I got a message from Progressive Democrats of America (PDA). They are supporting Dennis Kucinich who is running for office as an independent. For those who aren’t familiar with him, Kucinich was the “progressive Democrat” candidate for the Democratic nomination for president before Bernie Sanders took his place. Since leaving office, he’s gone on one of those  Assad junket Syria tours and was paid $20,000 to give a pro Assad speech. and is all in on defending Assad and apologizing for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “The United States was instrumental in overthrowing the government of Ukraine… in 2014,” Kucinich told The American Conservative.

Progressive Democrats of America are the mainstream of “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party. Check out their advisory board members. Barbara Lee, the poster child for mainstream progressive Democrats (and the congresswoman from my district) is among them. These are not the Putinists. But a deeper dive shows the result of a historic legacy. That legacy is the degeneration of the US Communist Party and their fellow travelers into mere liberal reformism, to a great degree.

Stalinist legacy from 1930s
This legacy goes all the way back to WW II. During the time of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) was vigorously opposed to the US entering the war. As soon as Hitler sent his troops to invade the Soviet Union, the CPUSA turned on a dime and demanded the US enter the war. (The Trotskyists wrote a great satirical song called “Our Line’s Been Changed Again” about this and similar shifts.) They gave complete and uncritical support to FDR and the Democrats. After the war ended, the CPUSA made a brief turn to support the independent presidential campaign of anti-Cold War liberal Henry Wallace. But following that they remained true to the Democratic Party. Inside the unions, it was nearly impossible to distinguish them and their fellow travelers from other liberal bureaucrats.

That is how they made common cause with the liberal and nowadays “progressive” wing of the Democrats as well as with their representatives in the working class – the union bureaucracy, especially the bureaucrats’ “progressive wing”. So, the deeper

The Committees of Correspondence.
Nowadays, even “socialism” is trendy and acceptable to liberals.

dive reveals that legacy. For example, here is an article from the Committees of Correspondence (CC) about the president of the board of directors, Conor Boylan. I have been unable to find any more background on Boylan, but the CC is a soft Stalinist group that arose out of the collapse of the Communist Party, USA at the time the Soviet Union collapsed. 

Another Board member is Michael Lighty. He was a union bureaucrat in San Francisco and before then was involved with the liberal/radical New American Movement and the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee. The executive director of the national staff is Alan Minsky. His background seems to be more directly Stalinist linked, including having worked with the soft Stalinist CommonDreams and the more openly Stalinist Nation magazine. Both journals apologize for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The Squad”
There is another wing of the Democratic Party which gives cover to the Putinists: That is the Ocasio-Cortez/”the Squad” wing. They are in general simply silent on the issue of Ukraine or, to say the least, they don’t openly and consistently oppose the excuses for Russia’s invasion, and on one or two instances they give cover to it. The most famous example was the letter sent to Biden by Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal that was signed by several “progressive” Democrats. The letter called for a ceasefire in Ukraine. As Oaklandsocialist explained at the time, the letter was sent as a result of the pressure the “progressives” were feeling from their organized “left” base, especially DSA. It was swiftly retracted when the mainstream of the Democrats opposed it.

Many of the people who give cover to the Putinists are not really Putinists themselves, nor even Putin apologists – Barbara Lee, for example – and probably others in PDA. But there is an overlap in much of their politics and the Putinists are more focused, more conscious of what they are doing and what they are after.

The overlap consists of this: Overall, this confusion results from the fact that these “progressive” Democrats are elected on a muddled basis and the legacy of Stalinism has a lot to do with this muddle. This political muddle becomes a way of life, a method. It also reflects the approach of the great majority of the left in the United States. This includes both the sectarian “hard” left and the reformist soft left. The soft left has all sorts of connections to the “progressive” Democrats (including within the union bureaucracy). This gives them more power and influence. Because of that the sectarian “hard” or “revolutionary” left in general confines its criticisms of the positions of the soft left to its own echo chambers; when they are in the presence of the soft left, they tend to be silent. This tendency means that the sectarian left feels obligated to be even more “revolutionary” within their own echo chambers, thereby adding to the muddle. It will require events themselves to actually create a wider drive for political clarity. Meanwhile, it is a huge mistake to sacrifice clarity for popularity.