DSA member Chris Rabb will be representing the 3rd US House District, which is in Philadelphia. Why do I say he “will,” as though it’s already a fait accompli? After all, the election hasn’t happened yet. The reason is that Rabb is running unopposed; the GOP realizes it would be a waste of time and money to field a candidate there, it is such a deep deep blue area. In fact, it’s the bluest district in the entire House, according to this video.

You can see from the video that Rabb has a great deal of ambition for the DSA message, which he thinks can also resonate in districts that aren’t so deep blue:

Rabb’s story in the primary has been a familiar one. He beat out two Democrats who were not as radical as he and who had more name recognition. All three candidates were black and so I assume race had little to nothing to do with his win over his opponents:

Rabb, who ran an unapologetically progressive campaign, set himself apart from the initially crowded field of candidates by describing himself as the “anti-establishment” Democrat in the race.

His progressive stances – and allyship with leftist organizations, including the Democratic Socialists of America and Working Families Party – proved to be key to his winning the deep blue seat against a party leader in Sharif Street and a tough newcomer in Dr. Ala Stanford.

“A couple of months ago, I was on the precipice of withdrawing from this race,” Rabb said to supporters at his election watch party. “I was reminded that tough times pass, but tough people last.”

You can see, however, that Rabb didn’t get a majority, although he got a strong plurality.

Here’s a quote from Rabb for Independence Day:

Rabb is the Democrat nominee for Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District who thought it was a good idea to actually denounce the Declaration of Independence ahead of America’s semiquincentennial.

“Those screeds that were very lofty but were notoriously catering to a performative aspect of collective genius that purposely erased indigenous and black peoples,” Rabb said at “America at 250 — Trump Fascism, Historical Erasure, and the Battle Over Truth.”

“It created distance from an empire to help very privileged people continue that privilege and ultimately institutionalize that through the U.S. Constitution many years later. But it certainly did not provide independence to indigenous and black peoples,” he claimed. “And we cannot talk about anything today without acknowledging that this is a nation born on stolen land & stolen labor.”

He hits every leftist note, master of the buzzword (“performative,” “privilege,” “stolen land”).

Rabb’s Wiki entry is interesting. In a familiar pattern, he is an Ivy League graduate (Yale in his case, with a Master’s in organizational dynamics from the University of Pennsylvania), and his father is both a doctor and a college professor. He is a descendent of many activist leaders in the black community:

Rabb was born in Chicago, to an ophthalmologist and professor father, Maurice Rabb Jr., and a politically active mother, Madeline Murphy Rabb. His maternal grandmother, Madeline Wheeler Murphy, was a Baltimore-based community activist, and his maternal grandfather, William H. Murphy Sr., was a judge in Baltimore. Rabb’s great-great-grandfather, John H. Murphy Sr., was born into slavery and founded the Baltimore Afro-American in 1892.

Rabb hasn’t gotten the same kind of publicity as some of the other DSA progressives. But it seems to me he could be a rising star in the Democratic Socialist movement.