the NYT 2018 midterms morning-after narrative, with all the chin-stroking about mixed results and the bland end of the Dems driving the successes, seems really wrong to me and frankly kind of enraging. obviously there were disappointments but, net-net, this is not a morning for wailing and gnashing of teeth. I compulsively wasted hours and hours of my life following this shit last night, so I’m just going to lay out some of the story points supporting a more robust and optimistic narrative real quick
the objective was always to take the House; the Senate was always an almost hopeless moonshot
we did take the House, decisively
the things that follow from that are now going to be realized. it means not only more robust Trump oversight, the tax return subpoenas and protection for the Mueller investigation and so on, but also much needed brakes on the runaway GOP legislative agenda. the Republicans are not going to get to try to repeal ACA again, or kill Social Security, or defund Planned Parenthood, or have their way with the 2020 census or the budget. those things are all huge
the >9% popular-vote D advantage is comparable to or bigger than past midterm “wave” elections, including 1994’s Tea Party wave. that’s literally how we fucking took the House despite 1. the disastrous 2010 census gerrymandering and resulting structural 5- to 7-point GOP advantage and 2. the more recent horrifying surge of strongman fascism. excuse me but we 110% fucking deserve wave status
got a bunch of governorship wins that really fucking matter! Scott Walker, don’t let the door hit you on your way out of Wisconsin! welcome home, Michigan! fuck you and the horse you rode in on, Kris Kobach!
what’s not the matter with Kansas, multiple excellent results there with both Laura Kelly and Sharice Davids winning upsets. possibly they’ve finally put it together that austerity is terrible and are positioning themselves to start fixing the damage. good going, Kansas
this whole weird line that it was moderate Dems that drove all the key successes and dynamic progressives only ever have any chance in the very bluest coastalest elitest cityest races is bullshit. I can’t believe the NYT can say that with a straight face. Sharice Davids is NOT your bland straight white guy DINO, and Kansas is, um, not the Bronx? Pennsylvania is literally going to have a DSA caucus? Beto O’Rourke lost what was, come on, a moonshot race by a high-suspense hair, he clearly has cemented his rising-star status and generated real excitement and momentum
meanwhile DINO “moderate” poster children Heitkamp and Donnelly lost us two (2) Senate seats. wtf with this narrative?
several of the highest profile GOP wins were in states with especially flagrant and egregious voter suppression. we’re all looking at you, Georgia, North Dakota, TEXAS whose Senate race was still close as hell. this is one of the things a Democratic House is well positioned to make a goddamn fuss about.
also Michigan and uh I think another state passed anti-gerrymandering ballot initiatives and, may I goddamn repeat, official face of ‘voter suppression is actually good’ Kris Kobach is out on his ass. plus, granted Florida is a trainwreck by a hundred thousand or so people again, they’ve also just reenfranchised 1.4 million ex-felons, so that may be goddamn changing in future
Virginia is a blue state now btw
New York internal state shit here but the state senate has finally thrown off its shackles so maybe we can actually get some good goddamn legislation passed, seriously if you don’t live here you have no idea the bullshit that’s been going on in Albany thanks to so-called moderates
is everything in the garden lovely? hell to the fuck no, shit sucks in abundance out there, but we knew that! that’s not the surprising bit!
give hardworking blues the credit they deserve 2k18
On the progressive side, I would also note that Stacey Abrams (who hasn’t conceded yet but I’m not holding my breath on this) came the closest to flipping the Georgia’s governor’s mansion since the 90s when middle of the road democrats since 2002 have lost from between 5 to 20 percent. Good lefty Abrams got within 2 percent (and outperformed Clinton in total number of votes received in Georgia…IN A MIDTERM YEAR). The Southeast did tend to go less blue than might have been hoped, but the Midwest made up for that and the vote totals show the progressives can get out to vote.
