Thanks again to everyone who donated. We gave to just about every Democratic challenger who flipped a seat last night. (I think it’s actually all but one — Max Rose, who had the most surprising win of anyone, in a not under-the-radar district.)
Thanks a lot for the postcards too! And thanks to Maze Dancer for posting Postcard Patriots together. Here’s a map of everywhere you guys pitched in.
Time to start writing the next cipher, as the kids say. I want to make the fundraising and GOTV stuff permanent, close to 24/7/365, maybe with a little break now for a little R&R and Mueller time. Dems have a huge advantage right now in donations to candidates (as opposed to PACs) and I’ve got to think there’s a way to use to help endangered incumbents: they could run ads year round and even in off years touting their accomplishments. We could also raise money split among all Dem challengers like we did before. And there also local elections in off years.
Speaking of local elections, please let me know if you’re running for anything next year, and I hope the blog can help out! Also, please let me know of any kind of voter registration or other stuff we should be helping fund in an odd year.
Thanks again. To quote what Bill Murray said to the Fond du Lac Community College jazz ensemble, you guys are the most rag tag, undisciplined commenters I’ve ever had the most unbelievably heavenly pleasure of working with.
rikyrah
You all absolutely rocked. And, thanks for taking up the fundraising banner.
You done good, people.
DONE VERY GOOD.
Nelle
Which candidates are challenging elections and may need some more $$$?
Doug!
@Nelle:
I don’t know for sure yet…I’m going to try to get on top of this. I know one of the big money people at Kos and I’m going to try to talk to him about it.
Lapassionara
@Nelle: Lucy McBeth’s win is being challenged by Karen Handel, and she will need help with funding.
Steve in the ATL
75% of the voters in my household received postcards. Was excited to receive them!
Steve in the PSP
Doug!
@Lapassionara:
Yeah, we can do that.
Ruviana
CA-25 should be Katie Hill. My brother, who lives there, tells me she won, dumping the odious Steve Knight.
oldster
DougJ–
that Bill Murray link is not working for me; have a look at it?
And thanks for all of your help with fundraising. A couple of my hopefuls did not win, but goddamn it a lot of them did. I’m calling last night a qualified victory and an unqualified relief.
waratah
Thank you Balloon Juicers for all you did for Beto. Texans lost last night not Beto.
Kent
Some random thoughts….
Florida, which is a vaccuum sucking up old white people from the rest of the country is taylor-made Trump Country. It may not always be so, but in the age of Trump, Florida with its sea of geriatric white people living in highly regulated HOAs and fearful of change is just going to tilt Trump. Arizona is the westen version of Florida.
Rural america is rapidly depopulating everywhere which means that rural states are becoming more suburban. Kansas, for example, is bleeding population in the western plains and growing population in the Kansas City suburbs where Dems took two congressional seats and the governorship. Similar trends are possible in states like Iowa and Nebraska as the old white farmers sell out to mega corporate farms and move to Florida while their kids settle into suburban lives in Omaha and Des Moines and seem increasingly open to Dem messages. It might be easier to peel back senate seats in places like Kansas and Iowa then in Florida frankly. Oregon where i grew up used to be fairly reliably Republican in a different era. It is now the bluest of the blue because Portland is exploding and rural Oregon is rapidly depopulating. Similar trends are underway in much of the rural midwest and plains.
The suburban South like NC and Virginia and maybe even Georgia hold more hope than the rural applacian region like TN, KY, and WV.
Doug!
@oldster:
Fixed it, thanks! Skit is one of my favorites.
Nicole
Thank you, Doug, for spearheading this. I’m feeling a bit hopeful for the first time in 2 years.
Due to a rather bizarre squabble with a right-wing family member, I recently read Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. What stuck with me the most was his assertion that revolutionaries never prepare for the counter-revolution, inevitable though it is. We weren’t prepared in 2016, but I think we pulled it together pretty quick after. Let’s keep up the good fight. Long road ahead, but a worthwhile one.
khead
Tom Fucking Brokaw thinks that Trump campaign stops helped the GOP and now wonders if Trump can now be a “statesman”. I am gonna shoot my TV.
