Democratic Socialist candidates midterm election progressive wins, Digi Mart USA News: At a bar in Harlem on Tuesday night, Democrats celebrated what some called not just a victory, but a revolution. The 32-year-old Darializa Avila Chevalier, also known as DAC, made her victory speech entirely in Spanish, draped in a keffiyeh.
A New York City Journal reporter spotted stickers and pins with slogans like “Abolish Ice,” “babies not bombs” and “my landlord is so mad right now.” Posters on the walls promised to free Palestine and tax the rich. One attendee boasted, “Tonight Chevalier wins, and tomorrow we get rid of [Democrat minority leader] Hakeem Jeffries.”
Chevalier was on her way to the House with 88 per cent of the vote in her district, one of five new progressive, socialist Democrats who are likely to prove a thorn in the side of not only the Trump administration, but also their own party. She is the first Afro-Latina and Dominican woman to represent her district, and indeed the first woman to do so.
Chevalier told Politico that many blue districts had chosen Democratic Socialist candidates rather than establishment Democrats “because we’re actually presenting a vision.” “We’re here to prove that the left can actually deliver,” she said. “It’s no longer just ‘oh, the Republicans are bad’.
Yes, the Republicans are bad… We need Democrats who are actually going to stand up to them.”
Chevalier is fervently anti-war. She once complained online that the U.S.
was “bullying Russia” by supporting Ukraine. She is unashamedly pro-Palestine and wants the U.S.
to stop arming Israel.
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is a growing force in the Democratic Party. DSA candidates celebrating victories on Tuesday include a new Los Angeles mayor, Nithya Raman.
Eight of their candidates will be in Congress next year, with five new members including Chevalier, Melat Koros in Colorado, Claire Valdez in New York and Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania joining firebrand Trump foe Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Rabb rejected “institutionalism and incrementalism” after his victory on Tuesday night. “This is a really important moment in time, where there are people who are leading with things that previously were considered non-viable, whether it’s Medicare for all, or universal childcare, social housing, or federal job guarantees,” he said.
“All of these things now are in the mainstream.”
Bernie Sanders, who is not formally affiliated with the DSA, calls himself a democratic socialist and has long argued for broad-based reforms. Sanders endorsed many progressive candidates in this week’s election, and dozens prevailed, including incoming Michigan senator Abdul El-Sayed.
Before the vote, Sanders said that if Democrats take back Congress, “the Democratic Party must undergo fundamental and immediate reform.”
Sanders and other progressives want a wealth tax on billionaires to fund affordable housing, universal and free childcare, and free public education. “I hope, and I expect, that the U.S.
House of Representatives will begin impeachment proceedings as soon as possible,” he told a rally in New Hampshire.
From January, Democrats will have a majority in the House to impeach, but not the two-thirds majority in the Senate required for conviction and removal from office. Trump predicted on Wednesday that “it would destroy the Democrat Party” if they tried.
Hakeem Jeffries, the likely next House speaker, said after the election that he had not had a single member of the House Democratic caucus talk to him about impeachment. “We’ve been relentlessly focused on affordability and on accountability,” he said.
Chevalier is open to impeaching Trump and others in his administration if it works. “We are going to have to think about what is actually going to hold their feet to the fire,” she said.
“It’s deeply important that we engage in accountability that actually has some teeth to it.”
Republican National Committeeman Steve Scheffler of Iowa told the BBC that Democrats would “overextend their welcome” if they pushed a radical agenda, predicting voters would say “I didn’t bargain for this stuff.”
