Why a ‘Democratic Socialist’ Will Lead Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee

It was the news Wall Street had been dreading for two years. Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, who's midway into his second term, would become the ranking Democrat on the Banking Committee. Instead of someone like New York Senator Chuck Schumer, whom bankers could do business with, the plum job went to a progressive who wanted to break up the largest financial institutions. "He’s on the record that we haven’t fixed too-big-to-fail and more needs to be done," warned Jaret Seiberg, an analyst at a unit of Guggenheim Securities LLC, in a 2013 Bloomberg News interview.

Democrats lost the Senate in November, so the doomsday scenario–Brown as chairman–would not be realized in 2015. Instead, it was one of several examples of the post-election Democratic minority moving to the left. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent and "Democratic socialist" who caucuses with the Democrats, will replace Washington Senator Patty Murray at the Budget table. Over at the Energy Committee, Washington Senator Maria Cantwell will replace defeated Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu. In the waning days of her campaign, Landrieu had warned voters that a supporter of "windmills and alternative energy" might get that job–and so it came to pass.