The Moar You Know
@waratah: I found out a few days ago just how much my wife sent to Beto. I think she has more than a bit of a crush on him, TBH. Told her she should have given that money to our local school board candidates instead but, hey, if we were going to spend it, that wasn’t the worst thing to spend it on.
Because that guy is going places. He is smart, good looking and works like a motherfucker. He needs to up his media handling skills but he can do that easily.
JPL
GA is turning faster than I thought and Lucy McBath is still ahead in the 6th district. The surprise for me though is that Betty Price might lose her safe republican state house seat. Tom Price has been positioning himself to get back in politics and that might put a damper on him.
We all know that Kemp cheated in order to win.
low-tech cyclist
I don’t know about 24/7/365, because we all need a rest from fundraising solicitations. But let’s not forget that some states (VA, NJ) hold elections for state legislature and statewide offices during the odd years. So let’s fundraise for them when the time gets close. Let’s not overlook them like we did last year, okay?
lamh36
Come through Auntie Maxine!!
RECLAIM YO TIME!!
Wall Street foe and Trump critic Maxine Waters is likely to take over the House panel that oversees big banks https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/06/wall-street-foe-maxine-waters-likely-to-take-over-house-banking-panel.html
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ruviana: That’s correct, Katie Porter was running in CA-45 and lost to Mimi Walters.
JPL
@khead: A better option might be to turn it off.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@khead: there’s too much competition to say he’s the dumbest of the Village Elders, but Brokaw definitely makes the finals
I want to think somebody laughed at him, but between the genuine daddy cult that seems rampant in the Beltway, and fear of losing a lucrative job that requires no heavy lifting, I’m sure everyone just nodded
TaMara (HFG)
Reposted from last thread, because I thought it was a good wrap up, despite it being morning joe
The Moar You Know
@khead: No better reason. Tom Brokaw struck bottom twenty years ago with that “greatest generation” horseshit and has never stopped digging since.
I don’t normally react to news readers like this but his treatment of Obama I found incredibly offensive, as in “I take this personally” offensive. It’s one thing to hate a guy, that’s fine, plenty of people hated Obama. It’s another thing entirely to show disrespect and disdain to a person’s face, which he did to Obama many times.
TaMara (HFG)
Thanks indeed! What an awesome resource and I bet we’ll be using it in the months to come. Great work!
low-tech cyclist
@Kent:
You take 1,400,000 ex-felons who can now vote and add them to last night’s results, and Florida’s looking pretty blue all of a sudden. This is exactly the wrong time to give up on Florida.
Butter Emails!!!
@khead:
1. The TV is not the entity deserving of a bullet. It’s completely innocent.
2. No Tom, he’s not going to pivot and become a statesman. Seriously, two years you media morons have been at this. Trump’s not going to change. He’s had 7 decades to change. He’s never been able to fully cover up his inner asshole and like you Tom, he gets less adept at hiding it as he ages.
patroclus
Tester takes the lead!!!!!!!!
JR
You don’t give up anywhere, folks.
There’s a democratic governor of Kansas, for chrissakes.
You don’t give up anywhere.
oldster
Let me just repeat that quote from Morning Joe, loathsome as he is:
“—>Ds vote margin bigger than Tea Party’s in 2010”
Our Resistance is bigger than the Tea Party. We did good on this election, and we are going to keep growing.
Barbara
@low-tech cyclist: The reason not to give up on Florida, Georgia or Texas is that they are large and they are undergoing demographic change. Virginia voted for a Republican candidate for president many cycles in a row, until it didn’t. In 1994, the year of the newt, my local democratic party worked its ass off for the sole purpose of making sure Oliver North was not elected, and he wasn’t. It was a kind of oasis victory, given the national desert, but it certainly made me a more active and interested participant in local politics.
mattH
Susan Collins needs to go down.
aliasofwestgate
Michigan’s vote reform is going to make a big difference in two years. Along with taking the drawing of districts away from the state Congress, which has it gerrymandered to hell and back to keep the state purple while they do their local smash and grab.
Nicole
Also, thank you for the Michael Jackson earworm.
Ian G.
@oldster:
Scarborough may be loathsome, but he’s no Trump sycophant and he’s dead on the money here. Taking that many state races is HUGE.
khead
I understand Brokaw’s angle – he’s now complaining about people in their underwear in a basement who can take a politician down. MSNBC should be ashamed.
