In the election mega on Hexbear, u/jack was pointing out that some PSL candidates got over 2% yesterday - which is a significant improvement over 2024.

An early exit poll showed 17% of people who voted identified as democratic socialist.

DSA-backed candidates performed really well, especially including the primaries earlier this year. And I’m including Angie Nixon in that, because she performed very well given the characteristics of Florida, possibly the most ideologically anti-socialist state in the union.

Plenty of polls over the last year show young voters in particular are very open the idea of socialism, even if they may not be working with a proper definition of socialism.

Anecdotallly, at a recent event for my union, in some personal conversations, there are quite a few brothers and sisters who are feeling very radical.

So my question is, in terms of tactics and strategy, where do we go from here?

I bring up all that above because I think they are indicators, and even the biggest anti-electoralist I don’t think would say we should ignore indicators. I am admittedly a huge weather station nerd. If I see my barometer drop and the winds start going east to west, I know a storm is coming. Right now our instruments are giving us a lot of useful information, but I’m thinking about how we interpret it and what do we do.

My early opinion is that we need to put more resources into educating and building up those US Americans who are sympathetic to socialism or identify as socialists but aren’t really educated on what that means or are involved in an org. I think we really need to build up leaders - everyone from savvy organizers to Marxist economists to people who can make cool art for their DSA chapter’s Instagram page to lawyers who can find little loopholes that can help us out. Obviously that’s a long term project and something we are already doing. But if you think of this stuff in terms of video game sliders, previously I had my “try and get people to not associate socialism or communism as ‘bad’” tuned all the way. Might pull that one down some and pull up “educating workers who already are down with socialism”.

But I’m just throwing that out there as an example of what I’m thinking, I’d rather hear from you all.