The trendlines are looking good
by David Atkins
I mentioned yesterday that although the chattering heads continue to point to unexpectedly close results in Virginia as a sign that the Affordable Care Act is hurting Democrats, it doesn’t appear that Democrats actually fared poorly in nationwide results.
I’d also like to point out that it wasn’t just Democrats who performed well. Self-avowed socialists did as well, which is something of a shock for a sleep odd-year election cycle usually dominated by conservatives:
It’s a far cry from a revolution, but socialists had a surprisingly strong showing in two city council races on Election Day, November 5. In Seattle, Kshama Sawant picked up 46% of the vote while challenging 15-year Democratic incumbent Richard Conlin. And in Minneapolis, Ty Moore is only 131 votes behind Democratic candidate Alondra Cano.
While Sawant and Moore both trail their opponents, neither race has been officially called. And even if they both lose, they will have received an unusual amount of grassroots and institutional support for two avowedly anti-capitalist candidates running in major American cities. Additionally, they both received major labor union endorsements, and Moore even managed to raise more money than the Democrat in the race.
“This is an indication of how eager people are for real change,” Sawant told msnbc. Both she and Moore ran as members of the Socialist Alternative party, an organization alternatively described as Trotskyist or democratic socialist.
“I think the situation across the country is ripe for this, and our organization Socialist Alternative. What’s unique is our organization took the initiative,” said Moore. “I think in the post-Occupy world, with the political discrediting of most capitalist institutions, including the two major parties, Wall Street, the corporate-owned media—no offense intended—there’s openness to a more bold working class challenge to the two-party system.”
Progressives often despair at the seemingly unbreakable corporate control of American politics. But when you consider where we were as a nation in 2003, it has frankly been a remarkable 10 years. No, haven’t yet elected Howard Dean or Elizabeth Warren, income inequality hasn’t been staunched, no one is doing a damn thing about climate change and Wall Street is still thumbing its nose at everyone. But we did make George W. Bush and Dick Cheney hide in an electoral hole, we elected an African-American man named Barack Hussein Obama (really, imagine someone telling you we would do that in, say, 2003), gay marriage is now mainstream, we had a full-fledged pseudo-socialist movement in Occupy, we passed a major healthcare law (imperfect though it may be) that had eluded the country for five decades, and Republicans are reduced to extreme gerrymandering and radical abuse of Senate rules to remain relevant in governance even as they erupt in civil war. Meanwhile, seriously progressive candidates are making big headway with voters in some of the country’s biggest cities.
From day to day things can look hopeless, and the macroeconomic trend lines suck. But there’s also a great deal to be very optimistic about. If we can sustain the momentum we’ve had for the last ten years, and create as much change in this country between now and 2023 as we have between 2003 and 2013, I think we’ll be in very good shape.
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