I should also admit that I’ve always wanted to shoot a TV like Elvis. If I lived in the boonies of Ceciltucky – instead of a civilized development inside the Elkton city limits – the Vizio in my office would already have ended up like the fax machine in Office Space.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
some junior producer at MSNBC DGAF
Toykokie
Looks like all the candidates for whom I sent out postcards won, with the exceptions of Xochitl Torres in New Mexico and Heidi Heitkamp. But Delgado in New York, Rouda in California, Spanberger in Virginia, and Fletcher in Texas were all winners. I’ll do more postcards next go-round. It’s a great way to become involved if you don’t like knocking on doors or making phone calls to strangers.
khead
Lol. Trump has never even heard of the House of Representatives.
Yarrow
Trump is doing his press conference and is praising himself for how well he did in campaigning for people who won. The weird sniffing is back.
I didn’t mean to watch this but just turned on the TV and there he was.
TenguPhule
I thought the idea was to attract and retain voters, not drive them away.
Quinerly
@Yarrow: looks more shitty than usual. Raccoon eyes from the tanning bed. Bloated. Struggling to read his statement. And doing that snorty, breathing thing that drives me up the wall. I hate him so much that it is unhealthy.
tobie
@khead: Gawd knows why they take Brokaw out of mothball storage, now and again.
My one take-away from yesterday is that the best way for Dems to win is to expand the electorate. You can do this through exhilarating candidates (Beto, Abrams, Gillum, etc.); you can do this by picking candidates who really fit their individual districts; you can do this by getting younger voters involved early in certain issues and ballot initiatives. 40-45% of the country is lost. But the rest is there, energized, and civic-minded.
(BTW: Tester has pulled ahead in MT with 99% counted; his reelection is all but guaranteed.)
The Moar You Know
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Perhaps they can go with “Operation Cheap Stunt” or “Operation Not Happening”. And I doubt very much it will happen; they don’t need it now.
Kent
The #1 priority of Dems when they eventually take all 3 branches again should be election reform. That was a huge failing last time around but I guess we didn’t know the supreme court was going to throw out the voting rights act. Dems should be coming up with a new national voting rights act that isnt’ just aimed at the old confederacy but nationwide. New York has some of the most odious voting regulations anywhere. We are in the age of computers and people are mobile. We should have:
1. National voting registration and standards for who can vote.
2. National standards for voter ID (simple, easy, free, and fair)
3. National standards for voting technology, absentee and mail-in balloting, and paper trails and security
4. National standards for redistricting
I’m in WA where we have mail-in balloting so no ID laws at all. If you don’t want to mail in your ballot there are red drive-through ballot boxes all over the county in front of post offices and other government buildings. When I was at the post office yesterday I watched for a while as people drove up and dropped in ballots in the red ballot box next to the row of mail drop boxes. Never more than 2 cars in line. Drive up, pop in your ballot, and drive away. None of this ridiculous nonsense of 4 hour lines or even 15 minute lines. And for people who actually want to vote in person or need electronic assistance for disabilities, there are still regional precincts set up where you can go in and vote in person or on machines. EVERYTHING is designed to make voting easier and more convenient. There is no reason why in this day and age we can’t have that nationally.
I’m guessing there may be constitutional issues with the Federal government getting too deep into state elections business. But there are carrots and sticks. If the Federal government has billions of dollars available for voting technologies and maintenance of registration records and so forth it will be hard for even red states to turn it down.
Voting should be a right not a priviledge.
RedDirtGirl
@Kent: That’s some encouraging analysis. Thanks.
TenguPhule
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The real mission name “Whack the Spics” has been transferred to the fully armed and operational Death Troopers (Formerly known as the border patrol)
Yarrow
Wow, this press conference is like a class on narcissism. “Mia Love didn’t give me no love and she lost. Too bad. Sorry about that Mia.” “Barbara Comstock was another one. She didn’t want to have any embrace….she lost, substantially lost.” Goes on to list various other candidates who “didn’t want the embrace” and lost.
RedDirtGirl
@low-tech cyclist: Also a good point!
