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Folks, I haven't seen enough people talking about what an amazing thing happened on Tuesday. Sporadic stuff about specific people who won (mostly rejoicing that Danica Roem, a transgender woman, defeated and replaced the Virginia state legislator who authored the bathroom bill), but nothing about the whole shebang.
Folks. Folks. The Republicans got hosed on Tuesday. As usual, the Washington Post has a great analysis: Anti-Trump backlash fuels a Democratic sweep in Virginia and elections across the country.
There weren't that many things up for election (it's a truly off-year, not even midterms; many states didn't have any elections at all.) But those people and items that were up for election? Pundits were expecting the Democrats do do well, considering how many people hate Trump. But nobody expected them to do this well.
Virginia had the most up for election, the governor and quite a number of Delegates to their state legislature. The Democrat governor, Ralph Northam, won by a lot. He had more votes than any previous Virginia governor. And he SOUNDLY defeated a Republican who used racist ads and championed Confederate monuments. (My favorite response: a tweet saying "Now we have to build a statue of Ed Gillespie, otherwise how will future generations know who lost this election?") As for the state legislature, so far there are FOURTEEN new Democrats. And there are four races that were still being recounted last I checked. If three of those result in a Democrat winning, Virginia will have a Democrat-controlled legislature. VIRGINIA! It's not the Deep South, but it is still the South. And a transgender woman soundly defeated the most conservative politician in Virginia. Women--educated white women--were a large part of the reason why. More of them voted, and more of them voted Democrat, than in recent elections. And the other part of the reason were people of color, who turned out at the same rates as for a Presidential election.
Maine expanded Medicare by ballot initiative. In other words, this isn't just a handful of Democrat senators making noise and getting something through, and there's no way for the Republicans to spin it as such. This was old-fashioned Will Of The People Speaking. And it turns out the People (at least in Maine) are pro-Medicare, no matter what Republicans think. This wasn't isolated, either; a lot of people in exit polls in other places say they voted Democrat because of Medicare.
New Jersey, too, picked up a Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, who pasted the Republican candidate. Democrats took control of the Washington state Senate. In Georgia, Democrats picked up three seats in the state legislature. St. Petersburg, Florida's new mayor is a Democrat (Florida! One of the most important parts!). Lots of women and people of color (and women of color) won seats as mayors, city council people, and a whole host of other crucial local government roles. A civil rights lawyer became Philadelphia's Attorney General.
Now, I know a lot of you are thinking, "wow, that's nice, but these are all local elections and small fry." But there are three things to remember.
First, a HUGE proportion of the ways government impacts our lives come from local government. Schools, roads, zoning (i.e. what kinds of homes and businesses and stuff goes where), water and utilities, police and law enforcement, these are all mostly under local control. Local is where pretty much everything starts. Obamacare started as a state-level plan that people liked and then adapted for the nation. If you think your local police are racist and need to be reigned in, the President of the US and your congressperson can't do jack shit. Your mayor, your governor, your county sheriff if you have one, your attorney general, your state legislature, those are the people who between them control your local law enforcement officials. Gay marriage started at the state level. Most things build up momentum at a local and state level, and then they go national. It therefore should be obvious that local affairs are small-scale but HELLA IMPORTANT, and because they are so small-scale, your vote matters more. You could be one vote in a few thousand, rather than one vote in a few million.
