Democratic candidates won all 30 of Northern Virginia’s seats in the Virginia House of Delegates on Tuesday as the party was set to significantly expand its 51-49 majority in the state’s lower chamber.
As of 11 p.m., Democrats had picked up 13 seats statewide, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. With only one race undecided, the Democrats will hold at least 64 of the 100 seats, the most they have held in nearly 40 years.
Trump’s shutdown has fucked federal workers, and half of NoVa is either a federal worker, a contractor, or someone whose livelihood hinges on the above getting their next paychecks. This has royally fucked Northern Virginia specifically. So it would signal the GOP is eating shit for their national policy platform of “Eliminate the federal bureaucracy at all costs”.
But when you asking what kind of politicians are replacing the outgoing GOP reps? Well… consider the new Virginia Governor - Abigail Spanberger - spent the last week of her campaign condemning “Defund the Police” despite nobody asking her about it. These are still going to be Ivy League educated, ultra-nationalist, neoliberal hacks. And they’re going to be governing a population that gets its paychecks based on how many high explosive devices we ship to Israel and Saudi Arabia.
You’re getting the kind of politician that wants to put a Rainbow Flag sticker on the B-2 bombers that struck Iran. Folks who think school vouchers need to be means tested, but don’t instantly recoil at the idea of both a Christian and Muslim private school cashing the checks.
Virginia’s trading out a long and ugly legacy of Strom Thurmond-ism for a bright refreshing cup of Joe Biden-ism. Yay…
It’s amazing how mild of a statement has sparked 5 years of bipartisan backlash. Like, defund the police was the alternative to keeping letting them kill people or abolishing them or even holding them accountable for murders they commit. Just don’t give them a reward for highway robbery and murder
Maybe this turns out to be baby steps? We’ve seen the power of creeping change, maybe creeping progress is the antidote to the accumulated regressive rot.
That’s what I was promised under Obama. shrug I guess Americans are taking another bite at the apple.
Maybe if we didn’t elect Trump immediately after Obama, we would still be creeping in the right direction
Might be worth interrogating why Obama’s popularity tanked following his election.
Uh… when, exactly? The past half century of American politics has been an unmitigated disaster on all fronts other than maybe LGBT rights.
That is exactly what I mean: The creeping erosion of rights and protections. Sudden change can lead to backlash by people who hate change, but slow change can dig far deeper hooks with less resistance. My pr-hope-osition is that this could work the other way too. If people aren’t ready for a full swing-around to progressive politics, maybe an iterative “slightly better” can ease them in.
Obviously, slow progress is agonising and we’d like things to get better quickly, but if it means coaxing formerly reactionary regressives out of their hole, maybe it’s a sensible approach for deep red areas.
Umm… they absolutely are. Almost every progressive policy position you can think of is supported by the majority of Americans. You’ll piss off reactionaries, but you’ll always piss off reactionaries; that’s why they’re reactionaries.
Realistically this only works one way. You can trick your average person into being the frog in the boiling pot, but the rich and powerful (aka the people you’re actually pissing off with progressive politics)? Absolutely not. They’re on to that stuff, that’s why progress always comes (or at least starts) with large movements and flashy acts of resistance; slow progress will simply fizzle into nothing or be rolled back faster than yuu can push for it. Also “you can have human rights but you have to Wait™” is always going to piss off people, who will flock to whoever promises (truthfully or not) to get them what they want now. People can tolerate incompetent leaders, but not ineffectual leaders.