Here is what won last night in New York’s 14th District:
- Medicare for all (including medicine, vision, dental and mental health care)
- A universal jobs guarantee
- Fully funded public schools and taxing Wall Street to support tuition-free public universities and trade schools
- Housing as a human right
- Ending the War on Drugs, demilitarizing the police, abolishing for-profit incarceration
- Abolishing ICE, protecting DREAMers, simplifying the path to citizenship
- Investing in 100% renewable green industry
- Clean campaign finance
- Peace
This is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez‘ platform. She walloped a long-tenured, establishment Democrat who spent $3 million dollars to try to stave her off. She did it on a shoestring, running openly as a socialist, and a “card-carrying member” of the DSA.
The lesson here is not that “progressives” can “run to the left” in Democratic primary elections and win. The lesson is that more and more people are ready to abandon the politics of “let’s be reasonable.”
Medicare for all? Yes, please. Guaranteed jobs? Why not? Abolish ICE? It’s high time, and don’t let the screen door hit you on the way out, fellas. Housing as a human right? Makes sense. Everybody needs a home. Good education for everybody? Green jobs? Stop putting an entire generation of young black men in prison? Of course.
Queue “Eli’s Comin'” and turn it up loud. Here’s to a new world.