Socialists in America

NY Times -   Socialist mayors were a real thing in the first half of the 20th century, when the Socialist Party of America held political sway. Milwaukee had a roughly 40-year run of them, so-called sewer socialists committed to building out the city’s infrastructure and instituting political reform. They lost power in 1960.

Then there was Bernie Sanders in Burlington, Vt., for most of the 1980s. “I’ve stayed away from calling myself a socialist,” he told The Boston Globe after his first win in 1981, “because I did not want to spend half my life explaining that I did not believe in the Soviet Union or in concentration camps.” He soon embraced the label.

And now? The mayor of New York City, the nation’s largest city, is a democratic socialist. Another one could become the leader of Los Angeles, the nation’s second biggest city. The mayor of Seattle is a socialist. And next year, a democratic socialist is all but sure to occupy the mayor’s office in Washington, D.C., a 15-minute walk from President Trump’s residence at the White House.

No one can say for sure whether their success portends national change. Their victories, or their chances of victory, have mostly come in dark-blue Democratic cities. And not every socialist running for mayor in a largely Democratic city has triumphed. Left-leaning candidates recently lost in San Francisco and Philadelphia.

But as my colleagues Campbell Robertson, Jill Cowan and Anna Griffin write, the success of those socialist mayors who did win their races says something about the state of the Democratic Party in the run-up to this fall’s midterm elections. And it gives us a glimpse at what happens when the far left actually takes office.