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 All politics is local, the saying goes, which probably means that all politics is intensely petty, racist, and fueled by weird grudges about people letting leaves pile up on their lawns. The midterms are over, the dust settling. At the federal level, the Democratic Party will now control the House of Representatives, while the Republicans have widened their majority in the Senate. Washington settles in for two years of gridlock punctuated by angry tweeting matches and gleeful vollies of subpoenas. The Lich Queen Pelosi, on her throne of shadows, extends a hand to claim the gavel once more and bring about a thousand years of Dems Bad chat. On the state level, meanwhile, a lot has changed. Several states have now gained unified Democratic control of government, while others were previously controlled by Republicans but are now split. The stage is being set for important local fights about Medicaid expansion, the protection of LGBT citizens, women, and people of color, and looming in 2021 the census-year redistricting that will shape the battlefield for the next decade. It can be easy to become numb to politics, especially when victories feel so hollow and defeats sting so badly, and that's why we have local politics. That's right, local politics, the only place where you can spend an entire committee meeting arguing about lawn height restrictions. It's nitty-gritty, frustrating, and surprisingly important for making a positive impact in the lives of your friends and family. This thread is dedicated to US politics below the federal level. With no major federal races for another two years, try to leave discussion of those clowns in Congress, what a bunch of clowns, to other threads; sometimes it's important to be able to tune out a little and talk about what your board of zoning appeals, governor who  A few gentle requests for the thread:1.  Your local controversies and state-level challenges are interesting, and sometimes talking about them is exactly what we need. Feel free to cross-post from the regional politics threads, too, since a lot of them are slower moving and contain a lot of really interesting content.2. This applies everywhere in D&D, but still, please don't threaten violence upon anyone; Lowtax can't afford a brand new robospine and also pay for legal fees. 3. Consider taking your very interesting discussions about how Bad, in fact, the Dems may be to USPOL, or elsewhere. It's tempting to get into it with those people, you know the ones, and any discussion of political operations across fifty mostly poo poo states will inevitably bring up questions of strategy. If it gets out of hand it can take up all the air in a thread for ages, though. 4. Post maps and graphs, lots of maps and graphs. The statistics nerds demand a sacrifice. 5. While there is no dog tax as such, we all like adorable animals and welcome them with open arms. 6. Be excellent to each other, and especially be excellent to anyone actually getting off their fat goony rear end and into the trenches. 
Quorum fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Nov 7, 2018 |
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Nov 7, 2018 15:57
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This post is reserved for maps, graphs, resources, and fun facts! Fun fact: a sharp stick is called a "pale," that's why when you stab someone you're impaling them, and when you build a fence out of them it's called a palisade. 
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Nov 7, 2018 15:58
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GHOST_BUTT posted:Although not a complete victory for the forces of less-bad last night (people bought the oil industry's spin about how requiring fracking to be no closer than half a mile from occupied buildings was going to cost us jobs, also my stupid city did not turn out well enough to counteract the entire western half of the state for control of our Congressional district), CO did manage to pass its pair of redistricting amendments. I'm not entirely sure how competitiveness compares with other optimization criteria for nonpartisan redistricting (like compactness and communities of interest), but I'm glad we're getting to see in real life, and whether it's better or worse than some of the other solutions, it'll be an improvement on the status quo. Here in Virginia, we're already gearing up for THE 2019 ELECTIONS because we're all loving insane. Up for election next november are the entire House of Delegates (again, time to see how the new Dems from 2017 fare, and if we can take the chamber entirely this time) and, this time around, the entire Senate. If we can take both chambers we can move the needle on a lot of really good policy, including hopefully banning the gerrymandering that ensured we spent most of the 2010s sending 4D-7R delegations to the House despite being a bluish state. Happily, last night was a big enough night in Virginia to flip that around, and come January we'll be sending 7 Democrats and 4 Republicans. Even better, one of the Republicans without a job will be Dave Brat, local disgrace and huge loving rear end in a top hat, and what a satisfying call that was. I'd already left the Spanberger watch party because I was exhausted and my boyfriend was worse, but we got to see it sitting on our friend's couch which was almost as good.mandatory lesbian posted:I hope the dog is actually mayor Yes! Mayor Max is in fact the mayor of the tiny town of Idyllwild. Constitutionally, humans aren't allowed to run for mayor in Idyllwild, they're only allowed to run their pets. It's mostly a ceremonial role, though, and not surprisingly most of the actual work is done by the human chief of staff, but still. Quorum fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Nov 7, 2018 |
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Nov 7, 2018 16:45
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PerniciousKnid posted:Missouri was dominated by red candidates and progressive ballot initiative wins like minimum wage. It's got me wondering how far we can push it. Like, what if we push a ballot proposition to A) levy a marginal income tax and B) fund a minimum income with the proceeds? Would rural voters go for it? Honestly, that's one message from last night. It's harder for the right wing media to torpedo initiatives than candidates, though of course not impossible, so where policy reforms via ballot initiative are possible, they should be pursued with vigor. Sadly, I live in a state too old to feature innovations like voter-initiated measures, here the only thing we've got are constitutional amendments, and they have to come from the legislature and be passed in two consecutive sessions before we even vote on them.
