By David Futrelle
If you haven’t already, GO VOTE and then come back to enjoy(?) this open thread. Tell us how it went. Talk about any shady sit the GOP tries to pull today. Discuss the results as they come in. Talk about your hobbies. Post pictures of animals. Post videos. Whatever it takes to get through this incredibly nerve-wracking day.
No trolls.
So we need to be ready for every ‘bad’ thing to be the fault of Congress from now on. They no longer will have to invoke the ‘deep state’ as a reason why a party in pretty much absolute control isn’t delivering what it promised.
And expect the next few days to involve lots of attempts to talk about absolutely anything else other than ‘Trump lost the GOP Congress’. Don’t let them set the topic.
One of our local people won which should be good for the county but marsha fucking blackburn went to the senate,
I saw one of her ads last night and it was horribly racist shit about the caravan being full terrorists.
In other news this was pretty funny https://www.themarysue.com/superheroes-and-villains-at-the-polls/
Bad news- voter ID passed in North Carolina.
O’Rourke didn’t win, but his campaign pushed several close races to the D category here in Texas, so I’m thankful for all his efforts anyway.
@WWTH
0_0
No matter how many times I read this it still amazes me that these idiots think they have the MOST IMPORTANT opinions on hormonal contraception when they don’t even have the foggiest idea of how it works.
@Melissia
Yep yep! Texas is looking purpler every year.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/11/ilhan-omar-first-muslim-woman-congress-acceptance-speech.html
yeah
this!
THIS!!
And Ohio has a new fascist as governor. Fuck.
@TreePerson
Hello fellow TN person. Marsha is a nightmare and those ads were infowars level bullshit. There was some good news nationwide, but TN remains as conservative as ever.
Some of you must feel like this after the past 36 hours.
I woke up to see that Rohrbacher and Scott Walker and Dean Heller are gone. Nice!
In not so good news, my bus is super late. 5 years ago, buses running so late was an occasional thing. In the two months I’ve had this job, I’ve been late to work four times. Even though I always leave earlier than the than the trip planner tells me so that I will be ok if they are 15 minutes behind.
I’m gonna second what SFHC said here:
Seriously, just observing the results from a province currently run by Crack Mayor’s Brother, last night’s results, while expected, are far from small potatoes. I actually found it surprising that people were investing so much emotional and mental energy into these long-shot races in Texas, Florida and Georgia.
Folks, the Democratic Party–milquetoast and knock-kneed (read: white) as it is at the best of times–managed to flip the House of Representatives facing about five different headwinds. Historically poor turnount in midterms. Voter Suppression. Gerrymandering. An activated and fearful opposition. A strong economy! The economy isn’t faltering and the Republicans STILL couldn’t hold on to their House majority. That’s a sign that there’s still plenty of people that understand the stakes involved here and I’d stay still a majority of Americans.
This was the best Republicans could do short of re-introducing Jim Crow laws. The only reason they have the Senate is their favourable map.
The Blue Wave was quite real and did what it had to do. There’s a brake now on all the hideous crap the Republicans are up to. Let Trump complain all he wants. I’m going to enjoy seeing his minions and family members dragged in front of House committees. That’s the big get. I hear they’re already prepared to subpoena Trump’s tax returns. There’s going to be a lot of juicy stuff in there.
We’ve got our beachhead. Now to build up and push on.
Hi all!
I didn’t have the wherewithal to be online last night to follow along with you, but I was very much here in spirit. Was talking with a friend who was all “this is not a blue wave, Jake Tapper just flat out said ‘this is not a blue wave'” and I wanted to smack him. Jake Tapper that is, my friend has better reasons for saying something so dumb.
Before the election, they tallied the swing needed to flip the house based on the current voting districts (counties? we call them ridings, here). It was right on the cusp of what the polling was showing for the Democrats, nationally. Very much within the margin of error whether the D’s would take the house.
But then they mapped the same results to the pre-2010 voting districts, and it was obscene. The modern dems needed more than three times the margin today as they did back then. Closer to 4 times.
Fuck you, Jake Tapper! In the face of that, in the face of the voter suppression, cheating, oppressive voter ID laws, and outright autocratic decrees (lookin at you fuckin’ Kemp), the forces of good planted their feet, put their shoulders in and pushed.
Did more than just squeak through, too. So many little victories all over the place. Sure, some authoritarian swagger-sticks flopped over the finish line like the dead fish they are, but that’s inevitable in a system that’s designed to catapult them over the finish line.
So fuckin’ proud of each and every one of you right now. And you should be too.
Let’s keep it up! Don’t sit on your asses for Mueller to fix it or for the House to impeach – that ain’t happening. Victory in the USA is going to be in 2020 and 2022. Victory everywhere else is going to look pretty similar, too. Keep pushing.
@Weird (and tired of trumplings) Eddie,
There’s actually two Musim women that were elected last night. One of Palestinian descent, one a Somali refugee:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/11/06/politics/first-muslim-women-congress/index.html
They can now join the two Muslim guys already there to get things to change for the better.
