Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

In after Baud. Damn.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2018 / Late Night Open Thread: And Tomorrow, We Fight On

Late Night Open Thread: And Tomorrow, We Fight On

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Another good thing about this election: More people — more voters & would-be voters — have now been exposed to the rank fraud, gerrymandering, and similar tactics that have allowed the GOP so much political control even when they’re outnumbered by decent people. Sunlight, as they say, is the best disinfectant…

Reader Interactions

140Comments

  2. 2.

    Kent

    Voting rights and national standards for registration and voting should be agenda #1 when the Dems finally gain power again.

  3. 3.

    Roger Moore

    I don’t know why so many liberals are all gloom & doom tonight.

    I do. It’s part of our basic response to the world. We’re optimistic enough to have dreams about all the great stuff that will happen with the best possible outcome, which only sets us up for disappointment if we get anything less.

  4. 4.

    guachi

    Too bad the Democrats couldn’t win the governor’s races in Ohio or Florida. Ohio is so gerrymandered the four winning Democrats won by 22, 35, 47, and 64.

    Maybe the initiatives passed in Michigan and Ohio will help.

  5. 5.

    lamh36

    It’s NOT over yet!!!

    Stacey Abrams poised to win Cobb, Gwinnett Counties: youtu.be/aG7pQDsKxh0?a via @YouTube

  7. 7.

    TaMara (HFG)

    Let’s celebrate the amazing wins for diversity candidates. There were a lot of firsts tonight and lots of women. It feels pretty amazing. Of course we still got our felons, racists and general scumbags….but it wasn’t baby steps.

  8. 8.

    NotMax

    Have not been keeping up with threads at all, so excuse please if already covered.

    Gentleperson’s betting pool open on the number of days (fractions accepted) until we can refer to him as former Secretary Zinke.

  10. 10.

    hellslittlestangel

    It’s a good night. But there are a hell of a lot of irredeemable Republican shit-heads who I was hoping to never hear of again.

  11. 11.

    guachi

    Just looking at votes and not seats, tonight was a smashing success for Democrats. Democrats will win the popular vote by 9% and there were 115 million votes cast, obliterating the record of 85 million or so in 2018.

    I hope Democrats pound this hard over the next two years.

  12. 12.

    Mnemosyne

    @guachi:

    Ohio and Florida practice massive voter suppression and have for years — do I even have to mention 2000 and 2004? I am not at all suprised that the Republican machines in each state were able to manipulate the vote just enough to eke out a win.

    ETA: I’m disappointed, but I’m not surprised.

  14. 14.

    Neldob

    Winning the house is huge. Good work us! Thanks Doug and those who donated, and all the hard working dems who helped and won and lost. I am so glad there is some light.

  15. 15.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jl: The counties around Atlanta, especially Gwinnett, are notoriously slow to report. And about 20% of Gwinnett was still out.

  17. 17.

    Mandalay

    @hellslittlestangel:

    But there are a hell of a lot of irredeemable Republican shit-heads who I was hoping to never hear of again.

    You’re right, but on the bright side here’s one irredeemable Republican shit-head you won’t be hearing from for a while:

    Democrat Laura Kelly has won the hotly contested Kansas governor’s race even though Republican Kris Kobach played up his ties to President Donald Trump.

  18. 18.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne: That the reenfranchisement amendment has passed and is now in the state constitution will make a huge difference going forward.

  19. 19.

    Mai Naem mobile

    Fuck John Roberts. Hard. With a rusty rake. I wish when he goes on his summer junkets to Vienna that somebody would ask him if it’s okay for people to wait for 4-6 hours to vote. Fucking asshole. I know it might seem unseemly but maybe Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan should go out to these long wait places and film a piece talking to the waiting voters. The GOP gets always with all kinds of shit.

  21. 21.

    PeakVT

    I guess I am mixed on the outcome – impressive given the state of the economy, but disappointing given how profoundly and systematically awful Trumpolini and the rest of the Repuke party are at this point in time.

    Maybe a day or two of perspective will make me a little more positive about the results.

  23. 23.

    Mary G

    Thank you to everyone who voted in this election. Turning this ship will be a long and slow process, but this is a good start. Let's keep turning it.— John Scalzi (@scalzi) November 7, 2018

  25. 25.

    jl

    @Adam L Silverman: No offense, Adam, but FL is on my my electoral radar from now on. There will always be some money from me for any Dem who runs against the FL GOP slimeballs.