Second, all these awesome things? They happened because people showed up and voted Democrat. Democrats (especially young ones) have this nasty, NASTY habit of not showing up. We get lazy. We don't think a particular candidate is ideologically pure enough, so they're no different than the Republican they're running against. We say, oh, there's no President on the ballot, so it doesn't matter. We don't show up. And then we wonder why everything's going to hell in a handbasket and our guys can't get anything done. Trump and the Republican behemoth can ABSOLUTELY be defeated, we can in the long run ABSOLUTELY change the way things are going, but you know what it's going to take? VOTING. VOTING IN EVERY ELECTION. YES, EVEN THE WEIRD ONES WITH ONLY LOCAL MINUTIAE ON THE BALLOT. If people keep turning out like they did in Virginia, whole lot of places going to be colored blue on the map and Democratic goals are achievable. BUT WE, ALL OF US, HAVE TO SHOW UP AND FUCKING VOTE. EVERY SINGLE TIME. You don't have to be constantly retweeting and reblogging stuff, you don't have to be The Greatest Activist Ever. I mean, activism is great. But it's all meaningless IF WE DON'T SHOW UP WHEN IT COUNTS. On election day. And if you don't have the time/money/attention/spoons/health/whatever to pay attention to each new scandal and whatever bill is in congress, that's okay! It's perfectly fine! As long as you vote. Regularly and consistently and every fucking time like you were a little blue-haired redneck Fox-News-watching granny. (I mean, vote as consistently as she would, not for the same candidates and policies as she would.)
Three, community. Everybody wants to be The One Great Hero. We build our societies on stories of The One Great Hero Who Saves The Day. So it's really tempting to fall into that mindset, where if we can't be The One Great Hero, we're not having an impact. But you know what? Most of the time, the day isn't saved by The One Great Hero, the day is saved by a multitude of ordinary people who choose to do their part to make the world a better place. Probably nobody reading this will ever have an opportunity to be The One Great Hero of anything. But when a lot of people come together with a common purpose to achieve something, they can achieve far more lasting change than any One Great Hero ever possibly could. Dr. King was great, but he wouldn't have achieved bupkiss without the SNCC and the NAACP and the SCLC and positive HORDES of voter registration workers and lawyers and lots of other people and groups. None of us are islands, standing alone. We all depend on each other. We have to work together. We have to support one another. We have to come together in organized groups if we want to effect large-scale change. There was no one great voter who single-handedly got any of these people elected. But communities did, by working together and voting together. This is both a blessing and a responsibility. A blessing, because it means that the pressure is not on any one individual. My senator isn't going to change his vote because of any one phone call I, personally, made; my single solitary vote isn't going to make or break any candidate. A responsibility, because a number of phone calls by different people to my senator might very well change his vote, and a lot of us voting together might very well make or break a candidate in an election. And the thing about groups and communities is that they are made up of individuals. If we all of us, individually, decide not to work together and organize and put in the daily grind, nobody is going to do it. So each one of us has a responsibility to do what we can. Not because the whole shebang rests on our shoulders, but because a small piece of it does. And if enough small pieces are missing, there's no larger picture.
Let's make sure as many small pieces as possible are in the picture.
Folks. Folks. The Republicans got hosed on Tuesday. As usual, the Washington Post has a great analysis: Anti-Trump backlash fuels a Democratic sweep in Virginia and elections across the country.
There weren't that many things up for election (it's a truly off-year, not even midterms; many states didn't have any elections at all.) But those people and items that were up for election? Pundits were expecting the Democrats do do well, considering how many people hate Trump. But nobody expected them to do this well.
Virginia had the most up for election, the governor and quite a number of Delegates to their state legislature. The Democrat governor, Ralph Northam, won by a lot. He had more votes than any previous Virginia governor. And he SOUNDLY defeated a Republican who used racist ads and championed Confederate monuments. (My favorite response: a tweet saying "Now we have to build a statue of Ed Gillespie, otherwise how will future generations know who lost this election?") As for the state legislature, so far there are FOURTEEN new Democrats. And there are four races that were still being recounted last I checked. If three of those result in a Democrat winning, Virginia will have a Democrat-controlled legislature. VIRGINIA! It's not the Deep South, but it is still the South. And a transgender woman soundly defeated the most conservative politician in Virginia. Women--educated white women--were a large part of the reason why. More of them voted, and more of them voted Democrat, than in recent elections. And the other part of the reason were people of color, who turned out at the same rates as for a Presidential election.
