Today I saw a socialist city council member attacked from the left.

[eridani]

9. What they are is the ONLY socialist organization within living memory that actually--

--mounted a serious voter outreach for an election (400 volunteers) instead of assuming that voters are all policy wonks who would surely respond to their finely reasoned platform. Plenty of things happen when you talk to average voters instead of other left policy wonks, not the least of which is that they talk back and express their own concerns.

Many immigrant small business owners (including many from her own community) talked to her about small business survival. The virtuous circle that higher wages set into motion has a lag time, and there is no reason to pub small businesses at risk before it gets a chance to really get going.

Socialists governeed for years in a number of midwestern cities, where they are remembered as models of good governance. Debs called them "sewer socialists," and said that they were more interested in cleaning the streets than in marching on them. Seattle voters expect Sawant to be a sewer socialist, and if she isn't, she'll have a single term only