Lee Carter recently unseated Jackson Miller, Republican majority whip, in the Virginia House of Delegates.   He ran as a Democratic Socialist and resisted attempts by the local Democratic party to steer his campaign.  He won by a nine percentage point margin of victory.   He spoke to Jeremy Scahill last week on Scahill’s Intercepted podcast (at 01:17:50) and summarized the current dilemma in knee-jerk red hat/blue hat American politics better than anyone I’ve heard do it.

Lee Carter:  2008 saw a massive collapse of the global economy on a scale we hadn’t seen since the Great Depression.  The fact that we never really fixed the global economy after 2008 has built up this simmering discontent with politics as usual, on both sides.   You have politicians, particularly in the Democratic party, because Barack Obama was the president at the time, who, for the last eight years have spent the entire time saying “look, we’re in a recovery, things are going great, we don’t need to change anything about us, the problem is the Republicans.”

And then the Republicans were pointing to the actual problems with the recovery, the fact that prior to 2008 we had millions of people who had a single, full-time job that was able to pay the bills, now they’re having to work two and three precarious jobs to get most of the same amount of money as they had before and they’re saying “the economy is not recovering, it’s still in the tank, and the problem is the Democrats.”   So the center of American politics in that environment is not really holding anymore.   

If you look at the polling, obviously the most unpopular thing in American politics is President Trump, but the second most unpopular thing in American politics is the Democratic Party.  So the Democratic Party,  right now, the leadership, certainly, seems to think that just by tying all elected Republicans throughout the country to Donald Trump they can see electoral success.  And in the short term that may very well work.   

But unless we actually clean our own house, and recognize that the recovery we have overseen since 2008 has been incomplete, that we never addressed the structural problems of America’s economy, that there are people who are being left behind, if we don’t address those problems and become the kind of party that fully embraces the working class and the health and welfare of 98% of people, once Donald Trump is gone we are going to go through the floor, because we won’t have that crutch anymore.  Donald Trump is not going to be around forever and once he’s gone, if we haven’t fixed our own problems, we are in a lot of trouble.   

Me:  Well said, sir.   Thank you for your service.

NOTE:  just spent a good deal of time accurately transcribing Lee Carter’s statement, since last time I checked the Intercept did not publish a transcript of its podcasts.  Now, looky here, darn it, all I had to do was cut and paste (note, the remainder of Jeremy Scahill’s interview with Lee Carter is at the bottom of this note):

JS: Now Lee, you, of course are at the beginning of your political career and it seems to me like there’s this bifurcation within the Democratic Party right now where you have the kind of more corporate, elitist, old school Democratic Party headed by the Clintons and their supporters. And then you kind of have everyone else who seems to want the Democratic Party to move in a different direction, more to the left and more in sync with the visions of the most popular political figure in the country right now, Bernie Sanders.

What’s your analysis, Lee, of the state of the Democratic Party?

LC: This is something that’s happening on both sides of the aisle. 2008 saw a massive collapse of the global economy on a scale that we hadn’t seen since the Great Depression. The fact that we never really fixed the global economy after 2008 has built up the simmering discontent with politics as usual on both sides.

You know, you have politicians particularly within the Democratic Party because Barack Obama was the president at the time, who, for the last eight years have spent the entire time saying, “Look, we’re in a recovery, things are going great, we don’t need to change anything about us, the problem is the Republicans.”

And then the Republicans were pointing to the actual problems with the recovery and the fact that prior to 2008, we had millions of people who had a single full-time job that was able to pay the bills and now they’re having to work, you know, two and three precarious jobs to get most of the same amount of money as they had before and they’re saying, you know, the economy is not recovering, it’s still in the tank and the problem is the Democrats.

So, so the center of American politics in that environment is really not holding anymore. If you look at the polling, you know, obviously that the most unpopular thing in American politics is president Trump, but the second most unpopular thing in American politics is the Democratic Party. So, the Democratic Party, right now, the leadership certainly seems to think that just by tying all acted Republicans throughout the country to Donald Trump, they can see electoral success. And in the short term that very well may work, but unless we actually clean our own house and recognize that the recovery that we have overseen since 2008 has been incomplete, that we never addressed the structural problems of America’s economy, that there are people who are being left behind, if we don’t address those problems within our own party and become the kind of party that fully embraces the working class and the health and welfare of 98 percent of people, once Donald Trump is gone, we’re going to go through the floor, because we won’t have that crutch anymore.

You know, Donald Trump is not going to be around forever, and once he’s gone, if we haven’t fixed our own problems, we are in a lot of trouble.

The interview begins:

JS: Lee Carter, first of all, congratulations on your victory.

LC: Thank you so much.

JS: You have, also, an interesting story as to how you decided to seek political office.

LC: Yeah, so, I served five years on active duty in the United States Marine Corps from 2006 to 2011, deployed twice with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, went to Haiti after the earthquake in 2010. You know I decided to run for office after an injury on the job in the summer of 2015, long after I got out of the Marine Corps, but I was installing a lighting control panel and I got shocked and I blew my back out pulling away from that panel, and I could barely walk for about two and a half, three months. You know I couldn’t walk more than about fifty feet at a stretch, and I just got shuffled around from doctor to doctor on worker’s comp and none of them really wanted to address the actual problem, they just wanted to give me pain pills and get me out the door.

But finally, I decided to pay out of pocket for a specialist to figure out what the problem was and he was able to get me back on my feet fairly quickly. And when I was able to get back to work, I called my boss and I said, “I’m ready to go, put me back to work.” And they said, “We have work, but we don’t have any for you. Because our customer is not comfortable with you on their job site.”

That’s what sort of pushed me into politics, you know? There was this rage that I put my body on the line to make this company rich and when I finally got hurt, you know, when that dangerous job caught up to me, they just threw me under the bus. So, I decided I was going to step forward and run for office and fix this. Because there’s a very common phrase in the construction industry that goes, “If you fall off a ladder you’re fired before you hit the ground.” Most construction workers have heard that and you know they’ve heard it, not as a joke, as a threat.

So, you know, I decided to step forward and run for office and make sure that what happened to me didn’t happen to thousands of other Virginians.

JS: Talk about the struggles you had in fighting both the Republicans and the institutional Democratic Party in Virginia.

LC: Yeah, we were able to put together a coalition of groups, you know we had the Democratic Socialists of America, we also had the anti-gerrymandering group, Let America Vote, which was founded by former Congressman Jason Kander. We had, you know, the support of the Sierra Club and Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-choice Virginia and the Virginia AFL-CIO and sister district and all these sort of women’s march type groups.

So, we had the support of the base of the Democratic Party, and also, you know, the Democratic Socialists of America and we put that coalition together sort of in defiance of Virginia’s Democratic Party leadership.

The leadership here certainly wanted a lot of minute to minute reports on exactly what was happening in the campaign that I wasn’t comfortable providing. They wanted some editorial control over my message that I wasn’t comfortable providing. So, I decided, you know what? I’ve got the manpower to do this. I’m going to go ahead and do this and I’m going to do it my way.

And the mailers that my opponent sent out, he actually sent out to 11,000 homes, a mailer that had Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung and Lee Carter’s face on them, all the text on it talked about my health care policy, because, you know, if there’s one thing that people remember Stalin for, it’s the health care.

JS: [Laughs.]

LC: But clearly that sort of 1950s, 1960s, you can’t go to the left or they’re going to call you a commie type of common knowledge in politics doesn’t hold true anymore.

U.S. Armed Forces Video: If a person defends the activities of the communist nations while consistently attacking the domestic and foreign policy of the United States, she may be a communist.

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