This despite entireblue districts in GA getting allocated non-working voting machines and being no joke completely shafted for voting, BY THE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE WHOSE LITERAL JOB WAS RUNNING GA STATE ELECTIONS. It’s not a disgrace, doing this well in the face of not only a legit mixed af Southeastern state constituency but also flagrant bald-faced cheating.
I mean, this is what I’m saying. Something important was accomplished today. Um, sorry that democrats weren’t able to wave their wands Harry Potter v. Voldemort style and vanquish every single republican in a puff of smoke? Like, that wasn’t ever going to happen. But a lot of cool shit got done– we took the gd house for crying out loud– and as I mentioned in my last post, republicans should’ve killed it in this election but instead they’re squeezing victories out of less than 1% of the vote. Lol, ‘blue ripple’ my ass! When I went to bed last night I was like, is tomorrow going to feel like 2016, but today I had hope for the first time in two years instead.
Like, hello, Colorado just elected a gay governor– the first in the country! I grew up in Colorado and that bitch used to be stop sign red, clown nose red, red delicious red. Look at it now. When I was a kid a law was passed saying gay people didn’t deserve special rights (not to mention the whole recent cake baker thing) and now a gay man is governor??? I feel proud of Colorado and proud of this midterm. I refuse to be so crushed by Trump and the non-stop pummeling of bad news over this last two years that I have to look for the poopy diaper in all this good news. Something rad happened all over the whole country yesterday and it’s a real and true good thing.
gonna hear a lot of fingerwagging about how yet again all the losses are the fault of an apathetic voter base or whatever and to every single one of you that gets out of bed ready to die on that hill of condescending arrogance:
run these numbers through whatever fuckbrain filter you use to interpret statistical data and explain to me in plain english how “people didn’t vote” explains the results of an election with numbers like this.
because you gotta be some galactically endowed genius to somehow think that’s how numbers like that could happen.
We took the House, held our losses in the Senate in the worst damn map imaginable, won seven governor’s mansions, picked up quite a few trifectas and flipped some legislative chambers even where we don’t have the trifecta, expanded Medicaid in three states (and with the governors’ wins we’ll get Kansas and Maine on top of that), won a ton of criminal justice and voting rights reforms.
It wasn’t a perfect night. There were some real disappointments. There was some truly ugly fear-mongering and disenfranchisement, and the rules of the game are tilted such that a 9% popular vote margin, one of the biggest in the history of midterm elections, didn’t feel quite like the wave that it was.
But even in our disappointments, we made critical gains that will change things in the future: Beto didn’t win, but running a competitive race in Texas helped several Democrats over the line in the House and in the state legislature which wouldn’t have happened otherwise; Florida was a disappointment for the Senate and Governor’s races, but the passage of Amendment 4 means that the next election in Florida won’t have 10% of the population disenfranchised.
So take the win, even though it’s not perfect.
To quote Max Weber (and apologies for his 19th century language here):
Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It requires passion as well as perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms–that man would not have achieved the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that, a man must be a leader, and more than a leader, he must be a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that resolve of heart which can brave even the failing of all hopes. This is necessary right now, otherwise we shall fail to attain that which it is possible to achieve today. Only he who is certain not to destroy himself in the process should hear the call of politics; he must endure even though he finds the world too stupid or too petty for that which he would offer. In the face of that he must have the resolve to say ‘and yet,’—for only then does he hear the ‘call’ of politics.
for a quick change of pace–i know we’ve all seen a thousand posts about voting, but what i haven’t seen (not yet) is one saying thank you.
thank you for those who made it out in the rain and the cold, who organized and canvassed and took on the onerous task of working with non-voting & conservative friends/family to change their stance if at least just this once. thank you for those who stood in line for hours, who had to travel because your voting place was moved, who had to jump through ridiculous fucking hoops to register, who weren’t inspired but showed up anyway for the disenfranchised and the greater good. thank you as well to everyone who voted early, absentee, and provisional.
just moving along like everyone else 