DSA, 'Woke' Backlash, and Policing Politics

Progressive outsider candidate Abdul El-Sayed narrowly prevailed over establishment pick Haley Stevens to win the Democratic nomination for Michigan’s open Senate seat, though AIPAC spent tens of millions of dollars to defeat him. The narrative that has emerged before and after the primary is one that stresses El-Sayed’s weakness with Black and Jewish voters.

As Jewish Currents senior reporter Alex Kane wrote earlier this month, Black and Jewish centrists are teaming up in key races to defeat progressive candidates, whom they portray as fixated on Palestine at the expense of their Black constituents. As Darius Jones—senior adviser to a Black centrist group called the National Black Empowerment Action Fund and longtime AIPAC operative—told Jewish Currents, “Focusing on a “foreign conflict” won’t “lower health care or housing costs for a Black senior in Detroit, or ensure that a path to home ownership easier for a Black constituent in St Louis or Ferguson.” These Black politicos have endeavored to link moderate Democratic policies and Black interests; reflecting on El-Sayed’s attacks on the Democratic establishment, for example, party strategist Jamal Simmons told The Hill that such “attacks on the Democratic establishment in places like Detroit are attacks on Black leaders.” Meanwhile, moderates and conservatives across the country appear intent on pushing the narrative that democratic socialism is the province of privileged white people, pointing to the demographics of the group’s membership and the class backgrounds of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s staffers and advisers.

To discuss the ways that the figure of the “Black voter” is being used in the fight over the direction of the Democratic Party, host Arielle Angel and Alex Kane welcome Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor—professor of African American studies at Princeton University, author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, and a co-founder of the digital magazine Hammer & Hope—to On the Nose. They discuss the role of Israel/Palestine in Black politics, the fallacy that Black voters are more moderate on the issues, and what to do with DSA’s demographic problem.

Thanks to Jules Natt for editing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”

Media Mentioned and Further Reading

“The End of Black Politics,” Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, The New York Times

“Donald Trump’s Victory, the Elitism of Democrats, and the Need to Build a Hospitable Left,” Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Daniel Denvir, Hammer & Hope

“With Jewish Establishment’s Help, a Black Political Group Battles the Left,” Alex Kane, Jewish Currents

“An Anti-AIPAC Insurgent Tests Her Message in a Working-Class Stronghold,” Alex Kane, Jewish Currents

“The Congressional Black Caucus’s Silent Partnership With AIPAC,” Anthony Conwright, The Nation

“Can Abdul El-Sayed unite Dems? He has work to do with Black, Jewish voters,” Simon D. Schuster, Bridge Michigan

“Who Is Abdul El-Sayed? His Harsh Trump Takedown Is a Clue,” Daily Blast with Greg Sargent, The New Republic

“El-Sayed faces ‘risky bet’ with Michigan’s Black voters,” Amie Parnes and Caroline Vakil, The Hill

“NYC-DSA is 60% white, internal survey says,” Peter Sterne, City & State

“How ‘Pro-Israel’ Orthodoxy Keeps US Foreign Policymaking White,” Peter Beinart, Jewish Currents

“Valerie Foushee ‘Will Not Accept’ AIPAC Money in 2026 Election,” Chase Pelligrini de Paur, Indy

“The Revolutionary Imperative,” Neil Smith, Antipode

Siena University poll of DSA favorability

“Most Americans Say Policing Needs 'Major Changes,’” Steve Crabtree, Gallup

“AOC and Mamdani wanted to defund the police. Their backtracking puts organizers at risk,” Derecka Purnell, The Guardian

“Movement for Black Lives opposes George Floyd Justice in Policing Act,” AP

“Eliot Engel, Jamaal Bowman, and the CBC,” Alexander Sammon, The American Prospect

Communists in Harlem During the Depression by Marc Naison

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

Transcript forthcoming.