TenguPhule
@The Moar You Know:
That’s not what the logistics is suggesting.
I think Trump is going to see how much he can get away with since he knows a Democratic House can only invoke impeachment, not make the final judgement.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
good, I hope Tester rubs his face in it
Woodrow/Asim
I gave a chunk to Stacey Abrams this AM, and posted about it on my Facebook.
If she’s gonna fight the shadow of Jim Crow, it’s the least I can do.
Quinerly
@Yarrow: He looks very sick. Is it wrong for me to hope he is dying?
Who’s the new WH physician? When’s that next physical and press conference?
TenguPhule
@Quinerly:
No, no it is not.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
probably one of the worst moments of the campaign for him, because somebody from TeeVee didn’t like him
TenguPhule
@Quinerly:
2nd of never.
Barbara
@Quinerly: Yes, it’s wrong. Not that I believe in karma, but I do think it’s better to simply hope that he will no longer be president in short order, whatever the cause.
TenguPhule
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Is anyone else completely creeped out by how Trump manages to sound like every woman he’s talking about is somehow in a personal intimate relationship with him?
Yarrow
@Woodrow/Asim: My neighbor texted me that Abrams and Kemp are having a runoff on Dec 4. Is that true?
@Quinerly: He’s completely delusional. If the economy crashes I think it’ll destroy him.
Barbara
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: THAT is good news indeed.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Kent: The flip side of rural America is it’s the final destination of white flight – the ignorant, racists lazy stoners I went to highschool with in the ’70s ended up in rural America rather that live with people who were exactly like them.
TenguPhule
@Yarrow:
He’ll blame Hillary and Nancy. Because that’s who he is and he will not change.
brantl
@aliasofwestgate: The repubes are already talking about modifying the ballot initiative that was just passed to be less effective. The sons of whores have no shame.
Yarrow
Oh, great. He’s going to shut down the government if the Dems subpoena his tax returns.
TenguPhule
@Barbara:
SC is going to lecture you that you’re not using that term correctly.
TenguPhule
@Yarrow:
Please proceed.
Better that he does it then force the House to try and work with him.
Barbara
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Maybe for some, but most people living in rural America were born there. Some communities have had substantial retirement influx, but there are a lot of barriers even for that in many states, e.g., accessible health care.
Barbara
@TenguPhule: “Karma” as a sort of cosmic justice where you eventually get payback for having done or hoped for the occurrence of something that is wrong or hateful. I am not asserting any technical facility with the term.
dww44
@khead: Better yet, shoot Brokaw. He has ALWAYS been an expert at this. I never listen to him!
The Moar You Know
@Quinerly: If that’s wrong I don’t want to be right.
Ian G.
@Quinerly:
Every day I hope to wake up to the news that he’s dead.
Barbara
@dww44: I assume that I am not the only person who viewed his schtick with “The Greatest Generation” as a thinly veiled appeal to white people who didn’t like being taxed with the idea that they could actually become better by shedding their notions of racist entitlement. Why should they? They were the greatest!
Quinerly
@The Moar You Know: ?
Thanks for the smile.
Woodrow/Asim
@Yarrow: The GA Governor’s race situation won’t be known for a few days.
There are, in theory, enough provisional and other ballots uncounted to possibly pull Kemp’s current lead out of the “50% +1” state needed to avoid an automatic runoff.
But, even so, I gave because Abrams is also very likely to continue to fight in court over all the crap Kemp and his cronies pulled. That’s a fight we here in the American South desperately need to have; a huge part of this is the idea that wankers like Kemp and the thankfully-defeated Kobach can basically pull Jim Crow tactics out anytime they want.
Without the VRA fighting them in the courts is the only real recourse we have. And if they are tied up in same, it hopefully puts others On notice that they can expect a battle if they try to bring in the ghost of George Wallace to win a race.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Quinerly: When is Trump due for his next physical? I wonder if he’ll still be the healthiest person ever to be president.
Gravenstone
@Kent: The VRA, with full pre-approval needs to be brought back into force as well. It’s not just the former Treason States that pull cheap stunts with polling places to try and suppress voter participation in targeted ways.
FelonyGovt
@Quinerly: I must confess that I had the same wish this morning about him AND Pence both… but after the new Congress is seated.
