i-thaphithin replied to your link: Socialist Sawant now leads Seattle council race by 41 votes
Dammit, Seattle gets a Socialist before we do. :-(
And, like, a hardcore Socialist. She's all about Occupy and punitive taxes on millionaires and hiking the minimum wage to $15 per hour. (None of this will end up happening, because she just has a single seat on Council, but the Council composition is likely to shift as Seattle also voted to change how councillors are elected.) This isn't some centrist Democratic type playing the base by claiming all kinds of hard-left affiliation but mostly seeking to preserve the status quo social safety net. She's pushing for a very different way to organize the economy, and she's managed to get elected on those terms.
(Also a Woman of Colour which is cool because socialist-type elected officials in the North American context tend to skew very heavily white and male. Despite claiming to represent the margnalized, socialists seem to think that we white males are somehow ~more electable~ than anyone else? Before the election BC NDP types talked about how to bring the "angry white male" vote back to the party. But afterwards they were blaming their loss on their inability to connect with Chinese and Punjabi voters.)
