The Binghamton University chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America hosted a postelection town hall to discuss the political landscape and their plans to organize and mobilize their movement during Donald Trump’s second presidential term.

The discussion, held in the Glenn G. Bartle Library Tower on Wednesday evening, began with a retrospective look at the last few general election cycles, starting with 2016. John Ferrara, YDSA’s president and a senior double-majoring in biology and Italian, examined what he viewed as the Democratic Party’s shift to the right of the political spectrum since Trump — who the YDSA described as a “fascist” — entered national politics.

Ferrara said the Democratic National Committee rigged the 2016 primary against Bernie Sanders — a democratic socialist — in favor of Hillary Clinton, who lost the electoral college vote to Trump. He said this happened again in 2020, when several major Democratic candidates dropped out of the primary to endorse Joe Biden after Sanders won the first caucus.

Biden eventually won more than 2,700 pledged delegates while Sanders won 1,119 delegates, falling about 870 delegates short of clinching the Democratic Party nomination. A majority or plurality of primary voters chose Biden in states Sanders won against Clinton back in 2016, including Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Oklahoma.

“Even though he had mass support, he was pushing forward a positive future for what the country could be — new ideas, radical ideas,” said Ferrara. “The Democratic Party would not let that slide.”

Biden ran on a few progressive campaign promises in 2020, including student loan forgiveness, expanding Medicare, a pro-union agenda and support for the Green New Deal. However, according to the YDSA, he neglected to follow through on these promises and reverted to an “establishment” Democrat once sworn into office.

The Supreme Court in 2023 struck down Biden’s student loan debt forgiveness program, which the administration claimed would have benefited up to 43 million Americans. The Biden campaign supported the “framework” of a Green New Deal during the 2020 election, but his campaign declined to endorse certain tenets of the proposal — like a federal job guarantee for all Americans.

The YDSA argued the Democratic party’s nonprogressive stances — citing Harris campaigning on calls for a stronger military, a more armed Southern border and support for fracking — contributed to marginalized and working-class people abandoning the party. Exit poll data showed that self-described liberal voters favored Harris by a significant margin while she slipped with moderate and conservative voters.

“Democrats, if you notice, many of them have been moved significantly to the right, both in military, in our border, in throwing immigrants under the bus and throwing trans people under the bus,” Ferrara said.

Tyler Brechner, the political education coordinator for the YDSA and a sophomore majoring in philosophy, politics and law, described the threat Trump and his administration pose to labor unions, the LGBTQ+ community, immigrants, abortion rights and student movements. He mentioned how Trump will allow for the continued suffering in Gaza, which Ferrara condemned Biden for during his portion of the presentation. Brechner referred to the humanitarian crisis as a bipartisan effort and said that the crisis may worsen under Trump, referencing talk of annexation of the West Bank within Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration after Trump’s election.

The town hall then moved into small group discussions, in which attendees spoke about how they felt after the election, what a Trump presidency would do to the country and what their strategy should be moving forward. The floor was then opened to a larger discussion.

During this portion of the town hall, René Rojas, an assistant professor of human development at BU and member of the Democratic Socialists of America — the YDSA’s parent organization — praised the students for their community-building approach among working people and reaching out to those whose economic anxieties led them to vote for Trump, which he believes his colleagues have often been unable to do.

“Talk to people who have Trump signs on their lawn,” Rojas said. “Figure out how we can resonate with them, [how] our messages can resonate with them. If we don’t, we’re doomed, because the Democrats aren’t offering anything and as long as there’s a void there, Trump and JD Vance — that’s the real dangerous fucker — are going to keep on winning working people over, of all ethnic and racial backgrounds, if we can’t come in and offer programmatic and policy solutions.”

Ferrara clarified that as socialists who believe workers should run the economy, they do not plan to collaborate with the far-right but advocate for and support the working class — a task the YDSA feels Democrats have failed at.

“This isn’t about accepting bigotry, it’s not about accepting that,” Ferrara said. “Rather, it’s showing people that all that stuff that they’re told, that it’s migrants taking your job, that it’s queer people trying to indoctrinate your children — that’s a distraction. It’s a distraction that the capitalist class is trying to force upon you so that you stop looking at how your boss, every day takes money out of your paycheck, how your boss works to alienate you from your friends, from your family, how they learn to take money from your paycheck and focusing on showing people that.”

Editor’s Note: Tyler Brechner, YDSA’s political education coordinator, is a Pipe Dream News writer. He had no part in the writing or editing of this article.