Chi Ossé, I have a proposal for you

I say let him cook

I try not to write too often about internal DSA stuff in this newsletter even though I love talking about it (and tweeting about it), mostly because I’m just more interested in writing about politics through the lens of the consumer economy, and also because there are dozens of people who love writing about DSA and are more active in the organization than I am at the moment so you should probably listen to them instead. That being said, I feel compelled to weigh in today because I’ve been thinking a lot about DSA’s vote against endorsing Chi Ossé in his potential run against Hakeem Jeffries and I haven’t really seen a good analysis of what the next few years will look like in the aftermath of that decision.

Some context: I voted no. I felt strongly about it at first but was ultimately not very confident in my vote, and I talked to my friend about it on the phone a couple hours before the vote closed on Saturday night. In the spirit of radical transparency, I have to admit that night I had drank an inadvisable amount of alcohol and made several unbelievably stupid choices that I paid for in dividends the next day. My head hurts as I write this, but I am bravely choosing to give myself credit for being so dedicated to the cause of socialism I was willing to talk shop in that state. (Lawrence, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry for making you listen to me like that. I have a bit of a hazy recollection of that night but I’m sure I was really annoying.) Gun to my head I do not remember most of that conversation but I do remember thinking the argument that win or lose this race would advance the cause of, specifically, Black socialism, was the only pro-Ossé argument I found remotely compelling. It was so compelling that I, a person who famously loves to double down, almost changed my mind.

Ultimately I stuck to my convictions, but Ossé’s response to the result was very comradely and admirable and it has made me wonder, over and over, if that was the right decision. I really couldn’t see a path forward to victory in such a gerrymandered district, and struggled to understand the viability of such a high-profile race considering DSA will run several races next cycle. I thought Ossé felt very young to me (it should literally be illegal for politicians to be younger than me) and that he needed some more time to cook before being ready for primetime. It felt like a bad idea to me to take a chance on such a long shot during a year where so many other things were happening and Zohran Mamdani’s first term as mayor would mostly be an unknown quantity. I think everyone is a little too confident that we know how the next four years are going to go. There isn’t much precedent for this moment in American political history, and basically anything could happen. We don’t have enough information about the future to take such a big swing yet.

That does not mean this should be the end of this conversation. 2026 might not be the year, but there is certainly an opportune time for this race. Here is my proposal to DSA, Chi Ossé, and the residents of NY-08: he should run against Jeffries in 2028.

In 2028, Jeffries will likely be Speaker. Unless the Democrats do something unbelievably catastrophically stupid they will almost certainly take back the House, and while we all know Democrats are better than anyone else at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory it would be extraordinarily difficult for them to fuck this up. We have an unpopular pedophile in the White House disliked even by his own voters and everything is really expensive. There are a bunch of masked freaks snatching people off the streets and everyone hates them. People are really angry about all of this and it’s changing the way the public thinks about politics. If even a few of the dozens of progressive and left-wing congressional challenges going on across the country next year pan out, the center of gravity in the House Democratic Caucus will change even as leadership will probably remain the same. This means there will be an even greater gulf than there already is between Democratic leadership and the rest of the party, and as Speaker Jeffries will be the face of that discontent in the way that Chuck Schumer has been this year.

I am sympathetic to the arguments that primarying the Speaker of the House is harder than primarying the House minority leader, but I’m not convinced. First of all, Jeffries is an extremely prolific fundraiser and he’ll raise a banner amount next year in trying to take back the House. There’s less money spent when Democrats have the majority. His fundraising ability is basically the only qualification he has for being Speaker, since he’s not a particularly good leader or charismatic or good at wrangling the caucus. Chuck Schumer is a spineless idiot who everyone hates but he’s kind of good at retail politicking; Jeffries doesn’t even have that. I would bet a not-insignificant amount of money that sometime between Election Day 2026 and 2028 he will make a high-profile decision that will fail spectacularly to meet the moment and garner him national ill will, which is good for Ossé’s fundraising. DSA members and progressives probably would have donated a ton of money to him in 2026 regardless, but every single day of Trump’s presidency has seen more and more liberals across the country becoming newly radicalized into more confrontational and populist orientations towards politics. A lot of Hillary 2016 and Biden 2020 voters went to AOC and Bernie’s rallies earlier this year. It doesn’t hurt that we have a very good-looking and charismatic new mayor who is popular among rank-and-file Democratic voters and who makes socialism look like fun.

