Disciplined cadre? Nonsense. All the local socialist factions have that. What distinguished SA was an ongoing commitment to maximizing actual voter contact. The reason that no socialists have ever won at the level of city council is that none have ever had serious commitments to organized canvassing with a sufficiently large number of volunteers. For once, a socialist party was less interested in this month’s correct line than in talking to voters who are by and large not political junkies.
Sawant most certainly did not defy conventional wisdom twice. She was elected by Democratic voters, some of whom were and are still active in local Democratic districtorganizations. There is absolutely no way in hell that those voters would have given her a majority against Chopp. She could run like clockwork every two years and still get the same 35% protest vote. Why? Because Dem voters will never be convinced to give up the seniority in the state legislature that Chopp has. On the other hand, with the Seattle City Council, seniority is a highly negative factor. Only O’Brien faced a serious challenger, who was handicapped by hating bike lanes and legal marijuana, stances not at all popular with the younger demographic that elected Sawant. The others were opposed by fruitcakes with no campaigns. All except Licata were vulnerable to a well-organized populist campaign similar to Sawant’s. That said, Sawant’s legislature run gave her a decent volunteer base.
Another point is that the electorate is now undergoing a massive change in the left populist direction—check out the following essay. BTW, Beinart is a conservative DLC “new” Democrat who was a major cheerleader for the Iraq war. If Dems are smart, they’ll do what they did in the 30s—steal socialist ideas and implement them. That can’t happen, of course, without ongoing pressure from actual socialists.
The Rise of the New New Left
by Peter Beinart
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/12/the-rise-of-the-new-new-left.html
It is these two factors—their economic hardship in an age of limited government protection and their resistance to right-wing cultural populism—that best explain why on economic issues, Millennials lean so far left. In 2010, Pew found that two-thirds of Millennials favored a bigger government with more services over a cheaper one with fewer services, a margin 25 points above the rest of the population. While large majorities of older and middle-aged Americans favored repealing Obamacare in late 2012, Millennials favored expanding it, by 17 points. Millennials are substantially more pro–labor union than the population at large.
Most striking of all, Millennials are more willing than their elders to challenge cherished American myths about capitalism and class. According to a 2011 Pew study, Americans under 30 are the only segment of the population to describe themselves as “have nots” rather than “haves.” They are far more likely than older Americans to say that business enjoys more control over their lives than government.
And unlike older Americans, who favor capitalism over socialism by roughly 25 points, Millennials, narrowly, favor socialism.
There is more reason to believe these attitudes will persist as Millennials age than to believe they will change. For starters, the liberalism of Millennials cannot be explained merely by the fact that they are young, because young Americans have not always been liberal. In recent years, polls have shown young Americans to be the segment of the population most supportive of government-run health care. But in 1978, they were the least supportive. In the last two elections, young Americans voted heavily for Obama. But in 1984 and 1988, Americans under 30 voted Republican for president.
Nor is it true that Americans necessarily grow more conservative as they age. Sometimes they do. But academic studies suggest that party identification, once forged in young adulthood, is more likely to persist than to change. There’s also strong evidence from a 2009 National Bureau of Economic Research paper that people who experience a recession in their plastic years support a larger state role in the economy throughout their lives.
The economic circumstances that have pushed Millennials left are also unlikely to change dramatically anytime soon. A 2010 study by Yale economist Lisa Kahn found that even 17 years later, people who had entered the workforce during a recession still earned 10 percent less than those who entered when the economy was strong. In other words, even if the economy booms tomorrow, Millennials will still be suffering the Great Recession’s aftershocks for decades.
Another instructive Google search—“Milwaukee” + “sewer socialism.” The decades of socialist governance there are still remembered as a golden age of good government. The term “sewer socialism” was actually a slam against them by other socialist parties, who saw them as too interested in governance and insufficiently interested in taking over the means of production. Or, as Debs put it “They are more interested in cleaning the streets than in marching on them.” I hope that Sawant realized that most of the people who voted for her thought that they were electing a sewer socialist. She needs to govern as one or face the prospect of a very short career as an officeholder. Not that this is at all consistent with continuing to participate in rallies and other events.
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