    If the vile and lawless Kemp wins, though, GA will be on the top of the list.

    But, to the shame of my home state, I cannot believe so many CA GOP Congress slimeballs wiil keep their seats.

  26. 26.

    Mnemosyne

    @lamh36:

    If Abrams can’t win outright, I want a runoff. There was a whole lot of fuckery today that I don’t think the Georgia courts will be happy about. I would bet that the GA ACLU already has their lawsuits written and ready to file in the case of a runoff.

  27. 27.

    NotMax

    BTW (as if anyone is champing at the bit to know), the wait for voting here today?

    Zero minutes.

  30. 30.

    H.E.Wolf

    @TaMara (HFG):

    Let’s celebrate the amazing wins for diversity candidates. There were a lot of firsts tonight and lots of women. It feels pretty amazing. Of course we still got our felons, racists and general scumbags….but it wasn’t baby steps.

    Amen, and yes.

    I’m proud to be in the same party as Abrams, Gillum, and O’Rourke. This week I’ll celebrate all of our wins, from state houses on up to the national level; and next week I’ll begin strategizing for future wins to build upon these of 2018.

    Earlier tonight I went in to our local Dem campaign HQ, after a long day teaching (and a long, long commute). I brought blue cookies and stayed for a little while to help with data entry.

    The teenagers who were phonebanking until the very last moment are, to my mind, a genuinely hopeful sign for 2020 and beyond.

    May we all find reason to hope, and to persevere.

  32. 32.

    Cermet

    Control of the House was all that the Dem’s had as likely outcomes; the Senate was a long shot. Far more importantly, if the 2018 turn out remains stable for 2020 as a percentage of population, then the orange fart cloud will go down big and we get the Presidency! This Blue wave spells his doom. So, we get the House, have shown that the Dem’s are and will remain the deciding vote come 2020. The worthless, criminal Orange fart cloud is hearing the footsteps that spell his end

  33. 33.

    Bupalos

    @Adam L Silverman: it’s obviously fundamentally the right thing to do, but I’d be very surprised if reenfranchisement results in significant D gains in future fla elections. I think most ex felons are white men. Most white men vote R. Probably a net gain for D’s but also probably very marginal.

  36. 36.

    Mandalay

    This vote was more important to me than any other individual result:

    More than a million convicted felons in Florida had their voting rights restored Tuesday.

    Constitutional Amendment 4 — known as the Voting Restoration Amendment — was passed in the state, allowing nearly 1.5 million convicted felons who’ve served out their sentence to vote.

    Apart from addressing an egregious wrong, this change may have a real effect on how things go in 2020 in Florida.

    And fuck you very, very much to Jeb Bush who made it his life’s work to shit on people and punish them even after they have completed their sentence. He did all he could to block this change while he was Governor. Tonight Jeb became even smaller, and even more irrelevant.

  37. 37.

    jl

    @Mnemosyne: Hope Abrams fights for every damn vote in every damn venue there is, and rips Kemp a new asshole that damages him politically as much as possible. I think he’s just as much an outright crook as Hunter and Collins. He needs to pay for his crimes as much as they do (or will, hope C & H get frogged marched out of their offices in front of cameras).

    I guess Kemp is beyond the reach of the law right now, but he damn well needs to start paying.

  38. 38.

    Raoul

    I guess we get to have 2 or 4 more years of the great upper midwest divergence experiment (though I don’t count WI out – 50,000 uncounted mail ballots in Milwaukee).

    MN held strong & flipped our state house back to Dem after two terms of idiot GOPers. Let’s see how our relative GDPs continue to perform if starve-em Walker remains in WI. Gaaah.

  39. 39.

    oldgold

    We won the House. That was absolutely essential and the most important result of this election cycle. It seems our Republic will survive at least for the next two years. So, I am relieved.

    That expressed, I am disappointed. I had some Champaign on ice, but did not pop the cork.

    My days of closely watching pre-election polls and paying any attention whatsoever to exit polls is OVER.

  41. 41.

    Mnemosyne

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    My friend at work and her husband worked their asses off for Hill. I really hope it pays off.

