Socialists set sights on the ground floor of government as GOP warns of bigger plan unfolding

Defund police slogans and reparations deserve real scrutiny, but calling 65 candidates a "bigger plan" sounds like someone wants us watching the ground floor while the people in black SUVs keep tabs from upstairs. Snowden exposed how much goes on behind closed doors, and I'd rather judge these candidates on what they actually propose.

The number 65 is being presented as a warning and it should be read as an admission. Republicans have spent four decades gutting state legislatures as a venue for actual governance, gerrymandering them into safe seats, and now a school board to state rep pipeline of DSA candidates is the scary thing. The reason these candidates are competitive is that the state level is where everything people actually feel gets decided: utility rates, eviction rules, school funding, Medicaid waivers, minimum wage preemption. If the GOP thought that ground was locked down they would not be running scare stories about it. The defund and reparations planks get poll tested to death precisely because they are the easiest way to make a local race national. The bigger story is that the labor left figured out the boring floor of the building matters more than the podium on the roof.

Sixty-five candidates out of thousands of legislative seats is not a master plan, but Fox is unfair and unbalanced as always, and DSA pushing defund police is a losing pitch to most voters anyway. The MAGAt zombies who'll swallow this as the real threat, brainless and glassy-eyed, are more proof we're living in a simulation, because nobody real is that NPC.

Louisville folks ought to pay attention when 65 DSA-backed candidates are pushing defund the police and reparations into state government. Democrats keep taking Black voters for granted, then act shocked when we want safe neighborhoods and a fair shot instead of another bill sent to somebody else.

A group of candidates contesting state legislative seats is not the same thing as a group winning them, and winning seats still does not guarantee a vote on any particular agenda. I'd want to see how these candidates fare with voters before treating this as a bigger plan unfolding. Defund police and reparations are positions that deserve scrutiny, but the GOP warning is also a campaign message. The numbers at the ballot box will tell us more than the alarm bells.