By David Futrelle
We won yesterday, and won big. It might not feel like much of a victory, because we lost some Senate seats and a couple of longshot races that I and a lot of other people had half-convinced ourselves we were going to win. It might not seem like much of a victory because it was incomplete, and because as long as Trump is in the White House we’re fighting a defensive battle. But the fact is that yesterday we pulled this country back from the abyss.
Had the GOP kept control of the House, we would have seen a newly emboldened Trump, convinced his racist “nationalism” was the key to victory, with no one willing or able to check him. I think we would have seen an almost immediate descent into “nationalist” authoritarianism, if not outright fascism.
But now, with control of the House, we have our first institutional check on Trump. No, the Democrats are not the heroes we need right now; as a party they’re cowardly and craven and even after everything we’ve seen they cling to ridiculous fantasies of bipartisanship. But they can block his worst excesses, and, more importantly, they can investigate him.
And we won back the House — and many other crucial races, defeating Scott Walker, Kris Kobach and Dana Rohrabacher — despite voter suppression, despite gerrymandering. This was a huge repudiation of Trump, and he knows it.
Last night Trump, or whoever had control of his iPhone at the time, tweeted about what he called the Republicans’ “[t]remendous success tonight.” But today it was abundantly clear he doesn’t believe that. In his press conference today he was even more unhinged than usual, visibly angry and upset, lashing out petulantly at reporters asking obvious questions. His firing of Sessions is an attack on democracy but it’s also a desperate move by a man who knows he’s cornered.
Wounded animals are dangerous, and things are likely to get pretty dicey pretty quickly as Trump does everything he can think of to protect himself and to go after his long list of those he considers his enemies — whether these are individuals like Mueller or entire categories of people. He and the GOP are going to pull every trick they can in the lame duck session before the newly elected Dems move into the House. Things are going to get worse, possibly much worse, before they get better.
But if we hadn’t won back the House I think we would have been facing utter catastrophe. So let’s give ourselves some credit for what we accomplished — and give our thanks to those who did the hardest work in the most difficult of places. And then let’s gird ourselves for what’s going to come.
Here are a bunch of tweets about our current situation — and some info on protests scheduled for tomorrow.
https://twitter.com/KatzOnEarth/status/1060035406266335232
https://twitter.com/dropkickpikachu/status/1060023027516215296
https://twitter.com/mat_johnson/status/1060044120528310272
https://twitter.com/maxberger/status/1060064874422829059
Ted Cruz is going to treat himself to TWO live mice tonight
— Jess Dweck (@TheDweck) November 7, 2018
https://twitter.com/kwcollins/status/1060068153378697216
it's really perfect that the president is literally threatening retaliatory investigations on Twitter this morning while pundits are preemptively scolding Democratic overreach
— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) November 7, 2018
https://twitter.com/owillis/status/1060306898111619072
https://twitter.com/ChloeAngyal/status/1060235172912738306
Hey Charlie, did you notice that right before the elections conservatives murdered 15 people and a huge Trump fan tried to kill like a dozen prominent Democrats and Trump critics with mail bombs? pic.twitter.com/Rc5gv7jlWs
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) November 7, 2018
BREAKING: Grassroots activists around the country are gathering for rapid-response protests THURSDAY, default 5pm local time (but check event posts for local details), given news of #Sessions's firing. This is a red line crossed, an attack on rule of law. https://t.co/Lh9J0PfEiC
— Anna Galland (@annagalland) November 7, 2018
I’ll get back to normal blog posts tomorrow but I have been obsessing about the elections — and people’s reactions to the elections — all day and felt the need to say something.
It’s at times like this that I’m really grateful that my country (NZ) has a MMP parliamentary system.
The American system just boggles my mind.
Trump acts just like the authoritarian dictators the U.S. takes military action against, but Trump’s most die-hard supporters still make excuses for him breaking promises and using violent rhetoric. It’s sick and sad.
I half expected trump to just call the results fake news.
“Ted Cruz is going to treat himself to TWO live mice tonight”
…but that’s because Ted Cruz is Renfield and not because Ted Cruz is a cat.