    I’m not surprised that San Diego re-elected Hunter. Those stupid fuckers.

  42. 42.

    PeakVT

    Rohrabacher behind with 31% in. It would cheer me up quite a bit if the most obvious Putin puppet went down.

  43. 43.

    janesays

    It’s a good night overall, but God help us all if anything happens to Ginsburg or Breyer between now and 2020. Trump will be able to nominate the most extreme judicial nominee possible, and they will absolutely get confirmed.

  44. 44.

    Raoul

    The Trans ballot measure in MA was huge. Important locally, but also important in the face of the Admin’s bullshit.

    Also was a test of how to message and win against the ‘bathroom panic’ garbage.

  45. 45.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    With the race for governor hanging in the balance, Milwaukee County Clerk George Chistenson said his office still had more than 45,000 uncounted ballots shortly after midnight Wednesday.

    Christenson said his office had just received 7,800 ballots from Wauwatosa, which were delayed because of a problem with a computer modem. Officials were reconciling those numbers and would soon release the totals.

    Christenson said he was still waiting to receive 45,000 outstanding absentee ballots from the City of Milwaukee.

    Milwaukee city officials put the figure even higher, saying the outstanding votes total 47,000. That amount includes 36,000 in-person absentee ballots and 11,000 absentee ballots by mail.

    Those votes are expected to favor Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tony Evers, as Milwaukee has long been a Democratic-leaning city. Evers is running against GOP Gov. Scott Walker. (link)

    fingers crossed

  46. 46.

    Barb 2

    The GOP wins by cheating.

    I’m going to keep on saying this – voting needs to be made easy. I do not understand the non voters. Not the folks that want to vote and are able to vote – but the idiots who refuse to vote.

    There is no reason for long lines to vote and laws written by the GOP that block democrats from voting. We need paper ballots and to make sure our vote can’t be hacked. In my county we just elected a registrar who has a background in computer databases and computer system or an IT professional.

    Write your state legislators about making voting easier in your state. All citizens have the right to vote and it shouldn’t take all day. Standing in line to vote for hours is so third world. We aren’t yet a fully functioning democracy are we?

    The polls here are closed and our paper ballots are being counted. We have a good idea about who won the various races.

    Vote by mail works! Ask for this in your state – lobby for fair elections! First step is to make absentee voting easy and common place.

    We have a long fight ahead of us to take back America from the Trumpites.

  49. 49.

    Mandalay

    @Bupalos:

    most ex felons are white men

    Not sure where you get that from since recent numbers show that 46% of those incarcerated in Florida are black and 41% are white.

    Also factor in that most of the remainder of those incarcerated are Hispanic, and it looks like Democrats should benefit from the restoration of their voting rights.

  50. 50.

    seaboogie

    Speaking of fighting on – I have had a small animal – a mouse, I suspect – making struggling noises from the down-spout of my outdoor washing machine. I fashioned a knotted prison rope out an an old, open-weave muslin shirt that I cut open, and I think the tiny soul just forgot the desperation, grew a brain and freed itself. Maybe a metaphor for Dems – still in election mode, I am.

  52. 52.

    Quinerly

    @janesays: anyone Trump wants on the federal bench for a lifetime appointment gets a pass under the makeup of this new Senate. I’m not celebrating tonight.

  53. 53.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    We won the House. That was absolutely essential and the most important result of this election cycle. It seems our Republic will survive at least for the next two years. So, I am relieved.

    This.

    I think people are sad because of the loses of Beto and Gillum (and perhaps Abrams) whom they came to love and because their disgusting opponents are being rewarded.

  56. 56.

    lahke

    One problem for our side is that we don’t seem to have the lefty version of wingnut welfare. How do we support Beto, Gillum, Amy McGrath, etc, so that they can stay active politically and come back next time? I’d hate to see them disappear as they go off to a day job to pay the bills.

  58. 58.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @Bupalos: That is very much not the case. Demographic analysis showed that minorities would be disporportionately affected by this measure. John Oliver had a good piece on this a few weeks back. 23.3% of the African-Americans in this state couldn’t vote due to felony convictions. That’s now undone.