Steve in the ATL
@The Moar You Know: soon to be ex-senator Nelson could have learned a few things from Beto on how to campaign. Being a long time ago astronaut is not a big selling point in 2018.
@JPL: indeed. I always thought Georgia was corrupt in local good ol’ boy ways, but this huge and overt cheating is more recent, isn’t it?
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t think brokaw is a moron, but he is clearly past his sell-by date and has gotten too deep into the greatest generation garbage to pay attention to anything else.
The Moar You Know
@Yarrow: Good. Let him. The history of Republicans – and it has only been Republicans – shutting down the federal government has not been one that is good for Republicans.
Speaking of, any states enact the “tax returns for ballot access” laws? That’s gotta happen before 2020.
bjacques
@Lapassionara: Karen Handel needs to go bye-bye not least for her antics as CEO of Susan G. Komen For The Cure. After reporters discovered the breast cancer charity blew all its money on glitzy schmoozefests, leaving almost nothing to to actually fight breast cancer, Handel attacked them and threatened to sue. That drew even more attention, and it emerged that she actively lobbied against government funding for Planned Parenthood, so she flounced out of that job and, unfortunately, into the House. But a slight delay in karmic payback, I’ll take that.
Around the same time, the Dutch chapter of SGKFTC was also exposed as a gold-plated stiff, by an Amsterdam columnist and breast cancer survivor who took those personally, and its CEO, after going on the attack, also had to resign shortly afterward, for the good of the brand.
khead@34: or the fax machine in “In The Loop” (WARNING: contains swearing–F-barrel bombs, F-cluster bombs, F-IEDs, you name it–in Scottish)
Steve in the ATL
@Woodrow/Asim: my take, as an occasional resident of Georgia, is that Stacey’s performance was incredible considering the open hostility in our state to (1) minorities, (2) women, and (3) Democrats.
Amir Khalid
@khead:
So I bought a .44 Magnum, it was solid steel cast
And in the blessed name of Elvis, well, I just let it blast
Till my TV lay in pieces there at my feet
And they busted me for disturbing the almighty peace
Judge said, “What you got in your defense, son?”
57 channels and nothing on …
dww44
@JPL: The last thing I read before turning off my tv and the computer yesterday (because my nerves couldn’t handle it) was this from Steve M over at nomoremisternice:
There is no doubt that if indeed, as expected, Kemp prevails, he will be as illegitimate a governor as there has been here since the Eugene Talmadge Jr election back in the 1940’s.
Waldo
Listening to trumps press conference. He’s not taking this well.
JPL
@Waldo: I tuned in when he was berating Jim Acosta.
gwangung
@low-tech cyclist:
Well, only a third of them are black. Some more are Latino. The rest are white….uneducated whites, I think.
So let’s think carefully about that assertion.
Steeplejack
Goddamn, I had gotten to a pretty Zen place this morning about the election, and now this Trump press conference is putting me into orbit!
The Daniel Dale safety-filter version barely scratches the surface of the crazy.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@TenguPhule: This is Trump, he only cares about “wining” not governing. Unless he can BS everyone he is a democrat now he will ignore Congress because he lost the midterm and go off on something else.
Platonailedit
How long before the cowardly thug and his minions start assaulting press right on live teevee?
TenguPhule
@gwangung:
They can be required to pass a basic civics test before being allowed to vote. /
/only half kidding
Steve in the ATL
@Waldo: the only thing trump takes well is other people’s money
TenguPhule
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Playing toy soldiers with the BP against unarmed women and children at the border sounds exactly like the kind of game he’d like to break.
TenguPhule
@Platonailedit:
That ship set sail back in 2016.
Stuart Frasier
I haven’t read all the comments this morning, but:
Tester looks like he will pull it out in MT Sen
There are reportedly a huge number of absentee ballots to be counted in AZ Sen with a thin margin
FL Sen looks like it could be heading to a recount
Keeping my fingers and toes crossed.
Quinerly
@Steeplejack: love this comment in the Twitter feed: “He looks and sounds like someone that got “Kavanaugh’ed” the night before.”
TenguPhule
The next 2 months are going to see the crazy go to eleven.
