ADEMS: Toward a Party By, Of and For the Vast Majority?
The Democratic Party is in a mess of trouble. And a mess.
Polls peg its public approval rating at the lowest in decades, mainly for failure to push back vigorously against the MAGA agenda. That’s no surprise to socialists, both within the party and without, who have watched it become more and more dependent on Wall Street and big business, especially distasteful elements like arms makers and sellers, neo-con warmongers, fossil fuel corporations, healthcare profiteers and financial speculators. It’s gotten to the point where Republicans, while allied with the same billionaire classes, manage to exude a phony “America first” populism by campaigning against Democrats’ elitist reputation and using cultural war opportunism to win enough of the working class—or induce us to not vote at all.
Meanwhile, insufficient attention was paid to post-election polling that showed the genocide in Gaza was the No. 1 reason people who voted for Biden in 2020 failed to back Harris in 2024.
Just a little farther to the right
Yet the Democrats’ dominant forces continue to insist that if only the party moved a little farther to the right or a little more distant from solidarity with Palestine, it could capture the votes of “moderate” Republicans in the “managerial/professional class” and stereotyped white suburbanites. The heck with working class immigrants and other marginalized groups.
We know better. Only a party by, of and for the vast majority of us who work for a living—or would if we could—can defeat the fascist right and institute a march toward societies that put people and the planet over profits.
Could that be a drastically remade Democratic Party? It feels implausible—and maybe is. But stalwart socialists and uncorrupted progressives are still carrying on that fight, understanding full well that comrades organizing in other formations (e.g. Greens, Peace and Freedom) or who envision DSA as a proto-party, are all our allies. Time will tell what roads will eventually converge in success.
The ostensible ruling body of the California Democratic Party (CDP) is its Central Committee, with approximately 3,500 members. About a third are elected officials, party bosses and their appointees—with some exceptions, the most conservative portion, thanks to the power of big money, incumbency and patronage. (Part of the progressives’ platform is to eliminate or greatly reduce superdelegate appointments.)
Another third are appointed by county central committees, themselves mostly elected on the bottom of the primary ballot in presidential years. The exact mechanism varies a lot by county, but they’re not typically big money operations. Progressives who banded together in slates and worked hard to get the word out have seen some success. (I’ve been elected twice.)
The final third are elected in Assembly District Election Meetings, known as ADEMS. Every two years, CDP organizes special elections to elect 14 people in each of 80 districts. The most recent was in February 2025. Traditionally, these were in-person, Iowa-style caucuses, with candidates vying to get supporters out on a weekend morning. This permitted a measure of grassroots power; where progressives organized slates effectively, they were often successful in making sure each candidate’s friends voted for all of them.
With COVID, the party began instituting mail and online voting, now in addition to a reinstated but much more low-key, in-person option, with complicated sets of deadlines for candidate and voter registration.
Progressives determined to win
This year, progressives determined to win a large number of seats organized—later than we should have, unfortunately—as the Progressive Delegates Network (PDN), aiming to help create and support slates in as many districts as possible. We first developed a political platform, set out to recruit and vet candidates, then helped organize and campaign. We endorsed about 360 (including significant numbers of DSA members) of a possible 1,120, and about a third of those were elected.
Post-mortems have led to some observations and conclusions:
We needed to start organizing earlier.
We failed to hook up with some progressives who either organized themselves or ran, generally unsuccessfully, as individuals.
We need to make affiliation with our slates a sine qua non for progressives, both as a key to success and a measure against opportunism that some have adopted, aligning instead with liberals or establishment figures perceived as more likely to win. We were up against a number of phony, self-declared “labor” slates, and others sponsored by state legislators who sought even more influence than they could get through their allotted appointments.
Online voting—a large percentage of the total—provided many opportunities for mischief: we’ve seen circumstantial evidence of people being registered without their knowledge, then “voting” as they’re told with minimal understanding. In most districts, only about half of those who went to the trouble of registering to vote online actually did so.
People with less English knowledge or lacking Internet access had more trouble voting.
Fewer in-person voting sites without good public transit discouraged participation, especially in rural districts.
Voters were uncomfortable going in person to some locations housing institutions that actively supported certain candidates.
Chaos reigned at several in-person sites, where privacy was compromised and ballots ran out.
For the first time, apparently, large sums were spent to get out the vote, with progressive slates particularly targeted by groups aligned with Democrats for Israel.
Probably the biggest conclusion of all is that if progressives want to seriously challenge the CDP machine, more serious, ongoing organizing is needed, not last-minute rushes to find people for the biannual ADEMs.
A new membership organization
To that end, the small, self-appointed group of PDN organizers intends to create a new membership organization, probably in the form of a PAC, outside the party. It will be based on the platform that was hammered out and with the sole mission of fighting for power in the CDP by competing for Central Committee positions in ADEMs, county parties and through selective involvement in legislative and statewide contests—something that California DSA is also taking on.
Meanwhile, there will be flurries of organizing around statewide party meetings, including the upcoming annual convention in Anaheim May 30 - June 1. Together with the party’s Progressive Caucus, we’ll engage in educational work, including a showing of the Oscar-winning film No Other Land about attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. PDN is waiting to get more organized before endorsing candidates for party offices, but a number of affiliated individuals are running for regional director and caucus leadership positions. Alan Vargas, a maverick Young Democrat who was PDN-endorsed for ADEMs, is challenging party chair Rusty Hicks, a nemesis of progressives and advocates for party democracy.
Battles may develop over resolutions calling for an arms embargo of Israel, Palestinians’ right of return and others—in an oppressive, anti-democratic milieu. Some of us will challenge the Rules Committee’s ongoing stall in approving our application for creation of a chartered party organization, California Democrats for Justice in Palestine. Democrats for Israel achieved that status a couple of years ago.
Anyone interested in getting involved in these efforts, contact your local folks engaged in the intraparty battles. Someone in your chapter surely knows who they are.