Right off the bat, the sad shit (which is a weird inversion of type, because most of the time I have way more bad shit to list, so the good goes first).
It really, really, really sucks that Ginger Jentzen didn’t win. I am, if you know me IRL, a SAlt member, so this stings extra. It stings extraextra that a fucking Green ran in Ward 3, and almost certainly siphoned some first place votes that (maybe) could have put her over the 50% mark, preventing the runoff that eventually led to her losing to some Louis CK lookalike motherfucker. And do not mistake me here–I’m not doing what the fucking Democrats did after 2016 and blaming a Green. But it really sucks that they’d run someone in that Ward when we supported Jill Stein (much to my chagrin) last election. Whatever, though. They suck, and maybe this will convince Party HQ not to do shit for them next time around.
The encouraging stuff now, I suppose.
Holy shit, a bunch of out-and-proud Socialists won last night. Like, at last count, 13. There are 13 elected Socialists in the USA right now, 12 more than there were when I woke up yesterday morning. This is self-evidently massive, and I don’t need to talk about that to convince you, reader of a blog literally titled “Left of Lenin.”
No, I’d rather focus on a single race, one that even got a shoutout on Chris Hayes last night (even if his name wasn’t actually said). Lee Carter, a Socialist and member of DSA running as a Democrat in Manassas, VA won (what I think???) is the first ever Socialist seat in the VA House of Delegates. Obviously, any first is a huge deal in itself, but it’s the manner in which he won that so encourages me.
The Democrats didn’t win this seat. They didn’t even really try. They may have kicked in less than 20k, but they offered no other financial or institutional support. Not only did they not offer support, they seem to have wanted to pretend that he didn’t exist. And yet, Lee won. And Lee beat the goddamn VA House of Delegates Majority Whip in order to do so. Crazy.
Lee won largely because DC and NoVa DSA canvassed for him. In a very real sense, DSA won an election last night. Not just that, DSA won an election in NoFuckingVa. In the suburban sprawl of subcontractors, a Socialist succeeded. That was not an outcome I would have called, not even if I were high out of my gourd on the best sativa-dominant weed in the world and also huffing whatever brand of paint best produces the narcotic effect of euphoria while also injecting cocaine directly into my eyeballs. In fact, that area of the country, suburban Manassas and NoVa in general, is basically the last place I would have expected a Socialist to win. And yet…
So, what do we have after last night? We have proof of concept, folks. If he could win there, we don’t have any more excuses for not trying to win any and all open seats that we can get the signatures for. For the first time since Bernie got realistically eliminated (unless you count the Corbyn hanging of May’s Parliament–which I count 50%), I believe that we can use electoral politics. Goddammit, I DO believe. Another world is possible.