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Nov 7, 2018 16:58
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Handsome Ralph posted:This is a good take, and as someone who used to live in MoCo (and likely will in the next few years), I'm glad it went in that direction. Yeah, I'm fairly nervous for the country in the short to medium term, but Virginia and its urban and suburban centers have been doing good things in the last few years. Maybe once the United States dissolves into a loose confederation of regional blocs we can join with the other Mid-Atlantic states to form a new nation: the Republic of Old Bay.
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Nov 7, 2018 17:45
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axeil posted:Who's ready to flip the VA legislature into a Dem majority and give us another trifecta? I think we can too, and that would let us pass lots of good policy and even start the two-sessions-and-a-general-election clock on some good constitutional amendments, maybe.
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Nov 7, 2018 18:03
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Ague Proof posted:The current governor Steve Bullock is a term-limited Democrat whose terms ends in 2020, so he should be drafted. There's also another former governor named Brian Schweitzer who won twice. That is absolutely the most Montana politics thing I have ever read.
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Nov 9, 2018 20:31
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OAquinas posted:Virginia will be interesting---dems could actually capture the state leg. Incidentally, the last time Virginia had a Democratic trifecta was under Governor Wilder, who left office in 1994. Since then, at least one chamber of the legislature (and almost always both) or the governorship have been held by Republicans. Considering how different the Virginia Democratic Party of the early 1990s was-- and, indeed, how different the Virginia of the early 1990s was-- I almost can't imagine what a huge difference that would make in the state.
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Nov 9, 2018 20:48
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Solaris 2.0 posted:Living in the DC Metro area and seeing how fast Northern Virginia has changed over the last twenty years has been completely nuts. Hell, I know a fair number of people indirectly who commute from Richmond just for the combo lower cost of living and higher quality of life. Most of them have an irregular work schedule and some number of work-from-home days, though.
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Nov 9, 2018 21:07
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:Do it. Honestly this thread doesn't move very fast when there's not a major election happening, and I'd say hyperlocal politics are just as relevant here as senate and state leg stuff. If you've got any references or resources that would be useful to people getting their boots on the ground, I can add them to the OP, too.
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Nov 26, 2018 18:05
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So for any of you who are into large history datasets, Virginia's House of Delegates has put together a database of every person who has served in the lower house of Virginia's legislature since its first incarnation in 1619. We've been hearing a lot about the first Assembly, since this year is its 400th anniversary and the House of Delegates traces itself directly to that meeting. Fun fact: 1,237 white men named John have served in the House of Burgesses/Delegates, while only 91 women period have done so. (But one of them is Danica Roem, so that's cool.  )
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Jan 8, 2019 21:31
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cheetah7071 posted:I know DC statehood is mostly being pushed to help balance the senate map, but from a pure enfranchisement standpoint I think offering all of the DC territory outside of the mall to Maryland or Virginia is a better option It would practically need to be Maryland; Virginia already got back its bit of the District in the 1800s, and it now forms Arlington County and the City of Alexandria. That said, while retroannexation (the formal name for this procedure) is probably the most elegant solution, it probably wouldn't be popular with Washingtonians or with Maryland. Discendo Vox posted:I think from an execution standpoint, merging DC into MD would be easier than statehood in some respects (MD's state governance has some elements that would make it smoother legally). I'm not sure MD, whose powerbrokers would principally view DC as a huge resource sink and liability source, or DC, whose african-american residents are used to being horribly kicked around and abused by their neighbors, would want that outcome.  Beaten!But the local/state/federal governmental snafu in the DMV is absolutely nuts and spending too much time contemplating it will probably send you gibbering mad from all the acronyms, which of course makes it deeply fascinating.
