Yes, my oligarchs, please come on bended knee and pay respects to your new overlord, Bill de Blasio. I am enjoying the spectacle.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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What’s so funny (“funny”) is that the nation’s oligarchs are fantastically powerful, and will remain so after De Blasio becomes Mayor of our cultural and financial capital. But the idea that they will have to give up even a scintilla of their influence completely freaks them out.
“Mr. Mayor, take pity on the capitalist titan!”
It’s not just de Blasio and NYC. In Seattle, the most pro-business member of city council, a 16-year incumbent and two-time council president, is in real danger of being unseated by an open socialist, an immigrant woman of color firebrand (and Occupy veteran) named Kshama Sawant. She already got 35 percent in a three-way city-wide primary against two better-funded mainstream pols, in the process drawing more votes for an explicit socialist than anyone in the US in a pretty long time. (Bernie Sanders won, in Burlington and then Vermont, with more cooperation than opposition from the state’s Democratic Party; and Seattle has more residents than Vermont anyway!)
As the linked article (a cover story in Seattle’s biggest alt weekly) attests, she’s done nothing but pick up steam since then, and her proposals – particularly for a $15/hr minimum wage – are forcing our mayoral candidates to the left on such issues as well.
As with de Blasio, Sawant’s strongest among voters under 30 and the working class – the people who came of age in or have been crippled by 12 or so years of bad job prospects. I think we’re going to see a lot more of people like her, de Blasio, Elizabeth Warren, etc. in the next few years.
A lot of voters are living in an economy that bears no relationship to the rhetoric being spouted by most politicians, and when they hear someone articulate the actual problems in their daily lives, they’re responding. It’s a neat trick. More politicians ought to try it.
Yeah, there used to be a party that did that.
And Jackson, Mississippi
I’m liking Washington state more and more. The officials answer e-mail promptly and courteously even to people who don’t live there. They are aggressively pursuing the ACA and Medicaid expansion. It looks like there are no crazy Teabaggers there. Now this. I’m impressed. The whole West coast is looking good to me. Too bad I’ll never be able to afford California. But Oregon and Washington are possible. The idea of living in a state without Joe Walsh, Pat Quinn, and Rahm Emanuel makes life seem worthwhile instead of the crushing grind it is here in Illinois.
Thanks for this. It brings to mind the late, great Molly Ivins’ description of the “conga line” of business lobbyists showing up to Ann Richards’ victory party in Austin, late in the evening on election day 1990 when they finally realized she was going to be governor of Texas for the next four years and they were going to have to deal with her.