Bernie Sanders has a strong approval rating in rural areas. In 2016, I door knocked for him in Michigan, Indiana and Illinois. We won two of those states, and I saw many yard signs next to the road in cornfields across the region. The friendliest reception I got wasn't in the cities, it was in small agricultural towns.

Yet, most socialists running or office run in urban districts.

What would it be like if DSA and Socialist Alternative ran candidates in Pend Orielle or Ferry County? Set aside the stereotypes you have about farmers and people in rural areas- I know you think everyone east of the Cascades is running around in a Klan hood, but thats just not true. They often vote Republican simply because Democratic policies tend to favor city dwellers. When's the last time you heard a prominent member of this state's Democratic caucus talking about the Farm Bill? It needs serious reform, and many small farmers are in fear of losing their family operated farms because the Farm Bill favor large corporate farms over small family owned plots, main it even harder for the little guys to compete with the bigs. That's an issue I think socialists can make a winning argument out of. Vote for the Socialist Alternative candidate for state rep to protect the rights of Yakima Valley winegrowers.

And you know, if you win in the areas the Democrats have long ago abandoned to the GOP, you'll have voices in the House and Senate to support a graduated progressive statewide income tax, or capital gains tax.

The New Deal built the Grand Coulee Dam. The Green New Deal shouldn't neglect Eastern Washington either.

@1: You are giving the residents of Eastern Washington too much credit. I've lived in Richland, Washington for 7 years. You are right that not everybody out here is a raging Alex Jones fan... but there are plenty of those. There are progressives working hard for change here: DSA has a very well spoken, charismatic woman organizing like hell. I love her events... and I see the same 15 people there that I see at every other progressive event. We've run hard campaigns with diverse candidate (young, woman, gay, latina, etc.). We get stomped every election 65-35 by solid majorities who think that Seattle wants to use Sharia law to take their guns away. They are not terrible people (for the most part), but they ain't going to vote for Bernie. Sorry.

Everyone's a Democratic Socialist, except for the Republican Socialists, around here.

Incrementalist and government pair well together.

@5:

That's because everyone wants government to do more stuff, like: build roads, schools, fire stations, police precincts, utilities infrastructure, water treatment facilities, electrical grids, et al - but people like you never want to pay for any of it.

"In addition to all that, they'll slightly increase the business-and-occupation tax for big businesses, which will pay into the state's workforce training programs."

No, Rich, they're proposed to increase the B&O tax for ALL service business, even the smallest ones.

2, 3

I never said it was gonna be easy. Nothing worth doing is ever easy. That said, what we’re doing now what’s yelleded exactly one city council member in the entire state. That’s it. Nobody at the co7nty level. Nobody in the state legislature. Just one-admittedly awesome, but still, just the one- city council member.

How the hell are we going to do anything meaningful like that?

No, we need to win big, and get not just one Sawant, but many many Sawants. Sawants everywhere. Sawants in Whitman. Sawants in Benton County. Sawants in the Colville Rez. Sawants all over the place.

I have no idea if Point Roberts has a municipal government or not, but if thy do, I want to see a Sawant as their mayor. And the only way that’s gonna happen is if we run campaigns far away from any Starbucks stores, waaay out in the boonies. Soybean socialism, my friends. Cornfield communism.

If that sounds absurd, remember that when the old SPA was around, they ran all their candidates out in the boonies. They even built a few of the towns out on the Kitsap peninsula. There’s a few books I can recommend about that history. One especially good one is They Are All Red Out Here, which talks about the surprising history of many places in Washington’s rural areas you’ve probably driven through and never had any idea we’re foudned by radical socialists.

Well, if Eugene Debs could do it back then, we can do it again today. Sawant isn’t the first openly socialist to sit on that Council, no, the first one had his seat back in the 1800’s. The Red tradition in Washington runs as old and as deep as the Columbia River itself. You know this state’s first anthem, Roll On Columbia, that was written by a Red, too.

Let’s get out there and reclaim our history. This state is ours, and i5 always has been.

@10 and all that "stuff" has to be upgraded, maintained and expanded so it will go for another 70 years. Because ignorant goobers like you can't understand that over 70 years more and more people use this infrastructure and services. It doesn't stay static and neither do the costs. But fewer of fewer of you dumb goobers want to pay for what was built for you 70 years ago.

@9 - if you want people to go along with your agenda, threatening more Sawants is probably not the way to do it.

The population of the US 70 years ago was 150 million people, The top federal income tax rate was 91 percent. The population of Washington State was 2.3 million.

The top federal tax rate now in about 40-50%. But practically with all the dodges, deductions and havens really about 30%.

Therefore you can see that our infrastructure and services are accessed at orders of magnitude in 2017 than they were in 1950. Yet tax rates are LOWER on average now.

70 years ago with those higher tax rates on the wealthy the US government went on a massive two decade long stimulus spending spree despite the debts from WWII that built the infrastructure you enjoy. (Caveat: the US was the last industrial power standing at the end of a global war with almost no global economic competition).

70 years ago salary growth was largely due to high union participation rates and the stimulus (reaching a peak in about 1983 when Reagan essentially destroyed unions and the American dream as it was known).

Forbes calculates that in the 1950's the average US worker had to work approximately 15 days to pay for the average healthcare payment.

In 2012 the average worker had to work 58 god damned days to pay for the same care type average healthcare payment.

70 year ago the US also had highly federally supplemented higher education. That ended about 1990 or so.

Now with record profits and growth for US corporations over a decade we have a top tax rate of less than 40%. Once you minus out the upper 6% (who make more than ever before) the US has grossly shrinking incomes, shrinking middle class, exploding healthcare costs, collapsing infrastructure, out of reach higher education costs, and exceptionally low citizen participation.

The issue is so called conservatives want to suck from the teat of the state and don't want to pay for what they use. They want to pretend it was already built for them and requires nothing more.

BTW comparison: US population in 2019 is 330 million. The population of Washington State is almost 8 million.

Yeah. I'd say that 70 year old infrastructure is wearing thin.

"Democrats need to quit asking for what they think they can get,
and start demanding what their constituents are saying they need." Precisely, Rich.

Take a page from Republicans, Demmies, and grow a fucking Pair.

Don't let THEM frame the fucking Debate.

(I actually heard today on NfuckingPR, an Interviewer Actually pushing back -- Assertively, damn it!-- on some Repub congresscreep -- it was Uplifting. Also quite rare, but damn fine to witness. MORE a' the Same, NPR!) !

I wonder if The Kids'll just Take Over someday soon.

It's GONNA BE Theirs.
Why not Prepossess Mother Earth, right fucking Now,
before WE Fuck it Up.
And NOT for Good.

For EVER.
For US, rather.

Get her madd enough, She''l shake us off like the Fleas we must appear to be.

@9
Yes! the earlier slogan was,
"the 47 states and the Soviet of Washington!"

There is no difference between incrementalism and surrender. Those insisting on incrementalism have given up-they don't believe that the huge Democratic legislative gains in '18 count and they have caved in to the right wing canard that they have no right to win. To be an incrementalist is to be soulless, passionless coward and to have no core values at all. No change implemented slowly, in small pieces, has ever made any meaningful difference in anyone's lives. Grow spines, Dems!