Is it a big deal if Seattle votes a Socialist into the city council?

Taken from Wednesday’s edition of The Tom and Curley Show.

John Curley says…

The election results are still slowly trickling in, and at this point Kshama Sawant, a devout, unashamed and unabashed Socialist, is leading in a Seattle City Council race by 402 votes as of the count Wednesday afternoon.

Is this a big deal that she claims to be a Socialist?

I think words have heavier weight because of what we attach to them.

If you were to get some guy on the street and say, ‘Are you for Socialism?’ He’d respond, ‘Oh, absolutely not. My brother’s in the Tea Party and I’m thinking of joining the Tea Party.’

Are you OK with Boeing getting a tax break? That’s a form of Socialism. How do you feel about Social Security, Medicare? The man on the street might say, ‘Don’t take my Social Security and Medicare.’

That’s all Socialism, that’s redistribution of wealth, that’s the government stepping in taking from some group of people and giving it to other groups of people. That’s by definition a form of Socialism.

The problem is this, people say well I have no problem with them supporting Boeing with tax dollars, or GM, or any other corporation, it’s a problem when we redistribute the wealth and give it to the 19-year-old woman who is about to have her third kid. Either way, it’s still the same mechanism, that’s basically within Socialism.

If you were to say to candidate Sawant: What are the biggest problems facing the city? If she says well the biggest problem is that people can’t afford to live here, or people aren’t having a livable wage – it all gets down to one thing.

It gets down to the dollars. Because it’s really about how much you’re going to take from one person and give to another person so that person can live a life that’s full and plentiful here in the City of Seattle.

She will basically come at it from this position, because I’ve interviewed her. She has said, and unabashed, she says corporations and businesses make way too much money, their profits are way up, they’re historically high, that they need to give more to the worker. And if we need to, as a government, come in and take from the profit to give to others so that they can live as well, that is what we intend to do. That is basically her entire thing. It will all boil down to that.

She is still just one vote of nine. The other part of the job is being a salesman. If you have an idea, you’ve got to sell the other five on your idea to go along with you. She’s going to have to come in and build some coalition and build some support.

Taken from Wednesday’s edition of The Tom and Curley Show.

Related:
Socialist Sawant pulls ahead in Seattle City Council race

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