We had met at a conference in Idaho, and while I would not say Michael and I were very close, he had, the year prior, personally reached out to me to get me on board with his project. /2

He reminded me both at and after Idaho that while many of the criticisms of Jacobin magazine (I had openly said it would suffer a similar path to the Nation and Mother Jones) and those who worked with the DSA, if I were too public with them, I would help push people right /3

My response to him as I was just getting back into union work and teaching in the US was "okay, but you can't have left Unity that is just based on candidates getting power because you won't be to keep holding opposing sides together forever and /4

electeds had no incentives not to deviate towards players that had larger money pools to launder through ads, independent media, etc. And that I had seen both Democratic and Republican operatives do that, while it was obvious when I was abroad." /5

Michael responded, "You can't do that alone. You have to build coalitions. Keep your criticism sharp, but keep it private and internal to leftists." I agreed that was probably better than making enemies of nearly everyone by showing how the sausage was made but I had a caveat/6

"You still have to hold them accountable, because if you don't they will either have every honest incentive to give people who could leave the coalition versus people who would never, & the public would stop trusting you-- pragmatists who lose all the time aren't pragmatic"/7

Despite my disagreement and cynicism with Democratic socialists, I would have thought it was a better world if they had won some of their policy goals. My problem is not just that they don't, but now they replicate the progressives they use to critiqye /8

But more importantly, they VERY MUCH don't keep their criticism internal. It is open, smug, and pathetic. The haughtiness of a declining upper-middle-class culture in free fell concreted in some of the richest cities in America. /9

Michael was right, we needed a coalition, and I have always been willing to work with groups whose politics I don't agree with, but I won't give them money if it would go to groups, like the DNC, I don't support /10

But solidarity is a two-way street, or you are a sucker. I have supported DSA rank-and-file in my worker's group, I have helped them do trainings. But I am not going to hide when people who have failed for over a decade to get legislative reforms or... /11

get Mayors with enough coalition partners to actually achieve their reforms tell me how "to owin." You haven't won; most of your heroes haven't won either. I will help you out of Solidarity, but solidarity will not be with people who just insult when you point out failure/12

And it is not just social democrats who do this, Losurdo has many things I praise him for, but a lot of what he is used for is "You can't criticize where people didn't live up to their promises or point when AES even actively undermined each other" /13

"We have the history of a successful revolution..." Did you do the long march, where in the red guards, where you an old bolshevik? The movements you are part of have collapsed four different times in countries you are in the last century and have never had more than 2% .. /14

backing after 1948, and even then, that backing ultimately went to a party that helped suppress you. But "tankie" hunting is a waste of time. There are many people who are MLs that work with, and anti-communist slop is also real /15

I don't want to kick people out of the moment, but I will be damned if I will be insulted when people are asked to explain why tactics, strategies, and sheenigans do not work. Nor will I ignore that since the social democratic revival happened a decade ago, we are further/16

from their reforms succeeding at any viable level than we were in the 1970s. We always talk about how union reforms of the 1970s failed, the left sectarianism imploded, and we got Reagan and Atari democratics /17

But from the point of view of policy which the Dem Soc pragamatists say I don't understand, they have so far failed worse than their new left or new communist counterparts and forebearers in the 1970s/18

I think Michael was right that we needed a coalition, but a coalition without accountability is a way to be sucker. But if people respect me, my class, and the unions I work with efforts and can listen and respond to my critiques, I will consider them comrades. /19