Thread by @Leftists4Office

Why last night was a win for progressives;

While there are small number of ballot waiting to be counted from last night’s elections, we have a lot of them and, as usual, I’d like to reflect on our wins and losses.

(I’ll include thread reader bot at the end)

While at first glance last night may look like a blowout for progressives I do not believe that to be the case, in fact I believe that in many ways we won last night.

Let’s start with Vermont where voters across the state participated in the annual Town Meeting Day.

Voters across the state passed budgets, many progressive, and many towns voted on retail cannabis. The retail cannabis bill was voted on in over 20 towns and passed in major cities across the state, including Burlington and Montpelier and was only rejected in Richmond.

In Burlington, every voting measure passed. All of these were supported by progressives. Among these measures was ranked-choice voting. Electorally, progressives didn’t pick up any races but they held on to the city council seats, almost flipping one.

Progressives lost the mayoral race by 129 votes, with the majority of voters supporting the two more progressive candidates. Despite what appeared to be a relative loss for progressives, we expanded the voter base across the state and shifted public opinion on major policies.

In St. Louis, all progressive alderman incumbents won their primary elections and the top two vote-receivers in the mayoral primary were progressives, who will move on to the general election in April.

^ Additionally, progressives stopped a conservative Democrat from qualifying for the mayoral race, someone who Democrats were hoping could primary Cori Bush.

We lost state legislative elections, however we ran a competitive race in Massachusetts. In Rhode Island, there were 7 bond issues on the ballot (all of which were supported by progressives). The majority of voters appeared to have approved every bond measure.

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