Maine expanded Medicare by ballot initiative. In other words, this isn't just a handful of Democrat senators making noise and getting something through, and there's no way for the Republicans to spin it as such. This was old-fashioned Will Of The People Speaking. And it turns out the People (at least in Maine) are pro-Medicare, no matter what Republicans think. This wasn't isolated, either; a lot of people in exit polls in other places say they voted Democrat because of Medicare.
New Jersey, too, picked up a Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, who pasted the Republican candidate. Democrats took control of the Washington state Senate. In Georgia, Democrats picked up three seats in the state legislature. St. Petersburg, Florida's new mayor is a Democrat (Florida! One of the most important parts!). Lots of women and people of color (and women of color) won seats as mayors, city council people, and a whole host of other crucial local government roles. A civil rights lawyer became Philadelphia's Attorney General.
Now, I know a lot of you are thinking, "wow, that's nice, but these are all local elections and small fry." But there are three things to remember.
First, a HUGE proportion of the ways government impacts our lives come from local government. Schools, roads, zoning (i.e. what kinds of homes and businesses and stuff goes where), water and utilities, police and law enforcement, these are all mostly under local control. Local is where pretty much everything starts. Obamacare started as a state-level plan that people liked and then adapted for the nation. If you think your local police are racist and need to be reigned in, the President of the US and your congressperson can't do jack shit. Your mayor, your governor, your county sheriff if you have one, your attorney general, your state legislature, those are the people who between them control your local law enforcement officials. Gay marriage started at the state level. Most things build up momentum at a local and state level, and then they go national. It therefore should be obvious that local affairs are small-scale but HELLA IMPORTANT, and because they are so small-scale, your vote matters more. You could be one vote in a few thousand, rather than one vote in a few million.
Second, all these awesome things? They happened because people showed up and voted Democrat. Democrats (especially young ones) have this nasty, NASTY habit of not showing up. We get lazy. We don't think a particular candidate is ideologically pure enough, so they're no different than the Republican they're running against. We say, oh, there's no President on the ballot, so it doesn't matter. We don't show up. And then we wonder why everything's going to hell in a handbasket and our guys can't get anything done. Trump and the Republican behemoth can ABSOLUTELY be defeated, we can in the long run ABSOLUTELY change the way things are going, but you know what it's going to take? VOTING. VOTING IN EVERY ELECTION. YES, EVEN THE WEIRD ONES WITH ONLY LOCAL MINUTIAE ON THE BALLOT. If people keep turning out like they did in Virginia, whole lot of places going to be colored blue on the map and Democratic goals are achievable. BUT WE, ALL OF US, HAVE TO SHOW UP AND FUCKING VOTE. EVERY SINGLE TIME. You don't have to be constantly retweeting and reblogging stuff, you don't have to be The Greatest Activist Ever. I mean, activism is great. But it's all meaningless IF WE DON'T SHOW UP WHEN IT COUNTS. On election day. And if you don't have the time/money/attention/spoons/health/whatever to pay attention to each new scandal and whatever bill is in congress, that's okay! It's perfectly fine! As long as you vote. Regularly and consistently and every fucking time like you were a little blue-haired redneck Fox-News-watching granny. (I mean, vote as consistently as she would, not for the same candidates and policies as she would.)
