"It wasn't working" it was making everyone miserable and they were broadly blaming Trump. That's the strategy working.

One predictable downside of making it "no this is only about ACA, our only demand" is that does get harder to defend as time goes on and the shutdown pain stacks up. The line for giving up on that, taking its loss as the lesser evil, is much lower than "we're not funding this fascist police state."

Housing costs + sense of precarity + loneliness + avarice-producing media + loss of countercultural support of thrift as a virtue (since ~1980s or so)

why didn't Zohran have the politician stink on him, despite working with David Shor and many other conventional Democratic consultants? because starting from a different position than "winning the election" makes you put the consultants in their proper role!

yup can't tell you the number of young people I met a couple years ago who were curious about the sierra club in nyc and then went "wait, why are these five people just talking about the elizabeth street garden?"

he won this district because they don’t like a pro-Palestinian socialist. they are not cuomosexuals.

At this point it’s almost a category error to assume any commonality between “very online non-nyc dsa members” (including members of the national political committee) and “nyc dsa”