DSA confessed on July 14, two weeks before my last post — that changed everything.
That’s why this post is late. But it’s worth it. We’ve now got the answer. It has two parts — the first was missing until July 14, 2026. Part 1 is a threat so grave the DNC will decide it has to do something. Part 2 is a precise description of something even they should have the courage to do. I’ve embedded these in the preface to an Emergency Edition aimed at kick-starting the new Transparency Promise strategy.
This post is long, because it introduces both me and, halfway through, the new DSA solution. Take your time, let me know your ideas for pushing this forward. Then spread the word. If it can be publicized it will build pressure for its own adoption.
Preface
We are now bewildered and confused by the lies and tactics thrown at us by people who would not admit they were Communists but who at every turn of the road hewed to the Daily Worker line.
—Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr., 19471
In the spring of 2008, I felt the same kind of radical optimism I’d felt in 1964. That year saw the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley; and the next year I would finally enroll and join the radicals, as I’d been planning since seventh grade. The same year, 1964, LBJ won the largest popular-vote landslide in the 200-year history of the Democratic Party.
That optimism vanished for 44 years — until 2008.
By ‘64, I had studied nonviolent direct action from the same book Dr. King studied before his first campaign of nonviolent resistance, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and I was about to become a conscientious objector after registering for the draft.2 Ever since, King has been my model for authentic radicalism — strong convictions while taking full responsibility.
I became increasingly uncomfortable as the anti-war movement and the Black Power Movement, which was also anti-war, turned to violent performative radicalism. But with 1000 times more of my generation killed by the war, and 20,000 times as many Southeast Asian peasants killed, what choice was there?
As uncomfortable as I was, the sheer energy of the radical left gave me some hope right up until two hours before the polls closed on November 7, 1972, when the election was called for Nixon. The 61%-to-37% landslide made it an easy call for Nixon over our radical George McGovern. It wasn’t just the loss; I knew this meant we had badly misunderstood how politics works.
That gloom returned 44 years later — with Trump’s win.
The 44-year “coincidence” is caused by the equal eight-year delays from euphoria to disaster, first from 1964 to ‘72 and next from 2008 to ‘16. Both are tied to the somewhat predictable rate of radicalization. The first time, from Free Speech to the Panther underground. The second time, from left-wing blogs to BLM, cancel culture, and a socialist entering the top Democratic contest.
While researching this book, I found that these and the red scares are part of a radical setback pattern that shows the present Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) episode sits on top of a powerful underlying current of generally Marxist anti-capitalism. All these episodes start from a (moderate) progressive high point, which encourages anti-capitalist radical extremism leading to a setback for progressives as well as radicals. The 2016 setback triggered the research for this book and the radical resurgence of 2026 sparked the strategy presented in this “emergency edition.”
The ‘72 catastrophe shifted my thinking in much the same way as starting college once had. I arrived at college thinking I belonged to the one tiny true religion, but I was already far deeper into physics. In no time, physics won out and the religion vanished. The ‘72 election had a similar effect on my radicalism. Both times, something remained — social responsibility from religion; nonviolence from Dr. King. Perhaps a bit of physics folk-wisdom — “Science advances one funeral at a time” — convinced me there was no quick fix.3 My exact thought was that authentic radicalism must wait for my generation to die off politically. Naively, I calculated that would take “a generation,” which I guessed meant 20 to 25 years.
President Clinton’s arrival after 20 years got my hopes up. But he was still just repairing the damage we’d done. It was only Obama’s millennials that brought back the feeling of 1964. But before Obama was even nominated, I heard a voice from the back seat of my car while driving friends to a movie. His precise words escape me, but something like “Obama, that capitalist lackey” comes close. My immediate reaction was, “They’re back; the radicals of the ‘60s are back.” I’d waited 36 years, and now this!
Bad politics keeps evolving. At best, we advance one funeral at a time. Garry, from my back seat, is only a year younger than Sanders, who emulates Eugene V. Debs, who peaked in 1912, and got his ideas from reading while jailed for six months in 1895.4
A 170-year-old movement that’s stronger than ever is not to be trifled with. DSA won’t be stopped by attack ads in 2028. Even if we win the presidency against a weak Republican, the publicity will make them stronger. Our best hope, as you’ll soon see, is using their own extremism against them; call it political judo.
Garry, as I soon found, was part of an anti-Obama crowd online. Seeing this attack on Obama, who I loved, was bad enough. Knowing it would mislead the millennial supporters I admired flipped a switch deep in my mind.
In 1969 I had spent the better part of a year listening to William Mandel’s weekly program, “Soviet Press and Periodicals,” on radical station KPFA. He convinced me that the USSR was wonderfully efficient and kind to its minorities, especially Jews. Then I learned from KPFA’s own newsroom that Jews were desperately trying to leave and being punished for even trying. Mandel was a communist, and I’d been duped. In 2008, I was deeply upset to think anti-Obama deceptions were the enduring legacy of my radical ‘60s tribe.