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Jan 8, 2019 22:19
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Your Boy Fancy posted:Well that’s a surprise. VA Senate votes to advance a bill to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 by 2021. I really don't get the Times-Dispatch's bizarre framing, though: quote:The vote, advancing the bill to the floor, could be an election-year effort to force all 19 Democrats to take a vote on an issue that could alienate members of the business community. All 40 senators and 100 delegates are up for election in November. Like, they don't even consider the idea that Republicans could be afraid of going against public opinion on an issue for which there is broad support, it's gotta be the business community behind this nefarious trap. Yeah Republicans are evil fuckers, but I think what's getting me is the idea that somehow the minimum wage issue coming to the floor hurts Democrats. What a terrible paper we have.
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Jan 15, 2019 16:12
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Your Boy Fancy posted:I mean, it might be a trap, but i don’t think it’s a trap for Democrats. We’re all savoring the opportunity to finish the job. Voting against a minimum wage hike in the more depressed areas of VA sounds like a death sentence to me. That's my thoughts on the matter, too-- there's few issues with broader support than a minwage hike. The T-D is just so stuck in its old-school Reagan business Republican worldview it can't see that. Their politics reporting is awful, and it's gotten even worse since Ned Oliver et al jumped ship to form the Virginia Mercury.
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Jan 15, 2019 16:52
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Lightning Knight posted:Wait... you mean, the one from the '50s-'60s? Like, a national constitutional amendment? Yep! It would in fact be the final required state* ** *subject to whether or not states are allowed to rescind their ratifications, as a few did ** and whether or not ratification deadline provisions are constitutional This is going to be a shitshow, in a mostly good way.
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Jan 15, 2019 20:41
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What's interesting is that a lot of deadline provisions in proposed amendments are actually a part of the amendment, something like "4. This provision shall have no effect unless ratified before a date seven years after its submission to the states." The deadline for the ERA was part of the joint resolution sending it to the states, not the amendment itself, so it's more malleable; even if it's legal, it's arguably alterable by Congress. Not that the Republican Senate would do poo poo to help pass the ERA.
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Jan 16, 2019 16:04
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sexpig by night posted:according to the USPol thread the constitution explicitly says 'elected' and has nothing about taking the office as a line of succession so he'd have grounds to try at least Yep, you can't get elected for the term after one you were elected to, but succeeding doesn't count! The us Constitution contains some language clarifying the situation but ours doesn't so all hail six year darkness of Lord Fairfax I guess
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Feb 1, 2019 23:11
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Here's why I'm finding a reason to be hopeful today: The Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, who becomes governor when the incumbent resigns, is Justin Fairfax, a strong progressive and the great-great-great-grandson of an enslaved man. He took his oath of office with his ancestor's manumission papers in his pocket. This summer, we're recognizing the 400th anniversary of a lot of things, among them the first meeting of the General Assembly, and the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to English America. There'll be a ceremony, and a wreath laying. And it keeps running through my head what it would mean to have a descendent of slaves laying that wreath.
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Feb 2, 2019 05:34
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Fritz Coldcockin posted:Both of which could be appointed by Herring in this apocalyptic hypothetical, yes? Actually, I think the new governor appoints the LG and the (Republican) General Assembly appoints the AG, unless this all happens after the General Assembly adjourns, then it's a temporary gubernatorial appointment until the next session.
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Feb 5, 2019 15:38
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Feb 6, 2019 17:51
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mandatory lesbian posted:Thank God they can elect more people who do blackface I mean what it actually means is that the power of black voters in Virginia's urban areas isn't concentrated into like two districts, so in fact it means the opposite of that thing, but sure. e: More seriously, this is really good and makes it substantially more likely that we take the House of Delegates this fall; take the House of Delegates and we can start actually passing legislation and implementing policy rather than just watch it die in a Republican-run committee that nobody pays attention to. It means it's easier for new Democratic politicians to rise up through the ranks; one of the problems with having a few safe Dem seats and basically nothing else is that you get a bunch of party loyalists who can only lose their seats if they lose a primary, and it's almost impossible to make an impact as a newcomer. That system is way harder to keep stable when there's a lot of seats to contest, so you get Danica Roems and Lee Carters and some percentage of those people go on to make an impact higher up as well. And since they had to fight to do it, there's less chance they've got skeletons in their closet that can emerge and suddenly traumatize your voters. 