And can I say I also hope things can start going back to ‘normal’ around here for a while. There’s a minor situation at one of my workplaces that I want to vent about / get advice on, but virtually all the open threads lately have been so much about the current state of the world that it seemed like my problems are far too minor to even contemplate bringing up, if that makes sense.
Don’t mean to guilt trip anyone here, since the state of the world is important. Just that I want to (eventually) gripe about a comparatively minor problem in my life.
It actually feels like we have a snowball’s chance in Hell now. It hasn’t felt that way for 3 years.
<3
TBH I'm astonished we got such good results and turnout on Q3 in MA, I fully expected a landslide defeat from divide-and-conquer tactics and liberals being transphobic. Even given that Yes interests spent like 6x as much as No interests. IDK, when you grow up with betrayal you come to expect it from every corner.
But: yesterday the vote, tomorrow the revolution. <3
Last time I tried, I got (F) bombed.
Bullshit.
@Jo
This Twitter thread should help. The phrase “Trump-backed loser” needs to be a thing:
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Well, fucking Hunter still won last night, which is irritating. On the other hand, apparently not by much (considering CA-50 is apparently a little chunk of Mississippi in California, political balance-wise), and he’s still under indictment, so I’ll swallow it.
The outside surge of hope makes it sit a little easier, though. Now to cross my fingers and hope being convicted means he loses the job.
I had convinced myself that even Florida wouldn’t elect someone as vapid, clueless, and racist as DeSantis. I was wrong. I’m trying not to be depressed about it, but it’s really hard not to be.
Gillum would have been a fantastic governor. Expanding Medicare and setting up a state healthcare exchange would have really helped me and numerous other small biz owners. Now we have to be concerned that the repubs will continue to try to make the medical marijuana law impossible to comply with…and there goes the last chance I have to get treatment for my pain issues.
I’m seriously considering moving back to Michigan. They elected a female dem for governor, multiple women in other seats, a Muslim woman, and they legalized recreational marijuana. I never thought that they would be moving in the right direction sooner than Florida, but here we are.
@Yamara:
Many years ago (late 1980s), in British Columbia, the premier was a man by the name of Bill Vander Zalm. He got into office purely because he was of the same party as the previous apparently-successful premier (the numerous chickens hadn’t come home to roost yet). Even before he was elected, his previous history of idiocy had led to a political cartoon in the local paper with a cartoonist sitting at his easel, hands clasped in prayer, saying how all the cartoonists would be ever so happy if Vander Zalm won.
By near the end of his time as premier, he was so toxic that whenever he pledged his personal support to someone running in a by-election, that person’s polling numbers immediately dropped several points. He was literally being begged by his own party to shut up (yet didn’t), and ended up being something like the second person in Canadian political history to be actively ousted by his own party.
(The fact that people were listening to him later on when he started the whole anti-HST campaign is a perfect example of just how short some people’s memories are.)
@Jesalin
Yup, “bullshit” is right. And you can already hear the sputtering of Tory supporters saying “B-b-but Trudeau is a groper!” Yeah, 28-year-old Trudeau kinda sounds like an asshole, and I do have my eye on him, but patriarchy isn’t baked into the Liberal identity in the same way it is the Conservative identity. It’s still there, mind you, but not as virulent.
To say nothing of Ford’s cabinet shuffle. I knew the minute they said Jim Wilson was going to rehab that it was something serious. That kind of news doesn’t drop on a Friday afternoon unless you don’t want it broadcast.
@Jo
So basically the same stuff we saw back during the Obama administration but with the parties flipped, then.
While the blue wave in retrospect was more or less wishful thinking (at least, in the extent its effects were supposed to have), the end result was still better than I had personally expected. We shall see what comes of it and hope for the best until then.
“Governor Kelly”… “Governor Kelly”
damn, that sounds SO MUCH BETTER than “governor Kobaaaauuuggghhhhhhh”
and from right next door, here is a U.S. House district map from Missouri… note the cozy, intimate… almost sexual relationship between District 5 and District 6, around Kansas City….
(District map by famous repugnican cartographer Jerry Mandering)
@shartheheretic
My wife found the following quote that pretty much sums up Florida politics:
“I swear Florida could be voting between ice cream and a kick to the head and the results would be 50.5%-49.5%.”
– Benjamin Park
I am happy about the hundred or so women who have moved into the House. We have gays, lesbians, Muslims, Black women, transgender women, And at least two indigenous women who have won seats, which I find remarkable. That is a true representation of America, as we consist of more than just old White men.
Now we just need to keep up the momentum. As Stephen King once said, “Find that wheel, put your shoulder to it, and push that bxxxxx hard, cuz she don’t move easy!”
I keep telling people that Obama was just a warning shot. A shot fired over the bow. This is another one. The battle is happening in a kind of slow motion, and I know people are impatient, but we’re going to get there if we keep moving forward.
“Keep Moving Forward” is my personal motto. I invite everyone to use it whenever you start to feel down and need a little lift.