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Ahead of “Super Tuesday” primaries

Democratic Socialists of America commits to rescuing Biden’s presidential election campaign

In an attempt to channel workers and youth disgusted with the genocide in Gaza back into the political graveyard of the Democratic Party, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) announced on its social media accounts Sunday that it is endorsing the “Uncommitted” campaign for the remainder of the Democratic primaries.

The DSA made this announcement less than 48 hours before 14 states are set to hold Democratic primaries, in an event dubbed “Super Tuesday.” Voters in Minnesota, Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Utah and California will have the option to cast Democratic primary votes on Tuesday. Republicans are holding primaries in 13 states and caucuses in two others.

On its Twitter/X account, the DSA wrote that it “endorses ‘Uncommitted’ in the remaining Democratic presidential primaries. Until this administration ends its support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza and delivers a permanent, lasting ceasefire…”

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Continuing to appeal to the war criminals to stop the war crimes they have been perpetrating since last October, the statement continued, “Until the Biden administration wakes up to today’s political realities, DSA encourages voters who want an end to this genocide to vote ‘Uncommitted’ in the Democratic presidential primaries.

“If your state doesn’t have ‘Uncommitted’ or a similar option on the ballot,” the DSA implores you to “call and text other states to talk to voters there.”

As the DSA makes clear it its own statement, and as the WSWS wrote last week, the aim of the “Uncommitted” campaign “is to promote the illusion that Biden and the Democratic Party as a whole can be shifted through pressure from below from their policies of global war and mass death.”

The DSA previously endorsed and helped organize the initial “Uncommitted” campaign ahead of the Michigan primary held on February 27.

Three weeks before the primary, groups such as the Democratic Party-aligned “Listen to Michigan” and “Our Revolution,” along with Democratic Party politicians, including Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, her sister Layla Elabed and former Michigan Rep. Andy Levin, called on voters to register their disgust with Biden by casting an “Uncommitted” vote.

Rashida Tlaib, Democratic Party congresswoman from Michigan

In furtherance of the protest vote, the DSA called supporters to “make calls, text voters, knock doors and organize.” While Biden easily won the primary with over 81 percent of the vote, over 13 percent of voters, some 101,000 people, selected “Uncommitted.” About 43,000 people voted for Democratic primary candidates other than Biden.

Despite attempts by media efforts to present this protest vote as an expression of Biden’s collapsing support only among Muslim and Arab-American populations in Dearborn and other areas around Detroit, “Uncommitted” garnered at least an 8 percent vote in all 83 counties in Michigan. In total, 73 out of 83 counties in the state recorded at least a 10 percent vote for “Uncommitted.”

The Democrats, and the ruling class as a whole, are terrified that this mounting opposition to “Genocide Joe” will lead to a break with the Democratic Party and capitalist politics entirely.

Many of those voting “Uncommitted” have no intention of voting for Biden in November. However, as one of the organizers of the effort, former Rep. Levin, made clear before the vote, and afterwards in an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, the purpose of the campaign was to “send a message” to Biden: “We are your base, we want to win in November, and in order to win we want peace now.”

In the same program, James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute and director of the influential political research group Zogby Research Services, reiterated, “As the congressman said, as the organizers of this movement have been very clear, this is not the ‘Abandon Biden’ movement. This is the ‘for god’s sake, shape up or you might lose in November’ Biden movement.”

In the same vein, Branko Marcetic, writing in Jacobin, the house organ of the DSA, went out of his way to stress in a February 28 article titled “Michigan’s Primary Shows Biden Is Courting Political Suicide” that the “Uncommitted” campaign was seeking to save Biden’s presidency, not challenge it.

Marcetic wrote, “Though some disaffected voters, like organizers of the smaller ‘Abandon Biden’ campaign, view their goal as convincing voters to sit out the presidential election and inflict a political defeat on Biden, supporters of Listen to Michigan explicitly framed their effort as a way to shake the White House awake and give Biden a path to winning back their votes. It remains to be seen if he’ll listen: according to Politico this morning, ‘presidential aides continue to believe that today’s “uncommitted” voters will be November’s Biden voters once they have a stark choice in front of them.’”

Later on, Marcetic warns Biden that by “ignoring the demands of pro-cease-fire voters... [He] risks being remembered as a disastrous one-term president... all thanks to a stubborn and increasingly inexplicable determination to back a foreign government’s unpopular, heinous war.”

Far from “shaping up” and listening to Marcetic, the experience of the last week unequivocally demonstrates that the Biden administration is impervious to protest votes. Moreover, the war is not just Israel’s, it is Washington’s, and Biden’s support for it is not “inexplicable.” The Gaza slaughter is an integral part of the drive by American imperialism toward world war, with Russia, Iran and China as its main targets.

The DSA’s backing for the “Uncommitted” campaign and its efforts to prop up the Biden administration express its class character and political function. It represents not the broad masses of workers and youth opposed to the genocide in Gaza, but privileged sections of the middle class. Its central role is to provide cover for the militaristic and imperialist policies of the Democratic Party, one of the two parties of the capitalist ruling elite.

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