasting working-class organization that can go on to keep fighting the bosses in future struggles and work to establish a socialist party in Washington.

Do you want to see every possible vote go to the workers’ candidate? Do you want to come out of this election having made strides toward building a militant socialist movement, breaking with the Democrats, and establishing a workers party? If the answer is yes, then you should join our Get Out the Vote efforts!