    In any case:

    Ok, one last thing. Don’t listen to people who say that this wasn’t a good night for Democrats. If you were on a hot date and thought you were gonna fuck all night, but instead got great oral and a promise to see each other again, would you be sad?— The Rude Pundit (@rudepundit) 7 November 2018

  60. 60.

    seaboogie

    @lahke: well, I have this leetle mouse friend who escaped an impossible situation with my help, and I sent a pizza donation to the polls, so I am feeling pretty, pretty good about our prospects for the future.

  64. 64.

    Mandalay

    @Kent:

    Voting rights and national standards for registration and voting should be agenda #1 when the Dems finally gain power again.

    Disagree completely. A noble and worthy goal, but as a practical matter a waste of time since that will go nowhere in the Senate.

    Agenda #1 for the House Democrats should be to go to work on Republicans with a pair of pliers and a blow torch. It’s payback time. Make Trump and Nunes and Zinke and all the rest of those fuckers live in perpetual fear until they are brought down and destroyed. And that’s not just for revenge; it’s prudent planning for 2020.

  67. 67.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    BREAKING

    Mary Spicuzza
    ‏Verified account @MSpicuzzaMJS
    4m4 minutes ago

    About 38,000 of those @cityofmilwaukee absentee ballots went to @Tony4WI, while just about 7,181 went to @ScottWalker. That should mean a win for Evers.

    0 replies 19 retweets 14 likes

    DOWN GOES WALKER! DOWN GOES WALKER!

  69. 69.

    jl

    @Mandalay: I think they should find some time to pass legislation that is good policy and has a big majority support. Country can watch the GOP Senate the the Dumpster Fire shoot it down.

  71. 71.

    Platonailedit

    Two Republicans under federal indictment won re-election tonight.— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) November 7, 2018

    This captures the essence of today’s election. The rethug voters will always go and vote tribal regardless of the levels of political, financial and other corruptions practised by their party. I was hoping for a change in their voting after the last two years of despicable misgovernance and malfeasance and have been disappointed.

  72. 72.

    Radio One

    it sorta feels like 2006 did, in that we basically start from scratch…yet again. But promising.

  73. 73.

    Mnemosyne

    @lamh36:

    Okay, based on the first Tweet you posted, I thought Abrams conceded and I was freaking out. Glad to see that she is who I thought she was.

  74. 74.

    Roger Moore

    @Mandalay:

    A noble and worthy goal, but as a practical matter a waste of time since that will go nowhere in the Senate.

    I think by “when the Dems finally gain power again”, Kent was talking about the future when they control the House, Senate, and Presidency. Otherwise he’d be talking about what they’re going to do now, not what they’re going to do in some undefined future.

    That said, I think it’s important for the Democrats to do more than use the House to hold the Republicans’ feet to the fire. They should also use the House to pass the kind of bills they’d like to make into law when they get the chance. Doing so does two positive things. It lets the Democrats put to rest the baseless canard that they have no positive governing agenda and only want to stop the Republicans. It also gives them a chance to start writing the legislation they want to pass so they can hit the ground running if/when the finally are in position to put things into law.

  75. 75.

    Bupalos

    @Mandalay: the operative numbers wouldn’t be based on those currently incarcerated, but the population of those who have completed sentences. Wish I had a link handy but from memory well under half of that population were poc. Not that Dems won’t benefit more, just that it’s likely to be pretty marginal in the aggregate.

  76. 76.

    lamh36

    AP calls it: Republicans, with the active aid of Trump, managed to blow a South Carolina seat where the Democrats didn’t even field a candidate four years ago.

    BREAKING: Democrat Joe Cunningham wins election to U.S. House in South Carolina’s 1st congressional district. #APracecall at 2:00 a.m. EST. @AP election coverage: apne.ws/APPolitics #Election2018 #SCelection

    https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1060064609196011522?s=21

  78. 78.

    bluehill

    This election was a battle dems needed to win, but wasn’t going to end the war. Dems did it and picked up some important state level wins. It was a good night.

  79. 79.

    jl

    @Platonailedit: It’s worse. Two Republican crooks who got their asses righteously nailed to the wall for breaking the law big time won re-election tonight.

    I am ashamed of California for Hunter keeping his seat, or at least ashamed for those yahoos south of San Diego.

  80. 80.

