It seems like there are a lot of good candidates in District 3. Perhaps because the incumbent has done a poor job of representing her values and her district. Demagoguery is fun to watch, but it doesn't get the job done. Only hard work does that.

@1

I mean, she does have nine union endorsements, so a lot of labor organizers are at least enjoying the show, right?

Sawant isn't a Capitol Hill candidate, she's a Socialist candidate, and nobody's really pretending otherwise, not even her own campaign. I doubt there are many dues-paying UAW members living on Capitol Hill, but that's not really what the endorsement is about, is it?

Zach also did a very good job at the 43rd District endorsements meeting last night. Could be time for Kshama to "go national" and leave City Hall to people who actually care about Seattle.

The Police Guild president's gushing endorsement of DeWolf speaks volumes about the real character of his candidacy. For anyone tempted to take seriously DeWolf's claim to represent communities of color, youth, and the marginalized, this endorsement should give pause.

The SPOG leadership is enraged that Kshama was the single vote on City Council last year against the rollback in police accountability enshrined in their contract (which Judge Robart since said said was illegal!). Worse than that, Kshama's vote helped legitimize and raise up the voices of the overwhelming majority of black and brown community leaders in Seattle, alongside left labor activists, who also opposed the rollback in police accountability.

In DeWolf, the Police Guild and the political establishment they have found a candidate they can trust to betray those most impacted by racist police violence. But crucially, they have also found someone who knows how to those package betrayals in progressive-sounding rhetoric that can serve to diffuse and confuse resistance.

@2 Champagne socialists on Capitol Hill?

I’m shocked!

Nonsense “Ross” #1,

Kshama Sawant uses the socialist conquest — of her Seattle city council position — as a megaphone for building mass movements:
• Forcing the 8 corporate council members to concede a $15-per-hour minimum-wage throughout Seattle — we want to extend that victory nationwide!

• Defeating the police and prison-industry’s attempt to build a new police headquarters-bunker and youth jail.

• Organizing the mass fightback for affordable housing and renters’ rights.

As others on this thread have pointed out, it’s no wonder that our corporate overlords and their police-leadership thugs are rhapsodizing over their “DeWolf in Sheep’s Clothing”.

Don’t believe them — don’t be a “Sheep in Sheep’s Clothing”.
:)

Instead, please donate to us! And even more importantly, consider joining us!
Together, we have a world to win!

https://www.socialistalternative.org/

"Effusive" support from the SPOG President is a reason to vote for anyone else.

This endorsement is classic SPOG. They’ll play nice with Zachary until he pisses them off or they tire of him, at which point they’ll dredge their holding cells for an opportunistic con ready to run to Lincoln Beauregard with a sad story about Zachary slipping them $15 for a blow job when they were 17. Lincoln will go public with a filed claim, while never creating a case file on the accusations in his own records, and then withdraw the suit just before the handpicked jailbird is due to perjure himself in a sworn deposition. SPOG will probably even throw in a leak of some suspicious-sounding dispatch records on a callout to Zachary’s home, just to chum the waters.

@7: That's kind of what I thought. The average Sawant supporter views this whole scenario with SPOG as further proof that Sawant is staying consistent to her vision of change.

@9: I think what they've realized is that Sawant's base is bigger than just them, so she's not beholden to them in the way another candidate might be. She has other sources of money that other candidates don't have.

But if she wins again, they'll get back in line. In general, unions are a force for more progressive policies, but they do not inherently serve those goals. At the end of the day, they are collective bargaining units whose first imperative is to protect and serve their members.

De Wolf seems like potentially a stronger challenger than some of the fresh-faced, Milquetoast, progressive lite candidates the establishment has backed against her in the past.

But at least so far, the establishment hasn't really come to terms with the strength of Sawant's ground game, which combined with her fundraising has made her impervious to the kind of air support that the establishment can provide with money, etc. I doubt they will this time either. At the end of the day, as long as their are a lot of idealistic students and other young people living in D3 she's going to be hard to beat.

as long as there are a lot of idealistic students....

Socialism is not idealism. It's the very heart of cynicism. To believe that regulated capitalism, the only system that has ever bettered the plight of mankind, should be replaced by socialism, is deeply ahistorical and generally derives solely from personal grievance.

@14:

Oh dear, I'm sure the ancient Greeks, or the Romans, or the Arabs, or the Persians, or the Chinese, all of whom created thriving civilizations pre-dating Adam Smith by several thousands of years in some instances, would sorely beg to differ with your naive, uninformed assessment.

@15

Ottomans, not "Arabs." And you left out the longest-running civilization of them all (ancient Egypt). And the war-gaming favorite, the Mongols. And the major new world civilizations, the Olmec, Maya, Chimu, Inca, Aztec, Tiwanaku, Clovis, Ayabaca, Narnino, Moche, Arawak, Toltec, Zapotec, Muisca, a dozen mound-building empires in the Mississippi valley, some Pueblo empires, whoever built and rebuilt the amazon earthworks, etc etc etc.

There's archeological evidence for so many empires around the world that we don't even have agreed-upon names for half of them, and that's not even counting pre-ceramic cultures that might or might not be regarded as empires, depending on who's doing the scoring and how much evidence is available for a given grouping. And I say "empire" just to restrict us to large, successful, politically and economically unified or centralized civilizations that clearly "bettered the plight of mankind," as @14 says.

And @14 doesn't seem to understand that an ideology can fail to meet whatever arbitrary definition of "idealism" you care to cook up, and yet still attract plenty of idealists.

Sawant represents the Socialist Alternative Party and whatever ideas they come up with in one of the their moms basements. Nobody else. Not her district, not Seattle. She could hold the same position anywhere else in America stupid enough to vote for her and it really wouldn't change her agenda at all. She is nothing but a parasite on her constituents. I'm hoping enough are smart enough to see that.