Kshama Sawant squeaks by in recall vote

-- " Seattle socialist Kshama Sawant keeps city council seat after recall election.," Guardian

Editorial cartoon by David Horsey, "Sawant misses the point," Seattle Times.

One of the things that separates me from a lot of progressives is my reflexive desire to fully understand something, so I am less inclined to let ideology direct my thinking.  I jokingly call myself an "inner city progressive" whose knee jerk liberal tendencies when I moved to DC in 1987 have long since been mediated by the reality of urban living--especially in those days of high crime and living in "bad neighborhoods."

OTOH, I admire people who remain hardcore and true to their beliefs, people like AOC, Arwa Mahdawi, a columnist for the Guardian, etc.

But my joke that "the more I learn about real estate development the more I become an intellectual Marxist," the fact is that while Marxism is great for understanding how capitalism works, it's not so great for solutions within capitalism, since we're not gonna overthrow capitalism in my lifetime.

Image: Anna Boiko Weyrauch, KUOW/NPR.

Kshama Sawant, a Councilmember in Seattle, is affiliated with the Socialist Alliance.  She retains her hardcore beliefs--"Eat the Rich" etc.--in the face of a political system that is pro-business.  She led the campaign in Seattle to get a $15 minimum wage, to tax Amazon, for tenants rights, etc.

She also, like Newt Gingrich, doesn't prioritize working well with others.

That, plus angering the business sector with most of her policies, led to her getting recalled.  Although she did some stupid s*** that gave her opponents a justification for moving forward with a recall.

Speaking of stridence.  Image: Deborah Wang, KUOW/NPR.

Most of the money for the recall campaign came from business interests, while Sawant's anti-recall campaign got donations from across the country.

Washington State has mail in ballots, and results are released daily for about a week after the election.  Generally, the first tranche includes the most "conservative" votes, while later tranches tend to be significantly more progressive.

While the early vote found the pro-recall side had a majority, with the later countings, Sawant squeaked by, with 310 votes separate yes for recall versus no for recall.

From the campaign flyer "5 reasons Big Business wants Kshama Sawant gone."

The thing is, should Sawant prioritize "working well with others"?  

I think it's incredibly important that her voice be represented on Council, especially in terms of progressive policies on wages, taxation, and landlord-tenant relations.

At the same time, should she consider, like Milwaukee's socialists in the early to mid1900s, of focusing on exemplary results and less on being strident? ("America's Socialist Experiment," PBS).

Given that out of 41,000 voters, they were evenly split, I'd say she needs to spend more time trying to work with others.

In the discussion about Northern Ireland in the context of Brexit, Richard Wyn Jones, a Welsh professor, wrote about  "loser's consent" when describing the vote for the creation of the Welsh parliament in 1997.  

The vote was similarly close, with a bare majority favoring devolution.  The leader of party went out of his way to build consensus, to get consent of the voters who didn't favor devolution, in order to be able to move forward.

The avowedly left need to think about this.  (The general concept is discussed here, Losers' Consent – Elections and Democratic Legitimacy.)

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Note: Also in the election, the more "conservative" candidates won for Mayor ("Maps from Seattle elections that made Bruce Harrell mayor," Seattle Times)" and for City Attorney ("Republican Ann Davison, talking law and order, wins Seattle city attorney race," Seattle Times).  The DA race was particularly stark between an avowedly pro-progressive crime policy candidate and a "Republican."  

Given the significant increase in disorder in Seattle over the past few years--homelessness, public camping, a rise in crime, CHOP and other problems, it's interesting that people voted decidedly in favor of more order for Mayor and DA.