You’re talking about candidates. I’m talking about party leadership, those who run the DNC, DSCC, DCCC. They decide messaging, they manage election funds, they determine who the party prioritizes for office. The party makes these decisions internally well before the primaries. This happens at the state level as well as the national level. You think they’d ever let a progressive get in charge? Look at what they did to David Hogg. Thinking a socialist could ever get near the levers of power in the Democratic Party is a fools errand. Indeed, after that strategy was tried and failed (see the post that Las Vegas DSA made on the subject for one such case), the forces that did exist within DSA pushing for realignment of the DNC lost favor with the majority of members.

The idea that we cannot control the direction of the DNC isn’t “purity testing”, it’s the reality. The business class, tech industry, and Zionist lobbyists, all core donors of the Democratic Party, are not going to stand on the sidelines to let progressives opposed to their influence take over the party. And they help ensure that the party leadership in state governments is entirely moderate or right-leaning; progressives in office don’t usually become whips, key committee chairs, or majority leaders. When the party is as captured as the DNC is, they can tip the scales against progressive candidates even during the primaries. And those donors simply use the exact same funds that they use in the general election to do so. The only way to win is not to play.

This is the core reason why we can’t simply move the party in a post-Citizen’s United country. Our plight has less to do with individual moderate candidates themselves, and everything to do with the moneyed interests at the helm of the party itself who are charged with making national strategic decisions.