Why state elections matter: Virginia

[Recursion]

In the past week, the Virginia legislature has passed:

Background checks for private gun sales (closing the horribly-named "gun-show loophole" )

A minimum wage increase to $12

An insulin price cap at $50/month

That is some real change that will have real, positive impact on people's lives. And Virginia did it by electing progressive Democrats where we could and moderate or conservative Democrats where we had to. Go forth and do likewise.

[J_William_Ryan]

1. Render the Federal courts and Congress irrelevant.

Given the fact that the Supreme Court is lost for at least a generation, this may be the people’s only recourse to bring about beneficial change, oppose discrimination, and safeguard citizens' rights and protected liberties.

That’s not how it’s supposed to be, of course – one’s state of residence shouldn’t determine if he’s afforded his civil liberties, or isn’t subject to discrimination, or has access to affordable healthcare.

And the political control of a state can change as soon as the next election, the consequence of the mercurial, capricious voters.

This is why we are a Republic whose citizens are subject to the rule of law, not men – as men are incapable of ruling justly.

[Recursion]

2. It's interesting: there's nothing essentially right-wing about federalism

That is, it's only by historical contingency that the right wound up favoring states' rights and the left wound up favoring Federal power. A left-wing federalist movement would be very interesting to see (and I think the Trump years have shown us the beginning of it).

[tblue37]

5. Kansas is beginning to undo some of the damage Brownback & his cronies did, now that we

have a Dem governor and the cooperation of somewhat more reasonable Republicans.

[TwilightZone]

3. Can't set the agenda if we don't win.

People sometimes seem to forget that. And every district is different.

[tblue37]

4. Also CA once the Dems took over the state--and it was the terrible treatment of

Hispanic immigrants and Hispanics generally (even if they were not immigrants) that mainly caused the Republicans to lose the state.

[lark]

6. Aye, aye, Recursion.

This is a tall task in FL where the legislature is so very red and repugs have such a huge advantage and cheat hugely. It is extremely important to do, but it's really hard in a state with so many billioniares buying our elections. Having said that, through the efforts of many people, including me, we flipped our county officially blue for the first time since Clinton. Gore actually won here per the re-count that the Russian Repug SCOTUS stopped, but the evil 5 invalidated that and used the original count which went by a hair to GW.