Earlier this month, Politico published an article called “Down Goes Socialism,” arguing that recent elections showed the weakness of the Democrats’ “Ocasio-Cortez wing” or “Berniecrat left.” The most “glaring defeat,” writer Bill Scher said, was the primary loss of Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s gubernatorial primary. If you thought the Democratic Party “was poised to go socialist, think again,” Scher concluded.
Scher’s analysis was odd, not least because Abdul El-Sayed isn’t a socialist. It seemed very eager to conclude that “Sanders leftism” was doomed based on a small handful of races. But that’s a bad way to examine trends in the left’s strength, because up until Bernie Sanders’ own campaign, the “Sanders left” was almost nonexistent within the Democratic Party. Its default position is losing, meaning that the question we need to ask is not “Are progressive Democrats mostly losing?” but “Are they starting to win more often, or increase their share of the vote?” Among some political analysts, there seems to have been a kind of “goalpost-moving”: It used to be that Bernie Sanders was considered a completely fringe figure whose politics could never win anything. Now, they’re asking why his politics aren’t winning all the time. By drawing their conclusions about what’s happening based on “last night’s election results,” these analyses inevitably miss the trend line. (Sure enough, two days after the New York Times published its “Why aren’t Bernie’s candidates winning?” piece, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won her primary.)
In the last months, we’ve seen primary victories for Ben Jealous in Maryland, Rashida Tlaib in Michigan, and Randy Bryce in Wisconsin. (Also Keith Ellison in Minnesota, though I wouldn’t feel comfortable invoking Ellison without mentioning the misconduct allegations against him.) Now, Andrew Gillum has achieved what Politico calls a “stunner” of an upset in Florida’s Democratic gubernatorial primary.
In Trump-voting Florida, Gillum was unafraid to break with his primary opponents by endorsing Sanders’ single-payer “Medicare For All” plan. Look at the responses each of the candidates gave when asked about healthcare. The others talked vaguely about expanding access and strengthening the Affordable Care Act. Gillum, on the other hand, came right out and called for a transformation of the healthcare system:
I stand with Senator Sanders[‘] “Medicare for All” proposal. It moves us closer to affordable healthcare as a right for everyone in Florida and this country, and I’m proud to support it. For two decades, Florida’s elected leaders have shrunk from the great challenges facing our state, including an uninsured rate today that is 45 percent higher than the national average. We’re near the bottom in health care affordability, and too many of our children do not receive the care they need to thrive.
Gillum has run on a platform that emphasized economic justice, and Florida’s Democrats were taken enough with it to vote for Gillum over older, better-funded, “safer” candidates. A core point made by Scher’s Politico article is that leftism only appeals in deep blue areas, like the Congressional districts of Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Gillum’s victory proves that this is not necessarily the case. It might be more difficult, certainly, to get a more moderate group of Democratic primary voters to “roll the dice” on a candidate that departs more from the “mainstream.” But it can be done.
The general election in Florida is going to be an important test. Gillum faces Ron DeSantis. DeSantis is a toadying Trump-worshiper, which is not my own leftist hyperbole but is essentially his own self-description. In a gross primary ad DeSantis labels himself a “pitbull Trump defender.” The ad itself gives me the creeps, since it features DeSantis teaching his young child to “build the wall” with toy blocks, and showing them how to say “make America great again.” Indoctrinating young people in xenophobia and jingoism is bad enough when it’s done in private, but exploiting it for television adds another level of depravity. DeSantis is an extremist, then, who has tied himself to all of Trump’s worst policies, so this election will be an interesting verdict on (1) Trump’s popularity in Florida, (2) the question of whether “Medicare For All” is as successful a campaign issue as the polls indicate (a majority of Republicans apparently support it now!) (3) how Democrats should position themselves in 2020.
Every race is different and it’s a mistake to see everything as a simple replay of “Bernie v. Hillary” or “the left v. the center.” But Gillum departed from Democratic party orthodoxy, and has now won his primary. The simple story that “Ocasio-Cortez politics can win in Brooklyn but not elsewhere” is yet to be confirmed or disconfirmed. We do know, however, that you can support single-payer and still win a statewide primary in Florida. And we know that reports of the left’s death have been greatly exaggerated.
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