As I’d expected, the radical hatefulness toward Obama increased over his two terms. By 2013, Garry was posting that “The reach of biracial President Obama as global enforcer for the corporate criminals who hired him is potentially thermonuclear.”5 By 2014, radical filmmaker Michael Moore, pretending to lecture Obama, said, “This is how you’ll be remembered: ‘He was the first Black president.’ Okay, not a bad accomplishment, but … a huge disappointment.”6
The next year, when Sanders entered the Democratic primary, I soon realized he was an exceptionally dedicated and well-informed socialist. In the ‘70s, I studied socialism before returning to UC Berkeley to get a PhD in economics, where I even took a graduate course in Marxist economics from a well-known Marxist. That’s how I knew he was a socialist — but one who never proposed a single socialist policy to his followers. What was he up to?
When the Democrats let him into their primary, I was sure it was a mistake. The DNC (Democratic National Committee) adopted a loyalty oath two years later, after they saw how Sanders stiffed them. They should have made him sign, “I’m not an independent.” That’s how he’d always harmed the Democrats. That was his brand, and I was sure he would not have signed. Not signing would have exposed his hostility to Democrats, and quite possibly avoided Trump’s win.
That thought, “he would not have signed,” was my first toe-hold on my way to the Transparency Promise, which I think could defuse the Democrats’ 2028 Emergency.
Everything Sanders called socialist was actually capitalist. “When I talk about democratic socialist,” said Sanders, “I’m not looking at Venezuela. I’m not looking at Cuba. I’m looking at countries like Denmark and Sweden.”7
Venezuela and Cuba are actual socialist countries. But their socialism is painful for him to look at. Instead he pretends that Denmark and Sweden — two of the most capitalist economies on earth — are socialist. He knew perfectly well he was deceiving our young Democrats to sell them socialism, while being careful not to mention that it means the “abolition of capitalism.” That’s according to DSA. And that’s why we need the Transparency Promise.
Since 2016, I’ve been looking for a way to stop him from damaging our country, and also for a more personal reason: he’s deceived my friends. But until summer 2026, I did not see a clear path forward.
Then in July 2026, DSA ratified their new platform, Workers Deserve More,8 engineered by Bread & Roses,9 one of DSA’s Marxist caucuses. Their own homepage begins: “Bread & Roses is a national caucus of Marxist organizers in DSA.10 Unlike Sanders, whose true views took me more than a year to unravel, the DSA, now dominated by Marxists, has laid all their cards on the table.
The platform opens by imagining “A FUTURE WITHOUT CAPITALISM” — no for-profit companies — no capitalists. “Food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation aren’t for-profit businesses,” neither are “the largest corporations,” such as Walmart, Google, Amazon, and Apple. Why has no one thought of this? They lacked the DSA plan. First, take “steps towards fully abolishing the police.” Also “abolish ICE,” “grant amnesty for all immigrants,” and “end visa caps and quotas” — completely open the borders. “Abolish the Senate.” Let the House choose the president.11 And, “Defund the Department of War” — zero out the military.
After obliterating our capitalist economy, and the entire structure of our government, this “complete victory will require building a new society from the ground up.”
As long as the Democrats allow DSA members to run as Democrats, and never reject their support, Republicans will let everyone in America know that the Democratic Party has “finally admitted they are the communists we always said they were.” Mark my words: when the DNC realizes this albatross will be hung around the neck of every Democratic candidate, they will finally see they’ve got to draw a clean line between us and the DSA’s anti-American Marxists. It’s do or die — but they don’t know how.
That’s why I returned to work, constructing the cleanest, most transparently fair loyalty oath I could. We’re ready for some political judo. But, let me start with the answer, so you can see its simplicity — then I’ll explain the political judo behind it. The DNC simply needs to replace its vague and arbitrary loyalty oath (aka their “Written Affirmation”) with what I’m calling The Democratic Transparency Promise to Voters.
I fight for fair capitalism. I am not a socialist.
If a candidate will not sign this, they should be deemed not a loyal Democrat and the DNC should have nothing to do with them. While the DNC has little control over state Democratic Parties, it can recommend that they follow suit.
The mechanism that makes this strategy work was published in 1970 and its author, George Akerlof, shared the Nobel prize for economics in 2001, largely for this idea. That may explain why my subconscious guided me to this idea. Akerlof was my dissertation advisor.
His paper was, “The Market for ‘Lemons’” — defective used cars. So imagine a highly simplified used car market. Assume we can’t tell the good ones from the lemons, so we’d like the lemon owners just to tell us they’re selling lemons.
