I’m a radical, but I tell my students at Queens, I try not to soapbox. I want to be on the left wing of the possible. Michael Harrington, a founder of the Democratic Socialists of America. 

The Left Wing of the Possible is also the title of an interesting and very complimentary article on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Socialist phenom from the Bronx, in the New Yorker (interestingly, the same article is entitled Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Historic Win and the Future of the Democratic Party in the online edition). The article is by David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker since 1998, who wrote a very favorable article on Barrack Obama in 2007, painting him as a centrist, that was instrumental in my getting on the Obama bandwagon. As with most New Yorker articles, it is about 75% context, so, if you are at all interested in politics, I suggest you give it a read.

Ocasio-Ortega is running on a platform that, the article points out, is not that radical. She is running on a platform that includes single-payer health insurance, a minimum wage of $15, equal rights for women and minorities, and free college,  but, to quote Bernie: “not the government taking over industry”. As the article title suggests, she wants what she thinks is possible. I think it is possible, too and, I don’t understand why I often read the opposite from the Democratic establishment. Taking a hypothetical Trump voter – who voted for Trump because they don’t like income inequality or are afraid that their middle-class life will not be there for their kids, not a Trump voter who voted for him because they think he is a racist – I think they are more likely to vote for somebody who is pushing free college rather than somebody who is pushing  we will significantly cut interest rates for future undergraduates because we believe that making college more affordable is…important.

I don’t think that the Democratic voter base, including many Trump voters – many of whom also voted for Obama – are against free college and single-payer health care, for that matter, I think the Democratic corporate base is. I think that, if the Democrats want to win back Congress, they are going to have to start listening to the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezes, not just their rich financial contributors.  

As an aside, after WWII, education at state colleges was virtually free and remained so at the University of California until 1970 when a $150 “education” fee was added. Now the tuition fee is  $14,460. As an aside to the aside, I don’t think it is a coincidence that, as the number of minorities has gone up at Cal, so has the tuition. I think the governmental and educational infrastructure, consciously or unconsciously, just doesn’t think educating people of color is as important as it was when most of the students were white. End aside.