Violet Starr will likely run again. Or she will write a memoir, launch a podcast, and become a kingmaker. But the 2024 campaign will stand as a cautionary parable for a generation of activists: passion is not policy, and a viral moment is not a mandate. Until the progressive movement learns to love the boring work of precinct captaincy and parliamentary procedure, the ghost of Violet Starr will haunt every primary—a brilliant, furious star that burned too hot to ever actually illuminate the White House.
To understand the Starr phenomenon of 2024, one must first understand the vacuum she filled. In the wake of President Biden’s decision not to seek re-election, the Democratic primary was initially framed as a coronation for Vice President Kamala Harris and a redemption tour for Gavin Newsom. But the rank-and-file progressive base, still nursing the wounds of 2020 and wary of centrist triangulation, craved an unapologetic economic populist. Enter Violet Starr. At 42, the junior senator from Vermont was not a polished orator but a relentless interrogator. Where other candidates spoke of “building back better,” Starr spoke of tearing down : breaking up agribusiness monopolies, abolishing private insurance through a true public option, and implementing a federal jobs guarantee. Her launch video, shot in a shuttered textile mill in her district, went viral not for its production value but for its raw anger: “They told us automation would free us,” she said, staring into the lens. “Instead, it freed our bosses from paying us.” violet starr 2024
The post-mortem of the Starr campaign is a Rorschach test for the left. Her defenders argue she was assassinated by a corporate media terrified of her anti-oligarch platform. They point to the disproportionate coverage of her gaffes versus Kincaid’s donor-class fundraisers. Her detractors, meanwhile, claim she was a narcissist who mistook tweeting for leading. “Violet Starr didn’t lose because she was too radical,” wrote one centrist columnist. “She lost because she refused to build a coalition. In a democracy, you have to count to 270—and she couldn’t count past the number of retweets.” Violet Starr will likely run again
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