Despite not winning some of the high profile elections, this was a really great night. I don’t want people to feel discouraged because we didn’t get every boogieman and woman in the GOP. Here’s some good results (as for 1:30AM Nov 7), according to the FiveThirtyEight election blog:
Nationally, we've seen a surge of female Congresswomen including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez D-NY (youngest women ever at 29), Ilhan Omar D-MINN (first Somali-American), Rashida Tlaib D-MI (first Muslim woman), Sharice Davids D-K (one of the first Native American woman), and Ayanna Pressley D-MA (first black woman from Mass).
The state governments of Illinois, Colorado, New Mexico, and Maine are all controlled by Dems.
Florida passed Amendment 4, which restores voting rights to felons and would affect 1 million people.
Amendment Y and Amendment Z have both passed in Colorado, creating independent redistricting commissions in Colorado for both the congressional map and the state-legislative map.
Massachusetts passed Question 3, a ballot measure to protect laws that prohibit discrimination against transgender people has passed.
Jared Polis of Colorado is now the first openly gay man to be elected governor. Chris Pappas of New Hampshire becomes its first openly gay Congressman.
And most of all, the best news of all:
According to Nate Cohn of the NYT: "Our current turnout estimate is 114 MILLION VOTES CAST in the House, breaking even our high expectations (we started at 102 iirc) and shattering the turnout of 83 million in 2014"
That is HUGE. You did that. Young people came out in waves, and it shows.
We still have a long way to go (I'm looking at you older white women who are still voting with the GOP 48% of the time). Whether we like it or not, 2020 just started. But this is progress, good progress, toward our never-ending fight against the Nazis in the Republican Party.
It is also VERY IMPORTANT not to be discouraged because of something called gerrymandering. In 2011, the GOP had control of the government after the 2010 Census. They had the power to redraw all of the Congressional districts. They did so in a way that makes it almost impossible for Democrats to win certain congressional districts. This is why the 2020 election, from the top of the ticket to the bottom is SO VERY IMPORTANT. We have another census in 2020. If we allow them to still control the government, they can do it again, and our generation will be fucked for another ten years. I know gerrymandering isn’t a sexy topic, or something that most people think of, but it will destroy everything we hold dear if we don’t get out in 2020 and vote the bastards out of office.
So, YAY for the progress we made, and constant vigilance for the progress to come.