Three, community. Everybody wants to be The One Great Hero. We build our societies on stories of The One Great Hero Who Saves The Day. So it's really tempting to fall into that mindset, where if we can't be The One Great Hero, we're not having an impact. But you know what? Most of the time, the day isn't saved by The One Great Hero, the day is saved by a multitude of ordinary people who choose to do their part to make the world a better place. Probably nobody reading this will ever have an opportunity to be The One Great Hero of anything. But when a lot of people come together with a common purpose to achieve something, they can achieve far more lasting change than any One Great Hero ever possibly could. Dr. King was great, but he wouldn't have achieved bupkiss without the SNCC and the NAACP and the SCLC and positive HORDES of voter registration workers and lawyers and lots of other people and groups. None of us are islands, standing alone. We all depend on each other. We have to work together. We have to support one another. We have to come together in organized groups if we want to effect large-scale change. There was no one great voter who single-handedly got any of these people elected. But communities did, by working together and voting together. This is both a blessing and a responsibility. A blessing, because it means that the pressure is not on any one individual. My senator isn't going to change his vote because of any one phone call I, personally, made; my single solitary vote isn't going to make or break any candidate. A responsibility, because a number of phone calls by different people to my senator might very well change his vote, and a lot of us voting together might very well make or break a candidate in an election. And the thing about groups and communities is that they are made up of individuals. If we all of us, individually, decide not to work together and organize and put in the daily grind, nobody is going to do it. So each one of us has a responsibility to do what we can. Not because the whole shebang rests on our shoulders, but because a small piece of it does. And if enough small pieces are missing, there's no larger picture.
Let's make sure as many small pieces as possible are in the picture.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-09 09:01 am (UTC)From:Go Democrats!\O/
no subject
Date: 2017-11-10 01:17 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2017-11-09 11:47 am (UTC)From:I turned 18 in 1985, and I still live in the same town I moved to that fall. I'm not sure that the information has become more accessible since then. For the local offices, the election that matters is the August primary because whoever wins the Democratic nomination will run unopposed in November.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-10 01:16 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2017-11-10 03:04 am (UTC)From:Or am I being paranoid?
no subject
Date: 2017-11-10 05:17 am (UTC)From:I mean, the whole primary system varies WILDLY from state to state, for example, and that's not a conspiracy to prevent voting, it's just because that's left up to the voters of each state to decide.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-09 12:38 pm (UTC)From:Lack of posting here does not equal lack of interest or activity.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-10 01:14 am (UTC)From:However, I do have a number of people on my flist and whom I follow on tumblr who either post or reblog about politics pretty regularly, and NONE of them had mentioned anything after two days besides "Yay for the transwoman who unseated the homophobe!" At which point I figured then I probably should.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-10 02:27 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2017-11-10 05:19 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2017-11-09 03:51 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2017-11-09 04:51 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2017-11-10 01:09 am (UTC)From:Quite.
Date: 2017-11-10 11:06 am (UTC)From:"The way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it all
to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one
exactly the function he is competent to. Let the National
Government be entrusted with the defense of the nation and its
foreign and federal relations; the State governments with the
civil rights, laws, police, and administration of what concerns
the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the
counties, and each ward direct the interests within itself. It
is by dividing and subdividing these republics from the great
national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends
in the administration of every man's farm by himself; by placing
under every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will
be done for the best…
"What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every
government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing
and concentrating all cares and powers into one body, no matter
whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the
aristocrats of a Venetian Senate."
--Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C.
Cabell, 1816.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-09 06:36 pm (UTC)From:I really, really hope the DNC and local chapters are taking notes so they can keep harnessing this momentum.
Another reason to cheer on local elections: districting! Gerrymandered districts were a big part of the Republican wins, so we need to sweep away those rigged outcomes.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-10 01:07 am (UTC)From:It's perfectly okay to gloat.
Date: 2017-11-10 10:15 am (UTC)From:The rest of the country did, after all.
But don't gloat too hard - this counterswing was inevitable. The same thing happened in 1994; Democrats across the country got their butts handed to them by the electorate who'd put Bill Clinton's party in office two years before.
Somehow, the Republic survives.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-12 08:49 pm (UTC)From:And we won! It was a pleasure to select Democrats all the way down the ballot, and even though the election outcome was less than a surprise, I was so proud that I went out and did it. It's so easy to be disillusioned and disheartened by the news these days.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-13 12:25 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2017-11-13 01:55 am (UTC)From: