Against the CA DSA Prop 50 Endorsement
California DSA has recently voted in favor of supporting Proposition 50, a proposal to redraw California’s districts that is self-evidently aimed at creating enduring structural Democrat electoral supremacy in California, in the form of creating and sending materials to chapters throughout the state, and encouraging these chapters to quickly launch campaigns over the next seven weeks. We dissent from this endorsement and reject its strategy, and lay out a rebuttal to the argument for endorsement.
What Does DSA Really Stand To Gain from Prop 50?
In the piece laying out the argument for the endorsement, CA DSA and Groundwork caucus member Chris K. called Republican gerrymandering in Texas a “calculated assault on democracy” and “the Right’s most powerful weapon for locking working people out of politics.” While he claims to have “no illusions about the party establishment and what it wants out of this,” he argues that gerrymandering can be used in California as a counterweight to Republican gerrymandering elsewhere in the US, especially in Texas. This illustrates the defining political mistake of the DSA Right: mistaking the goals of the Democratic Party for the goals of DSA.
Prop 50 makes perfect sense from the Democrats’ perspective. Of course Democrats want to minimize Republican footholds and shape the American political map in ways that maximize the electoral power of their (shrinking & demoralized) base. To lend our endorsement to a measure designed in their party’s interest, not ours, is to sacrifice our independence and organizing efforts without gaining any leverage.
Indeed, if we truly have “no illusions” about what this is, then we must admit it is very likely that Governor Gavin Newsom will use this redistricting process to engineer mid-layer support for his 2028 presidential campaign. Prop 50 provides him and his allies with another mechanism for consolidating their networks of patronage, rewarding loyalists, and structuring the political field to his benefit. Why align with that now unless we aim to be junior partners in the Democrat presidential campaign in 2028? As most recently shown in Minneapolis, it is an error to assume that the Democrat party will not strike against us as soon as we pose a threat to their capitalist base.
In his piece, Chris K. says “this moment gives us a chance to both take a realpolitik move to reduce the GOP advantage from Texas gerrymandering and to agitate and push beyond the rigged two-party system,” but we can’t be simultaneously agitating against a rigged two-party system while supporting one of the parties rigging it. Chris also suggests that we demand more fundamental reforms in CA such as proportional representation, which gerrymandering is designed to decrease. The confusion of the author’s politics illustrates the contradictions in our endorsement, and those contradictions will not be lost on the working class of California.
But let’s also be clear on what we’re advocating for: if the DSA wants to credibly demand an expanded democracy, our demand cannot be for “fair” electoral maps under capitalism, an idea which itself is based on liberal assumptions of political rights. It must be for a new kind of political system entirely—one in which workers control their workplaces, communities, and governments directly, not one in which capitalists shuffle district lines to their advantage.
How Our Experience in the Central Valley Shapes Our Position
North Central Valley DSA (NCVDSA), a small chapter which organizes in four counties throughout rural California, has experienced steady growth since 2022, and it owes its growth to working class Californians who reject partisan divides in favor of class war. The palpable disdain for both Democrats and Republicans can be seen both within and beyond the electoral context, and there is a critical demand among rural Central Valley workers for an alternative to the capitalist two-party system. In 2024, dozens of NCVDSA members participated in the CA DSA ARCH campaign, canvassing voters who spoke of the hardships they’ve faced for generations; astronomical rent increases, abandoned public transportation projects, extreme land subsidence, unbearable drought, unbreathable air. These attacks on Central Californians are often bipartisan, conducted by politicians who switch-hit between D and R on a whim. Many NCVDSA ARCHers felt like we were fighting on two fronts: convincing our neighbors that, while not a panacea, these propositions would be an important tool to help the working class, while at the same time convincing them that we were not sent by the Democrats, which would have instantly lost us credibility.
If we support Prop 50, we will set back our own work throughout California towards showing up as an alternative to the capitalist two-party system. Rejecting Prop 50 does not mean ignoring the real frustrations people feel about Republican gerrymandering. On the contrary, it is an opportunity to connect those frustrations to a broader critique of capitalist politics. We can explain to workers why both Democrats and Republicans manipulate district lines, why neither party is truly invested in their empowerment, and why only socialist politics can deliver real democracy.
California DSA’s Fundamental Political Error: Identifying the Democrats’ Goals with DSA’s Goals
Broadly, we understand CA DSA to be operating on the notion that the current primary contradiction in the United States is Trumpism, and the primary task before us as DSA is to stymie Trump. But we cannot take such a myopic view of the struggle between capital and the people: Democratic capital cannot save us from Republican capital and we cannot organize the working class through building the personal brand of Gavin Newsom. Our organizing work throughout California’s East Bay and Central Valley regions has made it clear to us that DSA must win the support of the working class regardless of party affiliation or lack thereof.
The mission of DSA as an organization is not to push the Democrats into action to defeat the Republican Party. Our class enemies are just as powerful within the Democratic network as on the Republican side, and losing sight of class antagonisms is a huge political error. Our mission is instead to organize the broad working class and win political power on their behalf. It is not possible to achieve this goal by playing by partisan rules, and only appealing to those members of the working class who are already committed to voting for Democrats.
Last year, only 34% of California’s eligible voters voted for the Democratic presidential candidate. If we aim for a strategy that alienates the near supermajority – 66% – of eligible voters who didn’t vote Democrat, then we will forever limit our horizon to being a minor advocacy group in the Democrat sphere. It’s our responsibility as scientific socialists to assess our terrain more clearly if we want to create a better world. DSA chapters in California and throughout the country are learning how to organize folks who do not vote Democrat, and supporting Prop 50 would present a significant setback to this work.
What Would Organizing the Broad Working Class Look Like?
Imagine, instead of endorsing Prop 50, the DSA aimed at agitating along class lines, communicating simply and clearly that both Democrats and Republicans are rigging the electoral system and disregarding their working-class base. We could point out how working-class communities of color, immigrant neighborhoods, and rural towns alike are carved up by politicians. We could argue that true representation will never be achieved through bourgeois redistricting, but through building worker power independent of both capitalist parties. We could use this moment not to strengthen the Democrat hegemony in California, but to destabilize it, and to create openings for DSA to win.
The Democratic party is the weakest it's been in our lifetimes. The working class correctly views the Democrats as failing to fight back against Trump in any meaningful way, but simply fighting Trump to gain electoral ground without actually addressing the demands of the working class will not resolve the heightening contradictions in this country’s politics. We reject the idea that aligning with the Democrats’ belated attempt to win back some of its loyalists will do anything other than undermine DSA’s principles and ideological independence, and we strongly urge California DSA to reconsider its endorsement. California chapters across the state understand that DSA must grow, develop, and thrive at the expense of the Democratic party, and we may be forced to reassess our continued support of a state organization that increasingly works against the goal of creating an independent socialist party.