Yeah 100%. This is the starting line, not the finish line. We have so long to go. In particular my area didn’t have much success, which was pretty sad, but with the influx of new members this year we’ve been making plans to build up our capacity to get members to run for local offices, so hopefully that goes somewhere. Not sure if I’m going to be personally running for anything because I’m a socially awkward nervous wreck, but I’m at least gonna be supporting the people who do step up.

What also gives me a tiny bit of hope is that it seems like even the centrists have leaned somewhat into populist rhetoric in some places. I don’t expect them to follow through on any of that, but it proves the point that this is what people are looking for and if we can get enough people and organizing infrastructure to take advantage of that next time, we have a good shot at winning some more.

I’d definitely encourage people to look into DSA chapters or other orgs in their area to join up with. I’m still a bit iffy on electoralism’s efficacy, but participating in the process has been helping my mental state a lot and they don’t just do electoral politics either.

https://2026.electoral.dsausa.org/

Here is a tracker for various candidates. We actually did pretty solid when you look at results across different levels of gov. I know it’s sad losing some more national facing races, but these state and local gov results are important for building up our base of support too. We also got a lot of new members this year, especially after each election, so between having more people to canvas and stuff and some footholds into local politics, things should hopefully only improve from here.

I just don’t like how much video is vertical now.