Interest in the Democratic Socialists of America as measured by Google Trends record of searches spikes upon Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s election in the primary, and remains higher than baseline thereafter:

Interest in Socialism in the US exploded when Bernie ran for president:

I could show many similar graphs, but I doubt anyone will dispute the main point. Elections are an effective platform for promulgating ideas. We can measure this empirically through things like search records, Wikipedia page views etc. The question is then, can and should we overcome our disgust to participate?

Here’s Lenin’s take on the matter:

In Russia, however, lengthy, painful and sanguinary experience has taught us the truth that revolutionary tactics cannot be built on a revolutionary mood alone. Tactics must be based on a sober and strictly objective appraisal of all the class forces in a particular state (and of the states that surround it, and of all states the world over) as well as of the experience of revolutionary movements. It is very easy to show one’s “revolutionary” temper merely by hurling abuse at parliamentary opportunism, or merely by repudiating participation in parliaments; its very ease, however, cannot turn this into a solution of a difficult, a very difficult, problem.

“Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder, Vladimir Lenin (1920)

Here’s what I think. Class war is a long, cold, game. The trauma of generations makes us want to throw up our hands in disgust and demand all or nothing right now but this has never worked. Moralistic horror alone should never divert us from a tactic. We are here to improve the world, not as a historical reenactment society, or as the church of a new personal morality.