    Viva BrisVegas

    “You can’t always get what you want,
    But if you try sometime you find,
    You get what you need”

    Democrats didn’t get everything they wanted, but they got what they needed for 2020.

    Remember that the Republicans had every advantage this year, and used them.

    In 2020 they will have far less advantage and far more to defend.

    Also too, from outside the running of the American version of democracy looks like a complete shambles. Somebody really should work on fixing it.

  82. 82.

    jl

    @Roger Moore: I think the House will have to actually have to pass stuff in order for the corporate media to pay them any attention. The corporate media won’t want to, and will shit all over it, but who cares? If it’s good legislation that the majority of the country supports, it just needs to get some coverage, and smarmy frauds like Todd and Co. can babble whatever they want. They’ll have to cover it if the House passes good legislation and then the shit hits the fan in Senate and, for the few good bills that have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting there, the WH. Trump’s toxic and idiot diatribes against good legislation coming out of the House will be 2020 gold.

  83. 83.

    Mandalay

    @Roger Moore:

    I think by “when the Dems finally gain power again”, Kent was talking about the future when they control the House, Senate, and Presidency.

    OK, fair enough if I had misinterpreted his comment.

  84. 84.

    Quinerly

    @bluehill: just better hope nobody has to be replaced on the Supreme Court. Bluedog moderates have been replaced. Actually we will be lucky if McConnell schedules any full hearings for ANY federal judge… Lifetime appointments for all.

  85. 85.

    hitchhiker

    We won the house!

    We have subpoena power. We have the ability to call witnesses and make them give public testimony. We have the ability to bring bills to the floor. We control the agenda. We have Nancy Pelosi — one of the most skilled and effective lawmakers the House has ever seen — in charge. We have all the house committee chairmanships.

    Trump will pass no legislation unless we agree to it. He won’t be able to end any of the investigations into his family’s crimes. He’ll be shown up as the unserious fool that he is.

    We won the house! Did I want more. You’re damn right I did. But this essential, difficult, necessary task is done, so I’m doing the happy dance of the year. Just for a little while this evening I thought we might fall short, and I almost fainted at the thought. If we hadn’t taken the house, there’d be no way to say with a straight face that “we’re better than Trump.”

    Well, guess what? We fucking ARE better than him. The voters in every state had a chance to weigh in on the direction he’s taking, and we said emphatically NO. It was our first national test since the horror show began, and we passed.

  86. 86.

    Quinerly

    @lamh36: isn’t this Sanford’s old seat? At one time Colbert’s sister made a run for it?Charleston. I think Jim Dement had a connection too.

  87. 87.

    bluehill

    @Quinerly: I hear you. To me the risk hasn’t changed that much because the senate was a long shot coming into tonight. I would have loved a walkoff home run, but wasn’t counting on it.

  88. 88.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Daniel Dale
    ‏Verified account @ddale8
    1m1 minute ago

    AP calls the Wisconsin governor race for Democrat Tony Evers. The Scott Walker era is over.

    Daniel Dale
    ‏Verified account @ddale8
    2m2 minutes ago

    CNN calls Nevada for Democratic challenger Jacky Rosen, who has unseated Dean Heller.

  90. 90.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Daniel Dale
    ‏Verified account @ddale8
    1m1 minute ago

    Democrats have won the Senate and governor races in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the states that narrowly put Trump over the top in 2016.

  99. 99.

    Mandalay

    @jl:

    I cannot believe so many CA GOP Congress slimeballs wiil keep their seats.

    Isn’t that largely due to past gerrymandering by the Democrats in California?

    One downside to rigging the system to ensure overall victory is that it becomes all but impossible to defeat the opposition in certain districts.

  104. 104.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Platonailedit: That’s a Constitutional change, it’s much easier to expand the Court which can be done by statute.

    ETA: Congress could also add judges to the inferior courts at the same time. President Baud would have a whole lot of appointments to make.

  105. 105.

    Amir Khalid

    @Viva BrisVegas:
    Especially given POTUS’ blatant disregard of their rights re that very song, The Rolling Stones would like their music kept out of American politics, kthxbai.
    Our American friends are understandably a bit disappointed that they didn’t win the Senate as well as the House, but that was always a long shot and I too think the sane party has done quite well for now, with the promise of more victories for sanity to come.