@bekabot
Or one of the reptile aliens from V. Cats are too good for cruz.
Nah, the reptile aliens in V can pass as human. Ted Cruz not so much.
I’ve signed up for a protest tomorrow. Here’s the link, for anyone looking to participate:
Nobody Is Above the Law—Mueller Protection Rapid Response
No, the Democrats are not the heroes we need right now; as a party they’re cowardly and craven and even after everything we’ve seen they cling to ridiculous fantasies of bipartisanship. But they can block his worst excesses, and, more importantly, they can investigate him.
I think that changes with this election. Thirty-one newly elected women will be joining the House. Two of them are Native American, two are Muslim American. We will have liberal champions like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez in the House.
I imagine that this coming iteration of the Democratic Party will be anything but craven.
As a Texas, I’m disappointed that Beto didn’t win. But as a center-lefty, I’m pretty happy with the election results. Nearly everyone I knew voted or did their damnedest to try to, which was pretty encouraging.
Though this doesn’t mean anything if Democrats continue to ignore the people who voted for them.
Drumpf simply does not understand that he can’t run a country the way he runs his sleazy company . . .
It was a mixed bag in some ways, but the Democrats did what they needed to do: take the House. Everything else is decidedly secondary. I was very disappointed that Gillum lost – I think he would have made a great governor, and DeSantis is a jackass. But you can’t win them all.
But this line from one of those tweets – which I’ve also been seeing all over Facebook – that the Democrats won the popular vote but “lost seats” in the Senate doesn’t make any sense. The Dems had many more seats up than the Republicans, and they won a majority of the Senate elections last night (something like 22 vs. 10) to go along with their popular vote win. There’s nothing sinister or undemocratic about it.
Same. My county flipped a bunch of local positions blue, however, including Stan Stanart, our (now former!) tea party voting clerk. So there’s that, at least. And hey, maybe we will actually have more Democrats actually running, now locally. Two years ago there were several positions that only had one option to vote for each (all Republicans) so I had to leave those categories blank on my ticket. I refuse to give them MY vote but of course they still win anyway, by default. :/
Good on you for mopping the floor with the face of Charlie Dork, David. Either that little punkass is completely divorced from reality, or he has some chutzpah. Maybe both. Either way, he deserves to be mocked mercilessly from now until when Donnie loses again.
@Bina At first I thought Charlie was being sarcastic, but then I couldn’t find a punchline…. great smackdown, Dave. 🙂
This is a stupid argument. Every state is different- they have different laws, they have different needs, and they have different cultures. The Senate allows for all states to have equal representation in the legislature. The House is the place for proportional representation. It makes no sense for both the House and the Senate to have proportional representation. If that were the case, 4 or 5 states would set the law for the entire country, with no regard for the rest of us.
I was raised in Illinois. Both the House and the Senate have proportional representation, which means that the vast majority of the state’s legislative body comes from Chicago. I lived in a tiny town over 400 miles south of Chicago. Do you think anybody in the legislature ever gave a shit about my little town? Or my entire county?
I’ll give you a hint: back in the 1970’s, the legislature got a great idea- why not dynamite the levees in part of Southern Illinois and make (another) lake? My home town would have been destroyed along with more than a dozen others. Tens of thousands of people would have to find somewhere else to live. A great many historical sites would have been lost- the area was important in both the Civil War and the Civil Rights Era. But hey, as one Chicago politician put it “It’d be a great place for [his] yacht.”
I’m extremely pissed about losing my state’s only decent senator, Claire McCaskill, but this argument needs to die. I’m sorry that sniveling weasel Josh Hawley is go to be inflicted on the country. Doesn’t change the fact that every state needs to have a place where they work on equal ground with all the other states. If they don’t, a whole lot of people won’t have voices at all.
Arizona Repubs trying to shut down counting. The fuckery doesn’t end on election day.
@Vucodlak : the argument will die once the system won’t give all power to 1/10 of the country, which is the case currently.
You can’t make a good faith argument in favor of the current senate system. It just wasn’t designed for the country being *that* lopsided in population.
The effect of voter suppression was seven per cent.
In a voluntary voting process that is a monstrous obstacle—and deep encouragement to game the system.
