The commies have taken West Palm. This week, the tony South Florida enclave and home to Mar-a-Lago held a special election for a vacant state House seat. Democrat Emily Gordon won, defeating her Republican opponent in a district that had been considered safely Republican right up until they got their asses handed to them. Arise, proletarians of West Palm!
In truth, the election is mostly symbolic since Republicans hold a supermajority in the Florida state legislature, but that didn’t stop Democrats from crowing about their win. “Democrats can run and win anywhere—even Donald Trump’s backyard!” said state Democratic chairperson Nikki Fried. “If Mar-a-Lago is vulnerable, imagine what’s possible this November,” wrote DLCC president Heather Williams.
I’m going to take Williams’ advice. Now that the Reds are painting the town... blue, let’s imagine what might be possible in November should Democratic gains continue at the torrid pace we’ve seen since Trump’s 2024 win.
I want Soviet-style breadlines, except for artisanal brioche, and the lines are only long because the brioche is so delicious. I want The Gap to start selling those cool Mao jackets. I want all those millionaires and billionaires sent to communal farms to work off their tax debts. I want to see Jeff Bezos slopping pigs!
This is what we’ve been promised for years, after all: The suburbs will be collectivized. The children will be issued Dolores Huerta lunchboxes—and litter boxes. Somewhere in a darkened back room, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will finally flip the switch that nationalizes Applebee’s.
It’s easy to poke fun at Republican scare-mongering about Democratic victories. When Democrats assume office, however, they never do the very bad things Republicans fearmonger about. (Sadly, they rarely do much at all.) As much as I would like it to be otherwise, Democrats haven’t taken your guns. Nor have they outlawed beef or legalized “post-birth abortion.”
Funnily enough, though, everything the Democrats warned about Trump has turned out to be even worse than we imagined. He’s even more venal, corrupt, and stupid than either Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris warned. And his new legion of flunkies are even flunkier than we would have thought possible. By comparison, his first Cabinet appears almost statesman-like. I would trade six Pam Bondis for one Jeff Sessions, and Jeff Sessions suuuuuucked.
This particular race, it should be noted, was for a seat which had been held by Republican Mike Caruso until it was vacated in 2025, when ol’ pudding-fingers himself, Governor Ron DeSantis, appointed him to run the Palm Beach County clerk and comptroller office. That appointment set up the essentially inconsequential race to replace him—until it became consequential, even symbolically.
Oh, and by the by, Melania Trump voted by mail. Something symbolic about that too, probably?
Of course, Democrats are making much of the symbolism. A Democratic win anywhere near Mar-a-Lago is catnip for a party desperate to believe Florida might someday be competitive again. For years, the state has been drifting steadily to the right, powered by retiree migration, cultural grievance politics, and the simple fact that Florida Democrats often campaign like people pressed into obligatory military conscription rather than as agents of that much-maligned hopey-changey thing.
But before anyone starts planning the socialist takeover of Boca Raton, however, it’s worth remembering that special elections are, like Stephen Miller, peculiar beasts. Turnout is weird. Enthusiasm swings wildly. One side gets complacent, the other gets motivated, and suddenly a race that would normally pass unnoticed becomes a national talking point.
The truth is that this election probably tells us very little about Florida’s political future. Or the Democrats as a whole. Because, of course, the Democrats have never been on the same page about anything. On the one hand, it’s certainly part of a pattern of events that bodes well for the party come November, if Trump allows the midterms to happen. On the other, this specialest of elections may simply tell us that Republicans didn’t bother showing up for a low-stakes race in the middle of the summer while Democrats did. That’s not nothing, but it ain’t exactly the Bolshevik Revolution.
Still, the reaction from the right has been predictably apocalyptic. Conservative commentators immediately warned that the West Palm result was proof that the radical left is surging. Soon they will come for your boat club, your golf membership, and the sacred right to pay $37 for a weak G&T at the club (roofie not included).
And if that happens, comrades, I say we lean into it.
Let the socialist future begin right there on the palm-lined boulevards of West Palm Beach. Replace the Bentleys with bicycle collectives. Turn the marinas into floating community gardens. Seize Mar-a-Lago and convert it into a monument to American narcissism.
Schoolchildren will take field trips. “And here,” the docent will say, gesturing solemnly toward the gold-plated bathroom, “is where our 45th and 47th president hid all his stolen files.”
“Did he go to jail?” they’ll ask.
“No,” the docent will respond. “He got four billion dollars.”
The kids will nod thoughtfully and then head outside to enjoy ice cream cones: ONE GOVERNMENT-PROVIDED SCOOP PER CHILD!
Until that glorious workers’ paradise arrives, however, the rest of us will have to settle for something less dramatic, a special election in a single Florida district that changed almost nothing about the balance of power in Tallahassee.
But if it irritates our Burger King even slightly, if even one White House page has to duck out of the way of a single flying ketchup bottle, it will have been worth it. The Commies may not have actually taken West Palm, and never will, but people really do have the power. Let’s see if people power can take back this country come November.
When we do, the first round of vodka is on me.
