If every Democratic establishment insider who now says they voted for Kshama Sawant actually voted for Kshama Sawant, she would've won! Oh. Wait. She did.

Of course Sawant won support from rank and file Democrats—that's the only way to win a citywide election in Seattle—but you'd be surprised at some of the party officials and prominent allies who've privately told me that they also voted for Sawant. The all-powerful SEIU 775NW officially endorsed incumbent Richard Conlin, but I haven't talked to a staffer there who says they voted for him. Likewise, Conlin's pro-environment record earned him the endorsement of the Cascade chapter of the Sierra Club, but executive committee chair Dan Schwartz made a point of publicly endorsing Sawant. And the King County Labor Council (KCLC) also endorsed Conlin, yet at Sawant's victory rally yesterday, KCLC executive secretary David Freiboth kicked off his comments by saying "this is one of the few times I'm happy we were wrong."

I suspect even a couple council members may have cast their ballots for Sawant, and not out of any enmity for their outgoing colleague. Sawant and her Socialist Alternative comrades ran an authentically outsider grassroots campaign, but in doing so they won the hearts and votes of a helluva lot of political insiders. Sure, there are establishment types (particularly the chamber crowd) who desperately want to see Sawant fail, and who would be eager to sabotage her abbreviated first term in office. And there are Democratic Party regulars who rightly fear that Sawant's win could erode the party's stranglehold on nonpartisan elections.

But there are a lot of insiders who want to see her succeed, too. It may prove an uncomfortable alliance at times, but Sawant is perfectly capable of working within the existing politic system even as she strives to change it.

Nationally the headlines have focused on Sawant's avowed socialism, and why not? It's a great headline. This may be the most impressive electoral victory by a US socialist in more than a century. But considering all of Sawant's support from the usual suspects, was it a victory for socialism?

In an uncharacteristically lucid column, Crosscut contributor Ted Van Dyk says no:

Analysts would be mistaken to credit Sawant's Socialist platform for her success. Her success, instead, should be attributed mainly to voter impatience with incumbents and to the fact that she was the only challenger who ran a vigorous, credible campaign.

Van Dyk is at least partially right. Sawant tapped into an incredible amount of voter discontent, and ran a surprisingly vigorous and credible campaign. But part of her success on both those counts was due to the fact that her main issues—a living wage, affordable housing, and economic inequality—resonated with voters, many whom (or their children) are being crushed beneath an economy where the balance of power between labor and capital has grown grotesquely unbalanced in favor of the few. Only a tiny fraction of Sawants 90,000-plus votes came from people who self-identify as "socialists." But that doesn't mean her socialist agenda didn't appeal to a helluva lot of voters.

Absent reliable exit polling, the only thing you can reliable say on this subject is that Sawant's Socialist Alternative label didn't hurt her. Some, like Van Dyk, voted for Sawant in spite of her socialism. For many other voters, the label just didn't matter. They liked Sawant and they liked a lot of what she was saying, and that was good enough.

And in that sense, within the larger American historical context, yeah—Sawant's victory really was a big victory for socialism. It wasn't so long ago that Ronald Reagan succeeded in turning "liberal" into a pejorative. Yet two weeks ago in a major American city (a city even bigger in cultural influence than it is in size), a "Socialist" won a citywide election.

This may not prove a harbinger of a coming socialist revolution. But it does prove the willingness of Seattle voters to consider socialism to be a serious part of the public debate. And that is a victory in itself.