Which is exactly what happened; the GOP gamed the system.
At least the Dems took the house—even if there will be no chance for the Senate rolling Trump on impeachment.
Because now it’s gloves off for what they can do which is lift up the many thousands of rocks to see what’s there.
Area man loves governance.
My primary concern right now is that, as David points out, wounded and cornered animal’s are dangerous. This morning, while quietly celebrating what I see as truly spectacular victories – more women in both state and national offices, Native American women in Congress ( a true first, since European-based men have been working overtime for centuries to permanently silence the voices of the survivors of patriarchal genocide so that they would never have to face THAT truth ), Muslim women and people of too many shades for Trump to be comfy, – I have also been contemplating the backlash and the possible shapes it will come in.
Make no mistake, folks, there will be backlashage. He is a narcissist, a violent toddler who seems to really believe that anything that benefits others is a direct and intolerable attack on him. I believe that any action is possible, from loading up the courts even more with judges who support his world view to arranging false flag events that will, he hopes, cement his absolute power.
So we need to celebrate the hopeful events and wins while remaining vigilante and realistic. We have to find ways to push back that will not trigger his desire to, as Ren and Stimpy put it, “push the shiny red, candy like button” that will result in a big boom.
Happily, I believe that there are many things we can do and many people with whom to do them. I would love to see what we can come up with.
Fuck the culture of small, rural, conservative states. They’re imposing their culture of misogyny and racism on the rest of us. That’s not Democracy.
It just isn’t.
And it’s not like rural voters are even voting in people who will serve them well economically. Conservative strangleholds on politics have given us dying towns with few jobs and now thanks to the trade war, piles and piles of unsellable soy beans.
I’m sorry, I just don’t see the upside in letting a bunch of backwards fucks in the minority impose a white theocratic ethnostate on the rest of us in the majority who want to move forward as a nation.
We’re going to permanently destroy ourselves as a nation in the service of soothing the egos of a few million people who will mostly be dead in twenty years. That’s not good.
Also, let’s not pretend the Senate was ever designed to be democratic. Originally, senators were appointed by governors. It became an elected position only because the process of appointing senators was so corrupt. Governors were just straight up selling seats. The body has been a failure from the start.
It’s not just Trump to be worried about, unfortunately. Others are throwing tantrums because they lost. One of our county (Republican) juvenile judges released a bunch of his defendants yesterday, basically just asked if they planned on killing anyone before letting them walk. He then rescheduled their cases until after his opponent takes over, in January. Because “that’s what the voters wanted” according to him. (Because “obviously” that’s what was going to happen when his (Democratic) opponent takes over anyway, amiright? /sarcasm)
https://www.click2houston.com/news/harris-county-juvenile-judge-releases-defendants-after-election-loss
@WWTH
The Senate’s purpose was always to represent each state and it’s interests in the federal government. Nothing more, nothing less. Equal voice from each state. If, absent of all the voter suppression and game playing going on, the Democrats still have trouble getting states with a higher rural population to vote blue, then it would a problem with the Democrat’s messaging in those states, not a problem with the Senate itself.
The Democrats have proven in this race that it’s not necessary to pander to people’s racism, sexism, or other prejudice to flip red to blue. Personally, I’m holding on to that.
@Samantha:
I think we’re seeing it already. Donnie accused a black reporter (calling him on his racism) of being “racist”, and barred Jim Acosta of CNN after using an intern to stage an incident (which was entirely caught on camera, and showed her to be the aggressor).
Plus, there’s the shooting that happened in California overnight. That will turn out to be one of Donnie’s “wounded” followers, I predict.
The sheer timing of it all just makes it all too obvious.
@Bekabot: that is an insult to Dracula.
Oh, and forgot to mention: Jeff Fucking Sessions and his successor. The one looks like an evil Keebler Elf, and the other like Anders Fucking Breivik. Donnie is purging anyone he doesn’t think is obstructing justice for him enough, and installing those he thinks will. The newly-installed House Dems will have to scramble to protect Robert Mueller.
This may sound like the understatement of the century, but: Donnie is an evil, evil bastard.