Impossible? Here’s all it takes: The sellers of good cars will have every reason to want to stop the lemons from tarnishing their reputations. Putting their heads together, they hit on a brilliant solution. Good car sellers start issuing a one-year, low-cost full warranty.
The lemon sellers dare not follow suit — they know they’d soon be forced to pay for costly repairs. So they offer no warranty. By doing nothing, they give themselves away. Everyone can see who they are. We now have full transparency.
Can we pull this off when the lemons are socialists?
The problem is the same: Marxist candidates are good at sounding like super-good Democrats, hiding a socialism that would break down on any test drive — so we can’t tell them apart.
But the comparison fails when we come to the warranty.
No one can offer a believable warranty to pay for a broken economy. So instead of a warranty, we use the Transparency Promise.
Just as with a warranty for used cars, DSA-socialists will not sign the Transparency Promise. Not signing is how we spot them. But who would stop them from just lying about who they are by signing? The DNC can’t stop them without getting into contentious interpretations of their programs — which the Transparency Promise forbids.
So who can stop them from signing? Their own teammates.
Now you can see how the Transparency Promise uses political judo. DSA will simply not tolerate anyone who publicly contradicts their central tenets, and signing the Promise does just that. Almost all true socialists will end up revealing their socialism — they want to abolish capitalism.
The Promise never touches policy — Medicare for all, Denmark’s whole playbook, all of it stays fair game. This provides a bulletproof, dead-simple shield the DNC has never had before — one raised squarely against the Marxist DSA menace.
To act wisely, it needs an ethic of responsibility — responsibility for the fate of the Democratic Party. It must also muster the conviction to say, “Here we stand, we can do no other.” This combination of responsibility and conviction is what Max Weber, the founder of political sociology, saw as “authentically human.”
So far the DNC has lacked the conviction necessary to act authentically, but it now has another chance. The threat is greater and has been laid bare by a foolish adversary. What’s needed costs nothing in money, and nothing in blood — only the courage to require one telling signature of Democratic candidates.
Dr. King accepted his share of responsibility for the consequences visited upon his followers and himself as they faced a powerful and violent system. His choice was radical and authentically human. The Civil Rights Movement was authentically radical and proud of it.
The DNC has pretended to protect the party by welcoming socialists who pretend to be capitalist reformers. Enough of this. Bread & Roses’ own platform has stripped away the socialist pretense, to reveal enemies whose all-destroying “victory will require building a new society from the ground up.”
Surely the DNC will now see the existential threat and the simplicity of blocking it, and will choose to end its complicity in camouflaging our age-old enemy. Regular Democrats are owed this transparency. We expect nothing close to the courage or authenticity of the Civil Rights leaders, but ask of them at least the courage and honesty to require one telling signature before handing over our good name.
There’s much more to say, and you can find it in Part 3. But Part 6 is where you’ll find practical advice about what it will take to bring attention to these ideas. It’s awfully hard for most of us to give history even the slightest nudge, but I think this is one of the best shots I’ve had, and I hope you’ll join me.
“Veterans: March & Countermarch,” Time (Jan. 26, 1947). The quote concerns the infiltration of the American Veterans Committee. In 1947, Franklin Jr. became national vice-chairman of Americans for Democratic Action. tinyURL.com/Stoft-FDR-Jr-1947
The Power of Nonviolence, Richard B. Gregg (1935, 1960). tinyURL.com/Stoft-Nonviolence . I did end up doing alternative service because I won the draft lottery
Scientific Autobiography, Max Planck (1948). "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
In 1912, Eugene V. Debs won 6% of the popular vote, a record Sanders has envied for most of his life.
Jonestown & Peoples Temple, Garrett Lambrev (2013, 2020) pp. 11−12. Lambrev explains his comment on Obama: “Let us look at the failures of these leaders whom we have chosen to lead us, not just the failure of Jim Jones who took a mere thousand to their totally unnecessary deaths.” After 10 years in Jones’s cult, not even hiding out in fear for his life and “a mere thousand” deaths, was enough to shake Garry’s faith in far-left radicalism. Except for this, Garry is a likeable, mild-mannered librarian. Such is the power of extremism to capture minds. tinyURL.com/Stoft-Garry
“Go Home, Roger Goodell,” Ebony (Sept. 12, 2014). ebony.com/shade-brigade-go-home-roger-goodell-403/
“Bernie Sanders: ‘Democratic Socialism’ …’Talking about Social Security,’” Real Clear Politics (Feb. 19, 2016). tinyURL.com/Stoft-Sanders-Cuba
Workers Deserve More, Democratic Socialists of America (July 14, 2026), program.dsausa.org
“In Support of Workers Deserve More,” Bread & Roses (Aug. 20, 2026) tinyURL.com/Stoft-Bread-Roses-WDM
Bread & Roses home page breadandrosesdsa.org/
Workers Deserve More. “Replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.”