How Sawant did it, plus victory rally video

[eridani]

4. Another article from The Nation

A Socialist Wins in Seattle

http://www.thenation.com/article/177389/socialist-wins-seattle#

What made Sawant’s victory historic was the context. Since 2008, Republican politicians and their media echo chambers have built a cottage industry around the comic claim that Barack Obama is a socialist. The man who took single-payer healthcare off the table and refused to break up “too big to fail” banks wouldn’t qualify as a mild social democrat, let alone the raging “Marxist” of Rush Limbaugh’s hallucinations.

Still, the charge persists. In October, Sarah Palin was peddling the fantasy that problems with the Affordable Care Act website were part of an elaborate scheme to steer America toward “full socialized medicine.” The rhetorical strategy imagines that the mere suggestion of a socialist or socialized tendency is a deal killer. It’s not just Republicans who buy into the notion; Democrats, with rare exceptions like Representative John Conyers and Senator Bernie Sanders, are almost as quick as conservatives to distance themselves from the s-word.

But the American people are less concerned. Thirty-nine percent of Americans surveyed for a November 2012 Gallup poll said they had a positive image of socialism. In a 2011 Pew survey, 49 percent of Americans under 30 said they felt positive about socialism, while just 46 percent felt positive about capitalism. Among African-Americans, 55 percent had a positive reaction to socialism, versus 41 percent to capitalism. Among Latinos, it was 44 percent for socialism, 32 percent for capitalism.