  106. 106.

    Mnemosyne

    @jl:

    Right now, the California Rs who seem to have won are Rohrabacher and Hunter, and they were considered the hardest races for a D to win. The Republican lost in Issa’s old district (which means MaryG is probably out partying right now). Steve Knight and his D opponent, Katie Hill, were less than 100 votes apart last time I looked, and she was ahead. It’s not the R sweep you seem to think it is.

  107. 107.

    opiejeanne

    @Roger Moore: This is what happened in Washington state, until Manka Dhingra was elected a year ago in a special election to the state Senate. Her single vote changed the face of the Senate and I think more than a dozen bills were passed as soon as she was elected. Some of these were bipartisan bills that needed that single vote, and they all passed. She was re-elected tonight so the state Senate will stay blue. I haven’t found out the overall results for state senate and representatives, whether we will have decent majorities. My district has had a republican state senator for years, so her re-election is a relief.

    I did find notice that Kim Schrier is beating Dino Rossi, so that is another seat in the House that will flip when the dust settles. She was one of the names we were supporting on BJ.

  108. 108.

    Stuart Frasier

    @Mnemosyne:
    Rouda is currently up by about 600 votes over Rohrabacher in CA48 according to the CA SoS website. That could take a while to sort out. It likes like Mimi Walters will win, though.

  109. 109.

    Shalimar

    As disappointed as I am with some really horrible people getting elected and re-elected, we aren’t powerless. Protest. Make all of their public appearances from ribbon-cuttings to restaurants miserable. They need to feel how much a large percentage of their constituents hate them.

  111. 111.

    opiejeanne

    @Mnemosyne: I’m so glad to see Dana Rohrabacher defeated. When we lived in Huntington Beach for two years, he was our congressman and we hated him. He’s been a crackpot for years.

  112. 112.

    opiejeanne

    @Mnemosyne: Wait, you said Dana Rohrabacher won. Dang! I read that wrong.

    But Rouda is in the lead currently, by a slim margin. He might still win this.

  116. 116.

    Barb 2

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:

    Yes!!!!!!!
    Scott Walker is gone!!!!!!!!!!

    I’m sad that it looks like we did not win the Senate. But there were lots of state level wins. This is a war and there will be many battles. Many of us will not live to see how this chapter ends. The young voters are so important because they are literally fighting for their lives. School shooting and Global warming – two reasons why the sad will be raging. The conservatives have planned this for a long time. The Supreme Court has been packed – but we get it now and know that the GOP has surrendered to Putin’s Russia. We know that the Greedy Old Pervert cheat.

    More democrats on all levels! Walked is gone. Native Americans are voting thanks to Four Directions and other efforts to empower voters. The spot light is shining on GOP cheating and vote rigging. Vote hacking is real and many voting databases are side open. This needs to be fixed. And the fixing will be on the local level.

    We also learned that a whole lot of small donations add up to big money!!!! We learned that all the work by everyone to get out the vote is worth the effort. We also learned that we have fantastic people ready to do battle and run for election.

    We care what happens to the people and this planet the Greedy Old Pervert only care about themselves.

  118. 118.

    sukabi

    @jl: he may have won the election, but he’s still got a fuckton of legal problems that aren’t going away. Seems to me a Duke Cunningham was in more or less the same situation as Hunter is now….he didn’t finish out his term in office, he spent it in prison.

  119. 119.

    Platonailedit

    NBC News says that Dean Heller has called Democrat Jacky Rosen to concede the Nevada senate race.

    — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) November 7, 2018

    And the dems won the gov race too. Wonder what role our good ole Harry Reid played today.

  120. 120.

    Barb 2

    Spell checker is madding!

    Voter databases in several states are wide open to hacking (wide has been replaced by side several times.) I feel like this tablet has been hacked.

    Seems like this database problem needs to be investigated by a House committee. My congressional representative is going to be hearing from me! Seems like our work has been laid out for us. There is no time to rest and in two years we take back the Senate and more state houses!

  121. 121.

    Platonailedit

    Tonight, Nevada officially became a BLUE STATE. Democrat majority in both state chambers. Democrat governor. Two female Democrat senators in Washington and three out of four house reps are Democrat. #NEVADA IS NOW A BLUE STATE!— David #FBPE #FBR (@intenseCA) November 7, 2018

    Hey, it was not such a bad day after all for the good guyz.

