{"id":18539,"date":"2021-01-11T17:15:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-11T17:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inthesetimes.com\/article\/democratic-socialism-dsa-aoc-bernie-sanders-congress"},"modified":"2021-01-11T17:15:00","modified_gmt":"2021-01-11T17:15:00","slug":"congress-now-has-more-socialists-than-ever-before-in-u-s-history-the-high-water-mark-for-socialists-elected-to-national-office-is-in-step-with-a-proud-tradition-in-american-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/11\/congress-now-has-more-socialists-than-ever-before-in-u-s-history-the-high-water-mark-for-socialists-elected-to-national-office-is-in-step-with-a-proud-tradition-in-american-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Congress Now Has More Socialists Than Ever Before in U.S. History – The high-water mark for socialists elected to national office is in step with a proud tradition in American politics."},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t\t\t\t

In the 2018 midterm elections, two members of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) were elected to the House of Representatives: Rashi\u00adda Tlaib in Michigan\u2019s 13th dis\u00adtrict, and Alexan\u00addria Oca\u00adsio-Cortez, in New York\u2019s 14th dis\u00adtrict. To mark the occasion of the most socialists entering the House for the first time in a single year, I wrote<\/a>\nin these pages, \u201cthe 116th Con\u00adgress will con\u00adsist of two social\u00adists and four hun\u00addred and thir\u00adty-three rep\u00adre\u00adsen\u00adta\u00adtives of oth\u00ader per\u00adsua\u00adsions. It\u2019s a start.\u201d <\/p>\n

And indeed it was. In November 2020, both Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez handily won re-election, and have been joined in the 117th Congress by two more DSA members: Cori Bush from Missouri\u2019s 1st district and Jamaal Bowman from New York\u2019s 16th district. That raises the democratic socialist numbers from two to four out of four hundred and thirty-five. (At this rate, doubling the socialist delegation every two years, it\u2019d only take six more elections before socialists in 2032 would become a majority in the House\u2014exponential growth is a wonderful thing.) <\/p>\n

Given the contingencies of non-fantasy politics, such an outcome remains unlikely. Still, this is a significant political landmark in the history of the American Left\u2014the first time in U.S. history that this many self-described socialists have held Congressional seats concurrently. Two members of the Socialist Party in the era of Eugene V. Debs\u2014Victor Berger from Milwaukee, and Meyer London from the Lower East Side of Manhattan\u2014served in Congress just before and immediately after the First World War, although they didn\u2019t overlap in office (Berger\u2019s tenure was complicated by his conviction under the Espionage Act for opposing the war; the House of Representatives twice refused to seat him after he was elected and re-elected by Milwaukee voters in 1918 and 1919). More recently, two DSA members served in Congress and overlapped for a number of years, Ron Dellums representing Oakland, California from 1971 through 1998, and Major Owens representing Brooklyn from 1983 through 2007. <\/p>\n

While Dellums and Owens were supportive of DSA, knowledge of their membership in an organization that at the time counted only a few thousand members was mostly left-wing insider baseball. Relatively few of their constituents had likely ever heard of DSA. Not so for the socialists in Congress today, in part because the organization itself has grown a dozen-fold in recent years, recently surpassing 80,000 members. The new socialists\u2019 organizational credentials are regularly cited by friends and foes alike (\u201cDemocratic socialists salivate over current, future New York state gains,\u201d Fox News reported<\/a>\nwith its usual taste and balance after last November\u2019s election.) <\/p>\n

I asked Maria Svart, DSA\u2019s longtime national director, what she thought would be the consequence of the doubling of the socialist contingent in Congress. She believes it will help legitimize democratic socialist policy proposals like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. The four socialists were elected \u201cbecause these ideas speak to deep human needs,\u201d she said. And, she continued, the socialists in the House will also prove fighters for democracy: \u201cWe have already seen how they are changing the conversation in this country\u2014Congresswoman Cori Bush introduced a resolution to investigate and expel the Republicans who supported the armed insurrection on January 6, and we know she will fight in the future to defund militarized police forces like those who stood by as those rioters walked into the Capitol.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dellums and Owens\u2019 long tenures in office suggest that the current democratic socialist contingent won\u2019t be going away anytime soon, whether or not they\u2019re joined by other DSAers in years to come. They are all young, or relatively so. Millennial Ocasio-Cortez was born in 1989, famously elected to the House of Representatives before she turned thirty, and Tlaib, Bush and Bowman were all born in 1976 and have yet to turn forty-five. Barring the unforeseen, they will likely prove a stable core of socialist strength in Congress for decades to come (unless elected to higher office, a real possibility). <\/p>\n

It\u2019s also worth noting that, thanks to the November election results, three of the four most prominent elected DSA members are women and all four are people of color (Bernie Sanders, while an outspoken democratic socialist, is not a current member). This development may hopefully deal a blow to the \u201cBernie Bro\u201d stereotype many hold of the average DSAer (aka, male, white and hipster). It\u2019s certainly a step in the right demographic direction.<\/p>\n

Our times are filled with danger and promise. As part of a broader progressive coalition, a revitalized socialist movement, committed to defending and expanding the democratic promise to all Americans, can play a vital role in the years to come.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\n

This post was originally published on In These Times<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\tIn the 2018 midterm elections, two members of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) were elected to the House of Representatives: Rashi\u00adda Tlaib in Michigan\u2019s 13th dis\u00adtrict, and Alexan\u00addria Oca\u00adsio-Cortez, in New York\u2019s 14th dis\u00adtrict. To mark t…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1446,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18539"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1446"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18539"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18540,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18539\/revisions\/18540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}