I expect Ossé’s star will rise quite a bit over the next two years. He will still be quite young and fresh-faced in 2028 but he won’t literally be 27 years old. NYC-DSA expects a lot of discipline out of their electeds and now that he’s a member he will likely become a much more polished public figure like every other NYC-DSA politician has become over time, both because he will have more experience and because of things like media training and message discipline. He is already an incredibly talented communicator and naturally very likable, and there’s nowhere to go but up. I think Ossé is correct here that going it alone makes it impossible to build collective power, and an underrated factor in that is that being part of a well-oiled political machine makes you better at the act of politicking. Agreeing to suspend his run after DSA’s decision and enthusiastically reaffirming his commitment to the collective project gained him a lot of goodwill with members (including me!) and they won’t forget it. If another run is put to a vote in two years, I feel reasonably certain that it won’t be nearly as contentious.

As one of Mamdani’s foremost allies on the City Council he’ll have two years to raise his profile in the city and attach his name and face to the affordability agenda, which I believe is attainable. I’m bullish on this because NYC-DSA is pretty good at winning elections. They’ve lost a lot (who hasn’t?) but they’ve won at least a seat or two in every single election cycle since 2019, and those wins have really added up and resulted in tangible policy wins for the working class. I see no reason to believe they won’t continue their winning streak next year and the year after with a chapter that is now 12,000 people strong, not to mention the tens of thousands of former Zohran volunteers citywide who may not be DSA members but have seen that their participation in a political vision that puts people first can actually make a difference. If we win even a couple of seats next year in the State Legislature and then on the City Council in 2027, those are several more allies Mamdani will have both here and in Albany. Kathy Hochul, reading the political headwinds, has signaled a new openness to raising corporate taxes after years of claiming it was a non-starter. More NYC-DSA members in Albany will only make our bargaining position stronger, not to mention the other DSA chapters in New York State that are capable of sending their own candidates to the Legislature.

Two years into Mamdani’s first term, we will much better understand how the political terrain in New York City has shifted. The right and center-left’s playbook will become much more clear. We will better understand their lines of attack, what’s effective, what’s not, how to stop them, what the new limits of our organizing power are, when pushing the envelope pays off and when it doesn’t, and how big our coalition truly is. We have to understand all of that in order to take calculated risks, and a lot can happen in two years. It’ll be a presidential year so we can count on high turnout and enthusiasm riding on the coattails of a potential AOC presidential or Senate run. It’s not a given that this race would be of high salience to voters, but I think Ossé’s enormous talent in communicating to voters will go a long way here.

Ossé’s political orientation towards Black socialism, intentionally taking on the mantle of a proud intellectual and organizing tradition without which a better world would simply not be possible, could change New York City and provide a roadmap to how DSA could change the country. You cannot win without Black voters. This is true for both practical and also ideological reasons. Among them: Black voters are the base of the Democratic Party, race is the modality in which class is lived, none of this would have remotely been possible without Black movements going all the way back to before America’s founding, the most annoying Democrats in America hide behind their relative support from Black voters and it’s insulting to everyone’s intelligence, et cetera. None of this should be new. It is a really serious problem that DSA doesn’t have the juice in Black neighborhoods, and the amount of time people spend trying to elide this fact is existentially threatening to the mission. If Ossé can figure out how to successfully organize working-class Black voters in Bed-Stuy and Canarsie and East New York and Brownsville and East Flatbush, maybe the same can happen in Harlem and Crown Heights and Jamaica and Parkchester and Mott Haven. Maybe it can happen in Baltimore and Detroit and Oakland and Atlanta. Maybe it can happen in South Carolina and Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana. We have a moral obligation to try, and DSA is honestly out of excuses.

I think this is all achievable, by the way. We all caught a glimpse of what was possible during the George Floyd uprisings in 2020. I’ve seen too many white people both in DSA and outside of it argue that it didn’t work, that Democrats doubled down on policing and that it’s a political nonstarter, to whom I’d like to say: grow up. Did you expect racial capitalism to be gone for good in just a few years? Get a grip!

Not that my personal efforts really made a difference in the mayor’s race (thousands of people worked much harder than I did), but I believed Mamdani had a (slim) chance at victory from the very beginning and I spent way more time canvassing for him than I have for anyone else in years. If Ossé tries again in 2028 I’ll be ready to run through a brick wall for him. I will buy a billboard in Dimes Square begging DSA members to endorse him. I will not talk about anything else for several months. I don’t think I’ll be the only one who feels strongly about this possibility, even among one-time skeptics. On the off-chance that Chi Ossé is reading this (I have no idea who reads this newsletter, other than a couple of exes and also my friends): Hello! I’m sorry it didn’t work out this time but I really hope you consider it!

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