Thanks be, Congress Member Elect Antonio Delgado has replaced John Faso as our Congressional REPRESENTATIVE. Antonio has already held more town meetings  and  listened to more actual voters (as opposed to corporate lobbyists) than Faso did in his one term in Congress and, I suspect, in his stint in the New York State Assembly.

This election was not the result of one man or one woman’s work. This election energized in part because we were “foolish” enough as Democrats to allow 7 contenders to vie for the nod of nominee. Every one of those contenders would have been an improvement on Faso, and every one of them should be thanked and praised to the degree that he/she ran a campaign which did not divide the Democrats but rather pulled in more and more citizens who for the first time got involved in politics. We had our differences, but ultimately saw that we had much more in common than that which divided us.

This election resulted In part because some very visionary members of the Dutchess County Democratic Committee permitted a selection of the committee’s choice for nominee by introducing ranked choice balloting, thus ensuring that whoever won reflected the choice of over 50% of the weighted votes. This use of ranked choice could solve a lot of problems for many primaries and was so efficient that it made believers out of most on the Dutchess Democratic Committee.

I hope this long march to success will inspire more people of good will to run for office, knock on doors, make phone calls, stuff envelopes, talk to their neighbors (and even their relatives), donate to campaigns, thank the people who staff the voting site, thank people who run, attend town board meetings  (bring a pencil, notebook  a comfy pillow, and your own stop watch to time your allotted speaking — somehow theirs are very fast!), write letters to the editor, get out to the Democratic fund raisers, join the County Democratic Committee, and pray, pray always for the courage to continue when you experience defeat and especially when you win.

Winning and losing are the the first steps towards the next election. We are still up against international corporate donors, and we are the party of the average citizen, so it will always be an uphill battle. The NYC  hedge fund managers dropped hundreds of thousands through their PACS into the coffers of Republicans running right in this county. Some very fine people suffered loses as a result.

We are the hope we have been waiting for. So sleep, party, cry, and get out there ( in January to start all over again.) —I revised this timeline in light of Trump’s attempt to stop the investigation into Russian interference in the national interests of the U.S. I think we need to get out there, write letters, and make calls NOW.

Peace, joy, and hope to everyone.