Washington State has 100% mail-in ballots, so it takes a while to find out who wins in close elections. Sue Peters and Kshama Sawant were in such close elections, and both won. Neither ran as Democrats in a Democrats-dominated town--they ran to the left of the Dem establishment and won despite all the money that establishment poured into the establishment candidates' campaigns. It gives one hope that money isn't everything, at least on the local level where opinions are formed by actually seeing and hearing the candidates in person.
Peters ran as an independent for school board on an anti-corporate education reform platform, and Sawant ran as a socialist on a raise the minimum wage to $15/hr platform. Both are super smart, articulate women, and they really deserved to win, but who'd a thought they would. Both were long shots even in September. Seattle is a well-informed, progressive town by American standards, especially on cultural issues, but it's bit by the Neoliberal bug when it comes to economic issues. That comes from the techy and entrepreneurial types, the Microsoft millionaires, the Jeff Bezoses and Howard Schultz's who lean pro-business libertarian. No need to put the neanderthals in Boeing even in that group.
Salon did an interview piece with Sawant here, and in a way it's unfortunate that she's calling herself a socialist because she's just talking common sense, and regardless of her success here, I doubt the socialist party is going to get much traction. But maybe I'm wrong. She's not anti business. She just recognizes that as productive as capitalism is, it has a very serious distribution problem. If it takes a socialist in office to do something about that, more power to her.
And here's a HuffPo piece Peters wrote a few years ago that represents where she's coming from, which is where I'm coming from on education issues, and it's why I ran for school board (and lost) in another district two years ago.
I don't want to make too much of this, but both these elections make me hopeful that rank-and-file Democrats are beginning to make distinctions between corporate Democrats (liberal on cultural issues, but pro 1% on economic issues) and candidates who represent rank-and-file interests.