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The words socialist and federalist tend to not go together. It would sort of be like calling someone a Atheist-Muslim, or a Neoconservative-Libertarian. It’s generally one or the other, because those things tend to be at opposite sides of each other. A Marxist-Capitalist would be another one, but Kshama Sawant seems to me at least and what I took away from this interview is that Socialists shouldn’t look at the U.S. Government, especially Congress to push their issues. That they should look at the local and state levels to push their issues where they had real success’ last year. The minimum wage being a perfect example of that.

When you think of socialism especially as it relates to the role of government especially, I at least think of Scandinavia and Britain, at least as far as democratic developed countries. Countries that have big centralized unitarian forms of government. That at least in Britain’s case doesn’t have states and provinces at least in the American or Canadian sense where those divisions have real authority of their own state or provincial affairs inside of their states or provinces. A big example of why socialism doesn’t tend to play well in the America is because of the big centralized unitarian form of government that they tend to advocate for.

But what Kshama Sawant seems to be advocating for is the opposite of what the social democratic-left inside of the Democratic Party tends to be in favor of. People who I call locked in the closet Socialists who tend to go straight to Washington and the Federal Government to address concerns and issues that they have. What Kshama Sawant is saying is that Socialists should go straight to the local and perhaps state levels to address issues like the minimum wage, workers rights and so-forth. And we’ll see how many people who tend to share her politics listen to her.