  122. 122.

    Platonailedit

    The Confederate armies weren’t destroyed in a single battle, and neither will Trumpist political control. This is a campaign with many fights, and Republicans are actually losing fast. The 2020 election exposes multiple R seats to risk, AFTER the bulk of Mueller’s work is done.

    — General BoomerDog #VoteBlue (@J_P_BoomerDog) November 7, 2018

  123. 123.

    Cermet

    The biggest gain by far? The overwhelming advantage in popular vote! Crossing the 5% threshold is critical. That is because the Presidency is in the bag if turn out (how could it not?) for Dems if they again get close to that level. The Orange fart cloud is dead meat and that pile of human shit is going down come 2020. WE will likely pick up a number of Senate seats – maybe not the majority but close. The filth call the thug party will be clean away as more young people vote and the old fart white shits die off.

  124. 124.

    Mai Naem mobile

    Goddamnit,looks like Sinema lost. Shes behind by a little over 1 percent with most of the vote in. Ugh. This is so fucking disappointing . It doesn’t even look like we got any statewide seats but
    all except for governor were close. Get ready for Dougie Douchebag to run for POTUS if something happens to Trumpov. And, hate to say it but he will make a good candidate for the GOP.

  125. 125.

    JWR

    @opiejeanne:

    ..Rouda is currently up by about 600 votes.

    Yikes! And shrinking fast! Rouda’s slipped from +600 votes down to 388, with 90.1pct reporting. Guess we’ll know later today. (Fingers crossed!)

  128. 128.

    Platonailedit

    @JWR:

    Per AP/BBC, with 99.75% reporting

    Rouda – 50.77% 91,649

    Rohrabacher – 49.23% 88,875

    Fingers crossed.

  130. 130.

    Platonailedit

    From bbc

    The number of women running for election this year was at an all-time high, and an unprecedented number ended up winning.

    Before Tuesday, there were 107 women in Congress, and that figure has been passed.

    Among the many firsts: the first two Muslim congresswomen (Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib and Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar); the youngest woman ever elected to Congress in New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; and the first Native American women in Congress, New Mexico’s Debra Haaland and Sharice Davids of Kansas.

    While we’re talking about notable firsts, it’s also worth mentioning Jared Polis of Colorado, who became the first gay governor in the US.

    It’s also important to point out the part Democratic women played in flipping Republican districts. It turns out voters quite like some new energy on the scene.

  131. 131.

    Platonailedit

    Love it that it was the dem women candidates who flipped the house (and the bird) against the sexist, rapist, misogynist scummy pos. Karma finally.

  132. 132.

    OzarkHillbilly

    In Texas:

    Before Cruz gave his victory speech in Houston, his father Raphael appeared on stage. “The message is loud and clear,” he told the Republican crowd. “Texas remains solid red!”

    But that message is not at all clear after a bruising campaign that saw the Democratic underdog come far too close to winning the Senate seat for comfort. The last time a Democrat successfully did that was in 1994.

    O’Rourke began his David versus Goliath mission to topple Cruz less than two years ago with a staff of just two – both old friends from El Paso – travelling in a rented sedan. He started from scratch in a state with next to no Democratic party infrastructure, criss-crossing the state to stump in all of its 254 counties – no small task in Texas, which is bigger than France.

    Wherever he went, he planted seeds of a new Democratic infrastructure – something that has been sorely lacking in Texas since the 1990s. They began recruiting volunteers, often young and inexperienced but energetic and eager, who grew into an army by election day, numbering 25,000.

    O’Rourke’s team created 727 “pop-up” offices, converting volunteers’ homes into hubs of activity. By the end they had knocked on almost 2m doors.

    The Democratic candidate went to extreme lengths to mobilise every potential vote. When the Guardian reported on an Hispanic young man in Gonzalez that had never voted and had no intention of starting now, he dispatched his field officer from 70 miles away to register the individual and encourage him to cast his ballot.

    Financially, he also tore up the traditional rulebook. He refused from the beginning to accept money from big donors or political action committees, preferring instead to rely on the beneficence of his passionate supporters.

