Is Socialism the Answer to D.C.’s Woes?

These days, the best thing about being mayor of Washington, D.C., is the nice title. The overwhelmingly Democratic city is in an economic contraction, triggered by the Trump administration’s purges of the federal workforce, and is facing a deep budget deficit of $1.1 billion. The metro area lost 1.7 percent of its jobs last year, the worst showing in the country. Meanwhile, a hostile president and Republican-led Congress are able—and eager—to overrule laws, yank away funds, and deploy troops in the city at whim. Perhaps that is why Muriel Bowser, who has held the job since 2015, announced in November that she would not run again. The bitter contest to succeed her has so far replicated the central ideological struggle within the Democratic Party—between a defiantly left-wing politics and the sedate institutionalism it disdains. The Democratic staffer class who will power the party in the coming years will make up a disproportionate share of the June 16 primary’s voters.The front-runner is Janeese Lewis George, a democratic socialist on the D.C. city council. She is promising greater resistance to Donald Trump, especially his deployment of ICE agents and National Guard members in the city. She is also proposing state-sponsored plenitude. “I follow the socialist tradition shaped by Dr. King, who said there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country,” Lewis George told me. “And that’s why there’s nothing radical about fighting for universal child care or housing that puts people over profit.” Both her rhetoric and her proposals show a deep skepticism that the private sector can sufficiently provide essential goods and services.Just behind her in a recent poll is Kenyan McDuffie, a mild-mannered lawyer who served, without much fanfare, on the city council from 2012 until January. “I’m not overcommitting on what we can deliver,” he told me. “What we have to do is be honest with Washingtonians, that D.C. has both a revenue problem and a spending problem.”