Toward a Left-Labor Coalition for 2028
Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks to 36,000 supporters at the “Fighting Oligarchy” rally in Los Angeles on April 12, 2025.
Lessons, Opportunities, and a Road Forward for DSA
by Chris Kutalik and Frances Gill | DSA-LA
“The problem has never been just the absence of a socialist party, but the absence of a class with the political capacity to sustain one.”
—Leo Panitch, Renewing Socialism
The stakes for the U.S. Left have never been higher. The return of Donald Trump to the presidency in 2025 has unleashed a brutal and coordinated assault on labor, immigrant communities, democratic rights, and the institutions of working-class power. But this political crisis has also created new waves of struggle—visible in mass protests, anti-ICE resistance, the growth of union militancy, and in DSA’s own organizing.
In this volatile moment, we must take stock—not only of the challenges, but of the opportunities. DSA’s growth over the past decade, driven in large part by the 2016 and 2020 Bernie Sanders campaigns, shows what’s possible when we meet moments of national polarization with bold political vision. And while the past few years have presented difficult terrain, we also believe they’ve offered hard-earned lessons: that DSA must move from a loose collection of campaigns and chapters into a more unified political force. That we need a clear theory of how we relate to electoral cycles and campaigns. That we must organize not just against Trumpism—but for an independent-minded political vision rooted in working-class power–yet grounded in political reality and the possible.
That’s why we’re proud to support R33: Unite Labor & the Left to Run a Socialist For President and Build the Party, the 2025 Convention Resolution calling for DSA to help build a broad left-labor coalition to run a presidential candidate inside the 2028 Democratic primary—and to field a national slate of down-ballot candidates in 2026 and beyond.
This is not just a proposal for an endorsement. It’s a proposal for a political project and external campaign: one that links economic struggle to political struggle, one that coheres our forces nationally around a shared program, and one that builds out from the party surrogate model.
Learning From the Past, Building for the Future
The absence of a viable left presidential candidate in 2024 and DSA’s default abstentionism left a vacuum. We were left responding to a false binary—MAGA reaction or centrist triangulation—without the ability to rally people around a credible alternative.
But would it have looked like to build our own pole? What infrastructure would we have needed? What alliances with unions, social movements, and the broader left would we have needed to cultivate?
This resolution looks forward. It proposes that we learn from the successes and limitations of the “DSA for Bernie” campaigns. That we begin now—years in advance—to do the long-term political work: coalition-building with unions and mass organizations, identifying potential candidates, aligning our electoral strategy across federal and local races, and ensuring that any national campaign we support helps grow DSA and broader Left.
Why a Presidential Campaign?
It’s worth stating directly: presidential campaigns are uniquely powerful political tools. They reach tens of millions. They help define the political landscape. And they offer a chance to speak to working-class people not just about their daily struggles—but about their vision for the future.
When Bernie Sanders ran in 2016 and 2020, he didn’t just popularize Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and the language of class struggle—he helped grow DSA into the largest socialist organization in the country. That kind of catalytic growth doesn’t happen every day. But it doesn’t happen at all if we don’t try.
The 2028 election will likely coincide with an escalating labor upsurge, including a planned May Day strike wave called by the UAW and other unions with lined up contract expirations. It’s a moment that demands our movement put forward a political alternative that unites the picket lines and the ballot box.
Building a Left-Labor Coalition
The core of this resolution is not a specific candidate—but a coalition. DSA should lead in bringing together labor unions, socialist electeds, and mass organizations to create a formal political bloc—a left-labor coalition that can contest power in the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election.
This is not a fantasy. We already see the outlines of this coalition forming: in the popularity of leaders like Zohran Mamdani, Rashida Tlaib, and Bernie Sanders; in labor’s growing assertiveness; in the tens of thousands attending rallies on the Fight Oligarchy tour; and in the hunger for a political force to the left of the Democratic establishment. There have already been steps down this road with the Chicago Teachers Union convening a massive May Day Strong coalition that launched over 1500 rallies in a single day and brought in partners from the UAW, SEIU, AFT to movement groups like Showing up for Racial Justice, Make the Road, and United We Win.
R33 commits DSA to help organize that force—not just in word, but in infrastructure. It calls for the formation of a multi-tendency committee to assess our options, for proactive outreach to unions and left parties, for a communications strategy that agitates publicly for this project, and for a process that ensures member input and debate through a national referendum on any endorsement.
From Electoral Strategy to Political Alignment
The resolution also addresses a key strategic lesson from recent cycles: the need to better align our electoral campaigns, our chapters, and our national strategy. Too often, DSA has supported candidates–even those we call “cadre” candidates–without clarity on how they build the organization, relate to our structures, or speak to a national audience.
This resolution challenges us to think bigger. What if our candidates were not just individuals with shared values—but part of a political formation with shared goals? What if our campaign volunteers were also building chapters, our elected officials coordinated strategy across offices, and our endorsements advanced a common national platform?
That is what it looks like to move from isolated campaigns to a political movement.
The Long Road to a Party
Finally, this resolution puts forward a vision for the future: not just 2026 and 2028, but the long road toward a party of and for the working class. A left-labor coalition today can become the foundation for a party tomorrow. But only if we build intentionally, strategically, and with real relationships to organized labor and social movements. It has to have a class anchor that’s not empty rhetoric, not just the platonic ideal of one.
DSA doesn’t need to wait for permission to begin this work. We can lead. We can convene. And we can use the tools we already have—our chapters, our electeds, our organizers, and our growing experience in electoral politics—to bring this coalition into being.