Quorum fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Feb 15, 2019 |
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Feb 15, 2019 22:02
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Quandary posted:How the gently caress did no one in Virginia resign Jesus Christ Ultimately, they learned the truth about politics that the Republican Party has known for a long time: you don't have to do anything you can't be forced to do, assuming you can squelch or lack entirely your sense of shame. Should makes absolutely zero difference without the capacity to enforce it.
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Mar 6, 2019 19:56
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friendbot2000 posted:The biggest achievement from this meeting was getting support for connecting the VRE to the MARC train and working on setting a date for a forum on the topic of VRE expansion. Like, a rail line from Richmond to DC to Baltimore would be a gamechanger in moving commuters because soooooo many people commute from Stafford (and further) to Northern VA. This would be amazing; it's ridiculous that VRE and MARC operate as completely separate services with zero crosstalk. I know people who commute from NoVA to Maryland and that sort of commuting pattern just doesn't compute for any of the existing commuter services. We're lucky enough to live in one of the few regions of the country where it'd be a relatively simple matter to go hard into rail, but the jurisdictional splintering makes it all a headache. Here in Richmond we've been talking about the DC2RVA high speed rail project for what feels like an eternity, and progress has been extremely spotty. They just announced the completion of a bypass around Acca Yard which will make transit times between our suburban and urban core stations faster, but the rail configuration still forces slow speeds between the two, so we won't gain but so much time. Plus, there's a high chance of getting stuck on the tracks because there's only one through-rail between Staples Mill and the peninsula line, and that's a busy route for the cargo trains that get right-of-way. 
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Mar 21, 2019 17:03
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Edgar Allan Pwned posted:Woah so I found out there is going to be a KKK rally in a city like 70 miles from me next month. Thats way too loving close and not while i live here. you could probably ask your roommate/the people they know if they know about what kind of organized protest is in the works, if any. There's usually a place for people of various levels of commitment and moral principle, it's not all black bloc. Take along a sign, mock them and/or make clear to bystanders that hate groups are not welcome in your community.
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Apr 26, 2019 22:00
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Lambert posted:How does that square with freedom of speech? Partially the above, but the legal answer is that the law doesn't bar you, the contractor, from exercising your right to free expression by donating money to the candidate of your choice, it bars the candidate from accepting your money.* The goal was to prevent corruption by prohibiting candidates from taking money from Bob's Military Airplane Parts Emporium and handing Bob a huge contract for airplane parts in return. Of course, since that time we've developed newer and more exciting forms of corruption for our elected officials to engage in which aren't in any way prohibited by that regulation. *That said, your employer might prohibit you from making or attempting to make donations, even if they might actually be legal, because Quorum fucked around with this message at 20:27 on May 21, 2019 |
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May 21, 2019 20:25
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nonrev posted:Just got back from voting in the Virginia primaries. How common is it to receive a Democratic sample ballot from someone in front of the polling place even though both candidates on the ballot are Democrats? Depends. Candidates have gotten in hot water for producing their own fraudulent sample ballots before (looking at you, Joe Morrissey), and sometimes they represent the state or local party's endorsement but were not printed and distributed by the party, thus the lack of other candidates. Either way, it's basically campaign advertising, not advisory information from the party, probably. Speaking of old Fighting Joe, I voted at 6:45 this morning; the only race on my ballot was the state Senate primary between Rosalyn Dance and Joe Morrissey. Dance is a lukewarm Dem at best but I trust Joe "Twice-Disbarred" Morrissey about as far as I can throw him, so I voted for the incumbent. I was voter number 6 at my deserted precinct, but I also get up earlier than most.
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Jun 11, 2019 17:47
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redneck nazgul posted:it was apparently the "fix Old Town's sewer problems" money from the state budget under T-Mac, so i guess she was gambling on "oh, here's a white dude in a button up, he must be somewhat concerned with taxes and spend a lot of time in Old Town" friendbot2000 posted:Half of Old Town's sewer problems are because they need some serious development of a hardened coastline so everything doesn't loving flood all the time every time we get a light drizzle. Something like what the city of Boston is doing for their harbor: Oh yeah that's a fun thing about local Virginia politics that a lot of people don't think about : all our cities are old as balls and situated on rivers, so when their sewer systems were designed, they just made one combined sewer and wastewater system. This works fine except when it storms, because the wastewater treatment plants aren't designed for massive overflows of storm water, so the only option is to dump the torrent of poop water into the river! We've made some headway in the last couple of decades through improving the capacity of our wastewater plants and building great big fuckoff tanks to hold excess water and stave off overflow events, but at the end of the day climate change and our runoff prone urban landscapes are working against us and separating the network of pipes into separate branches is an enormous expensive undertaking.
