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.
Also, as someone living in Texas and starting to feel defensive about how people keep saying they’re ‘disappointed’ in Beto – I’m 100% sure that his campaign knew it was a long shot from the beginning, because no Democrat has won a statewide race in Texas since 1995, and so they placed a lot of emphasis on building a coalition with Democrats down-ballot and increasing turnout. As a result, pretty much every state race went from the usual 10-15% margin to single digit margins, often less than 5%. Turnout was higher than the 2000 presidential election, which featured then-Texas Gov. George fucking Bush. Even with all the hilarious gerrymandering, we flipped two US House seats (possibly three), boosted our Dem faction in the state lege, and increased diversity in gender, race, and queerness.
To quote Lt. Gov. candidate Mike Collier:
“Somewhere the Republicans are toasting, but their hands are shaking.” Just wait and see what we can do with two more years, motherfuckers.
A LOT of great points here – I’ve been really irritated at the negative perspective on the results, which I’ve seen a lot of on Facebook. Like, I’m not sure what fairy tale land a lot of people *thought* we were living in, but as far as I’m concerned, this midterm was a rousing success.
I live in Michigan. One of the other posts I’ve seen said that we voted out our Flint-poisoning governor. That’s not actually true; Snyder was term-limited out. But here’s the thing – Snyder was generally a moderate. Schuette, the Republican who was running, was decidedly not. We dodged a major bullet by *not* electing Schuette. And that’s without considering the fact that Whitmer, our new Governor-elect, is very promising.
In fact, here in Michigan, all four of our statewide elections were won by Democratic women: governor, senator, secretary of state (who runs our elections), and attorney general – which happens to be the position that Schuette currently holds, and that he has used to oppose LGBT protections, rights for juvenile offenders, and more.
We also had three ballot proposals in Michigan – all three were progressive and solidly passed. We legalized recreational marijuana, approved an independent redistricting commission (important for the future of our state legislature, which is still quite red, as well as our Congressional districts), and expanded voting access.
Let’s not forget some possible implications for 2020, too. Not who’ll win or even run; it’s way too early for that. But I noticed that for both governor and senate, Macomb County, Michigan, went narrowly blue. That’s interesting because in November/December 2016, Macomb County was the focus of a *lot* of those “why Trump won” articles, specials, etc. Humans of New York even spent a month there. (I happened to grow up in Macomb County, so that was memorable for me.)
One more really key thing for 2020 that I haven’t seen people point out yet, and this one’s not about Michigan. It’s about Texas. Yep, Beto lost, which is sad. But it was damn close. In Texas. Very, very red Texas. By far the biggest of the red states. The Republicans **cannot** lose Texas and hope to keep the White House. Do I think that this election means that the Republicans *will* lose Texas? No, they’ll probably win it. But they can’t COUNT on it anymore. They have to campaign there. They have to spend a lot of their time and money making *damn sure* they win Texas. And that’s time and money they can’t spend in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, Virginia, Florida…
i hate reading this post for the sole reason that it made me realize against my will that kermit and miss piggy are literally mr. and mrs. bennet personified and this crossover would probably work
i am disturbed by how well this works
alright now i’m just pissed off because that fits even better
Can Sam the Eagle be Lady Catherine de Burgh?? Please?
Full time work should entitle someone to enough pay for rent, food, bills, and leisure activities. Full time work for a full life wage. You put in your 8 hours a day, 5 days a week? You should be able to afford the basic shit you need in life, no matter where you work.
pisses me off that this is considered a radical statement.
So I should be able to move into one of the midst densely populated cities, say LA or New York, flip burgers for a living and all of a sudden i should just be allowed to have a $2000/ month apartment to boot?
Do cities have restaurants that employ food service workers?
What does the question mean? Does McDonalds have a resteraunt in LA?
If yes (which, yes, duh) then those employees should be paid enough to live in LA. If McDonalds doesnt want to pay employees enough to survive in LA, then McDonalds cant REALLY afford to operate in LA ethically.
idk why this is such a hard concept to understand.
I’m sorry I am sick of people acting like minimum wage jobs like McDonalds are for lazy people and are easy and that means the people who work them are lazy and don’t deserve a full living wage or respect.
Can you remember off the top of your head everything on a constantly changing menu and how to prepare it in under 3 minutes, accounting for changes in that recipe for people who ask for it differently? Can you do it with 100s of orders coming in every minute and balance your time properly so all of them come out on time and hot? Can you stand for 9-10 hours a day with only a short unpaid break dealing with hoards of people who are likely to be rude to you for no reason? Can you get screamed at for no reason after a 10 hour shift and not cry or yell back or even stand up for yourself because if you do it’s bad service? Can you lift upwards of 40lbs of stock over and over all day without hurting yourself? Can you get a horrible hot oil burn, slap a bandage on it and keep working? Can you work odd or constantly changing hours, on weekends and holidays, that mean you don’t have a lot of free time and cannot get a regular sleep schedual? Can you do it while going to school full time? Or caring for a family?
Can you do it all for $7.25 an hour? For no benefits? No paid time off? No sick pay? The people working at McDonalds and Burger King and the restaurants and movie theaters and coffee shops are not lazy teenagers trying to make some extra spending money. They are hard working people who are trying to make a better life for themselves and their families and that deserves a full, living wage and benefits and RESPECT. And if you don’t think that then you should stop going to those places.
And what about small businesses? Ones who can’t afford to pay that much?
“If McDonalds doesn’t want to pay employees enough to survive in LA, then McDonalds cant REALLY afford to operate in LA ethically.”
If you cannot afford to pay your employees a living wage, then you CANNOT AFFORD TO OWN A BUSINESS. Simple as that.
And there is no reason for the CEO of McDonalds to make upwards of 7 million dollars in a year(x), while his employees can barely afford to eat.
THIS!!! I’ve had a lot of jobs in my time on this earth and by FAR the hardest were the ones that paid the least. “Flipping burgers”, waitressing, factory work and retail etc are fucking hardcore.
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.
You know, probably my favorite part of the movie Hercules, besides all of the horridly inaccurate mythology and fun gospel music, is that Hercules was already super strong and didn’t need to work out. Phil just made him work out for the Hero Aesthetic™
Skinny arms don’t cut it, kid.
Only big arms will get you an action figure.
Never mind that you’ve been lifting houses since you were a toddler.
Consulting Witch 