    The gamble worked – O’Rourke smashed previous US Senate fundraising records, hugely outgunning Cruz by drawing in about $70m from more than 1m small online donations to his opponent’s $30m.

    ………………………

    Perhaps O’Rourke’s most important achievement has been to prove that groups that have been written off as potential voters in Texas – notably young people aged 19 to 29 – can be brought to electoral life. His campaign led to a surge of voter registration that added 1.6 million voters to Texas voter rolls.

    Having registered them, O’Rourke’s army of volunteers then persuaded them to actually go to the polling stations, leading to a massive surge of early voting that saw almost 5 million Texans vote early – more than the total who cast ballots in the last midterm elections in 2014.

    Cynthia Valdez, a customer service assistant in El Paso, is one of the new legions of Democratic voters in Texas unleashed by O’Rourke. She is 27, but voted for the first time in early voting last month. She said she was partly motivated by Trump. “He is not for the people, he is only interested in himself, his friends and the rich. He only cares about money.” And it was partly motivated by O’Rourke. “He’s for the average person. He cares about us.”

    It’s a much different Texas today. Here’s hoping they can keep the energy thru 2020 and beyond.

  134. 134.

    Jeffro

    Happy 1st No-More-Congress-Running-Cover-for-Trumpov Day, America!
    3 quick thoughts:
    – we won the House back…which means the Mueller investigation is now safe, the ACA is now safe, there will be no more huge deficit-busting tax giveaways to the rich and big corporations, and we’ll have Trumpov’s tax returns out in public (where they should have been all along, as he himself promised during the campaign!) by late January.
    – the GOP is now clearly and for all time the party of un-American vote suppression in the service of Trumpov and his racist agenda. Voters preferred the Dems nationally by over 9% last night. Good luck with that in 2020, Repubs.
    – look at the Dem resurgence in the states…not just in VA-7 (holla, Abigail Spanberger; bye, Dave Brat!) but in places like Kansas and Wisconsin.
    It was a good night, and it only gets better from here on out!
    Way to go Team Blue!!

  135. 135.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Platonailedit: I don’t often read Richard Wolffe but his take on the election is good this morn:

    Deep in the darkest recesses of Donald Trump’s very, very large brain, there is now a nagging feeling that gnaws at his braggadocious narcissism. His own supporters are just not that into him any more.

    Not all of them have abandoned him, for sure. The angry old men are still there, screaming their insults at immigrants, the media and anyone else who isn’t an angry old man.

    But all those white women – the people he called a majority of women (because the rest of them don’t count to him) – they just ran for the doors that say Trexit.

    The exit polls gave Democrats a massive 21-point advantage among women, while Republicans scored just a two-point lead among men. White women split 50-48 for the anti-Trump movement known as Democrats. The only age group that Republicans won were 65 and older – and that was only by one point.
    ……………………………….
    It is no coincidence that among the Democrats who won the House there are significantly more women than the old Republican majority. They will be led by the first female speaker, taking control of half of Congress for the second time – which counts as two historic achievements.

    So it will be no coincidence when the leading Democratic contenders for the presidency in 2020 – and the right to take the fight directly to Donald Trump – will be female candidates. The 2018 midterms weren’t a blue wave for Democrats, but they were a landslide for women voters and women candidates.

    For a man who famously thought he could grab women by the genitals, Donald Trump is about to experience just how painful a squeeze that can be.

  137. 137.

    Platonailedit

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    For a man who famously thought he could grab women by the genitals, Donald Trump is about to experience just how painful a squeeze that can be.

    Indeed. Go Gals. Make the scum regret his birth.

  138. 138.

    Platonailedit

    Looks like Harley Rouda / 50.74% / 91,750 has pulled it off against that russian stooge rohrabacher by about 1.5% / 2700 votes.

    Can CA bj’ers confirm this bfd?

  139. 139.

    Platonailedit

    wtf am I moderation?

    Reposting

    Looks like Harley Rouda / 50.74% / 91,750 has pulled it off against that russian stooge rohrabacher by about 1.5% / 2700 votes.

    Can CA bj’ers confirm this bfd?

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    For a man who famously thought he could grab women by the genitals, Donald Trump is about to experience just how painful a squeeze that can be.

    Indeed. Go Gals. Make the scum regret his birth.

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