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Jun 11, 2019 19:09
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Seven Hundred Bee posted:lol loving Joe Morrissey, convicted sex criminal and twice disbarred lawyer, won. what a piece of poo poo. UGH Looks like he lost slightly in most of the district, including Richmond, but cleaned house in Petersburg, which is highly, highly underserved and disinvested in by the powers that be, and well aware of the fact. Fair enough for them to express their frustration by voting out the incumbent (who, to be fair, wasn't amazing as far as I can tell), it just sucks that the guy is such a slimeball grifter who talks a big game. Happily, there's no Republican opponent, so there's literally no ideological cost to writing in someone else this November, and maybe he'll get indicted for crimes again or primaried by someone with good policy positions and who isn't garbage. Incidentally, the Washington Post did a pretty good article on this race, and they made a very good point: Morrissey winning and Northam facing backlash from black legislators but less so from black voters isn't unrelated. Lots of systematically disenfranchised and underserved voters sort of assume (not incorrectly) that everyone powerful is a corrupt piece of poo poo, so what matters more than being free of past wrongs is demonstrating actual results for you, the constituency.
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Jun 12, 2019 02:21
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Badger of Basra posted:Can someone explicate the difference between (FAIRFAX CITY - FAIRFAX COUNTY) and (FAIRFAX CITY - FAIRFAX COUNTY) - FAIRFAX COUNTY? The CA represents both Fairfax County (the larger political subdivision) and Fairfax City (the smaller independent city inside the county because Virginia local government is a nightmare). The top box is overall results for the race. The second one is results for just precincts inside the County, and the screenshot cuts off a third for precincts inside the City.
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Jun 12, 2019 02:25
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Also the usual warning holds here that sparsely populated Maximum Republican ("real Virginia") precincts typically report first and densely populated suburban and urban ones ("those people") report late, so figuring out whether a Republican lead in preliminary results is an artifact of statistics or a harbinger of doom is tricky. If you're likely to be stressed out by this, avoiding any results at all until 9:00 or 10:00 Eastern might be wise.
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Nov 5, 2019 22:46
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Ballz posted:I feel bad for not voting in Virginia today. It's ok, settle in and hopefully we'll have some vicarious excitement coming along from our friends in competitive districts.  My delegate had an unserious Republican challenger but my Senate race was Joe loving Morrissey versus an unserious independent. I wrote in a local community activist, and Joe will win with 90% of the vote. Ugh. My best hope is he toes the party line and tries to actually deliver for his constituents in an effort to survive the inevitable primary from a well funded, prepared challenger in four years.
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Nov 6, 2019 01:33
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Ballz posted:Goondolences. Nah, his shittiness is almost all personal, policywise he's indistinguishable from a pretty good Dem (aside from a spotty record on reproductive justice iirc) and his base is persistently disenfranchised communities of color. He's just an incredible scumbag.
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Nov 6, 2019 01:44
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my bony fealty posted:why exactly *do* people keep supporting Joe Morrissey Short answer, historically marginalized communities of color are extremely used to turning out for politicians who then disappear for four years, and for all his many, many shortcomings, Morrissey knows how to make his constituents feel heard and seen through constituent services. That earns him some serious loyalty. my bony fealty posted:holy poo poo I used to work with Ghazala Hashimi, I had no idea she was running for State Senate. she's a really cool lady and really dedicated to public education and community colleges. so fuckin awesome to see her flip a seat.  So glad to see that shithead Sturtevant run out of town on a rail. Hashimi seems really cool, too!
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Nov 6, 2019 02:05
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Lprsti99 posted:Obviously not calling anything, but In the darkness of a display case at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, a lovely blue ceramic bowl begins to crack as its curse is broken...
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Nov 6, 2019 02:16
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I'm on mobile so I can't post a picture, but... Democrats are currently ahead in 52 out of 100 House of Delegates districts. We might actually do this.
