The Cori Bush post, btw, was because I want to connect with people who chose genocide over genocide and theft, when they feel obliged to participate.

Which is absolutely legitimate. My point was not that we should not engage with people who come to anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist politics through realizing the limits of electoralism. My point was that you should never play defense when reactionaries and liberals make attacks against you or your ideological or situational allies. You do not want to ever find yourself in a situation where you are put on the defensive and forced to explain or apologize.

It doesn’t even really matter where you stand on whether you think that these types of candidates are a net good or just another distraction and way to divert people from revolutionary politics into bourgeois electoralism. Here’s why:

If you think that these progressive anti-genocide candidates are tactically useful allies, then you shouldn’t engage with accusations against them. Don’t let the enemy choose the battleground. Instead go on the offense and hammer home the points that you and they stand for. Offense is the best defense. Defend by attacking the liberals and the reactionaries, highlighting their hypocrisies, and the fact that they have no leg to stand on to criticize anyone when they support genocide and are the footstools of capital.

If you think that these candidates are just capitalist reformists and imperialism with a progressive face, then it goes without saying that you gain nothing from defending them. Let them fall and use the opportunity to draw their supporters to more radical politics.

Either way, you see, it’s like i said: it doesn’t matter what the details of the scandal are.