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Nov 6, 2019 02:33
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OhFunny posted:
The WaPo isn't making projections, the light shades on their website means "leading, and between 10 and 100% of precincts are reporting." I've been scanning the races left to call and I'm don't think there's any nasty surprises lurking-- in fact the usual pattern here is that the Dems mostly stand to gain from this point in the night thanks to dense suburban precincts. But it's not a sure thing. We're up to 53 Dems leading now! Hoping the trend continues  e: a for our boy Lee, if his race didn't flip then I doubt any of the others will 
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Nov 6, 2019 02:50
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You guys I can't even really wrap my head around what having actual Democratic control of my state would look like. For literally my entire life Republicans have controlled at least one of the three main institutions of power in Virginia, and even as we've started to elect Democrats statewide they've maintained a stranglehold on the General Assembly and the House of Delegates in particular. There's so much stuff that could be done if we could do actual legislation.
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Nov 6, 2019 02:56
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Grapplejack posted:Pretty much, yeah. I think this is the first time in at least a decade there is a full democratic majority across all 3 parts of the government. Here's hoping they don't gently caress it up by trying to grift instead of fixing the myriad issues that VAPOL has. Since 1993. And before that many state level elected Democrats were still Dixiecrats and Blue Dogs. This will be the most progressive legislature since Reconstruction.
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Nov 6, 2019 03:33
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Virginia doesn't have a bicameral legislature because the federal government does; if anything the causality works the other way. Ultimately, both have bicameral legislatures because Parliament is bicameral and that's what the people setting these deals up were familiar with. In contemporary English political science it was believed that the English government, being made up of a monarch (an autocrat), some Lords (an oligarchy), and the Commons (democracy), could partake of the best parts of all three while avoiding their pitfalls (dictatorship, plutocracy, and demagoguery respectively, according to them). Virginia's colonial legislature emulated the original, being made up of a House of Burgesses (today's Delegates, the Commons-analogue) and a Council of State, who were mostly wealthy planters appointed by the governor or by the Crown, and with the governor acting as a proxy for the monarch. It was a fairly successful model (for the planters, at least), and one the other colonies implemented with various tweaks of their own. The 1776 Constitution replaced the Council with the Senate, which was designed to be less frequently elected and represent more people, with the intention of serving as a deliberative chamber like the Lords. The federal legislative system is an adaptation of the post-1776 Virginia one by Madison, who kludged it so the Senate would represent the States to appease the small ones who had really liked each state having one equal vote in the Confederation Congress and the House seats would be apportioned by population to appease the large ones who hadn't. As for why the states still have bicameral legislatures, it's mostly because some are left over from their colonial structures and nobody's bothered to change it, and by the time we were making new States they just started copying what had been working and didn't bother to change it. Except Nebraska.
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Nov 6, 2019 21:41
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 17:38 |
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It's worth noting too that the Senate didn't get any of the court-ordered gerrymandering reduction that the House did, so this election was carried out on the same maps drawn in 2011. Given that, it's drat impressive that the Democrats won even a slim majority; those maps were designed to stand up to a pretty sizeable wave. Basically every structural factor in the electoral system in Virginia has been designed to ensure right wing dominance since the end of Reconstruction and especially since the Civil Rights Movement, from the off-year elections designed to ensure that only motivated white people vote to the natural gerrymandering of the urban-rural divide to the artificial gerrymandering of the district maps to the photo ID laws. Hell, even most local races are in off years for maximum insulation from waves. The good news is, we managed to overcome all those factors, even if only by a relatively slim margin, and a majority is a majority. There's enough mediocre Democrats in the legislature taking money from Dominion and the Chamber of Commerce that I won't get my hopes up for ending "Right to Work" or breaking Dominion's hold on our politics, but we can definitely do a bunch of good and make sure the maps for the next election aren't designed to minimize the influence of the majority of the population, which will make the next steps easier. It'll be more important than ever for the next two years for VA goons to pressure their state legislators; they'll need to feel they've got the support of their constituents to actually use their majority for more than just the safe lowest common denominator of good policy, and they'll need to feel the heat if they don't. I'll be paying a lot of attention to what the environmental and labor activists are saying, because those are the areas Northam and the squishy Dems in the caucus have been squishiest on.
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Nov 10, 2019 18:48
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