McConnell now has pretty much no downside to packing federal courts as fast as his rubberstamp can ink.
the center will not hold.
Luciamia
Sweet Jessus, is he still talking?
Redshift
My good friend Jennifer Boysko will be running in the special election for Jennifer Wexton’s state senate seat. She’s very good, and definitely deserves support. (I donated to her when she called a few weeks ago before the public announcement. Am I a bigwig now? Or maybe a smallwig?)
TenguPhule
Oh damnit, I just had the horribly depressing realization that Trump has free reign to fuck over every appointed Cabinet position at will come 2019.
TenguPhule
@Luciamia:
He just said he plans to declare war against the House if they try to investigate him.
Elizabelle
Dave Brat has finally conceded. Called Congresswoman-elect Abigail Spanberger and put out a statement.
TenguPhule
wut.
guachi
I looked up Joe Cunningham, the guy who won an upset in SC-01. AFAICT, he’s the only white Christian Democrat in the Deep South.
He’s a mighty handsome fellow. Like, you’d expect to see him in a catalog looking rugged and selling men’s suits.
Redshift
Virginia elections!!! If we pick up one seat in the House of Delegates and one seat in the state senate, we’ll have the trifecta for redistricting! We have elections every year, and this one is usually the lowest turnout of the four, because there’s no election for Congress or governor. Makes it tough to get people out to vote, but also a tremendous opportunity.
JMG
AP calls Montana for Tester.
Redshift
@Elizabelle: Woot!
Tenar Arha
@JPL: McBath has posted a request for recount funds here that I added to earlier today.
ETA grammar
Steeplejack
@waratah:
Seems like Beto helped push a lot of candidates over the finish line, but, like Moses, he didn’t make it to the promised land himself.
Aziz, light!
Some of those Florida felons will have become good people but plenty will still be assholes. I think it will be a wash.
(By this I don’t mean to impugn all the black men who went to jail for smoking a joint.)
Ruckus
My state assemblyman, Chris Holden, sends me great update emails regularly, as does Sen Kamala Harris.
If your elected officials don’t, let them know this is unacceptable. They work for us, we do not work for them and they need to keep you informed. If they send you crap, let them know that. Demand at least minimal effort.
Steeplejack
I wish the TV feed(s) at the press conference would ID/label the journalists asking the questions. Some of them sound like quislings or outright plants.
Most of the big-time network reporters are blowhards.
KSinMA
@Nicole: Well said!
Domestic short hair tabby (fka vheidi)
@Steeplejack: agreed. Some id themselves, which seems ideal
Ruckus
@lamh36:
We heard her speak at one of the marches we went to. She’s my kind of gal, she was worked up and really charged up an already worked up crowd. And she’s not shy with her language. She knows the words not to use in public, and does anyway.
LuciaMia
@TenguPhule: I believe my mother used to call that “Robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
ruemara
@Steeplejack: I think that auto vote programming “error” might have had a hand in that. Audit the vote.
PJ
@Barbara: I posted this in a very dead thread below, but you are right on about electoral change in this country:
I was reading a very good book recently, Democracy in Chains (about the libertarian/Koch movement to constrict democracy from the 1950s until now), and something like less than 15% of eligible voters were permitted to vote in Virginia in the 1950s (and it was even lower earlier: http://www.virginiaplaces.org/…..rdorg.html). In the past 60 years, Virginia has gone from being one of the most conservative (then racist Democratic) states in the country to almost being liberal (now not-so-racist Democratic). It took a long time, and a lot of it was driven by educated people coming from out-of-state and settling in NoVa and the Norfolk area, but it happened. Would Andrew Gillum or Stacey Abrams have come this close in FL and GA just four years ago? I think how well they did, given the “Southern Heritage” of those states, is a sign for hope. That doesn’t help the residents of those states now, but if people keep fighting, it will in the future.
MCA1
I agree with someone upthread who suggested perhaps we should target state level races for fundraising.
I came into this morning sharing Betty’s take on last night: OK, we got the one thing we absolutely positively had to have lest the Republic fail, but Floriduh and Ohio are lost causes, the new Democratic rising stars we found this cycle all lost their high profile races, and the fever has not broken. But my tune has changed a little after looking at non-federal matters.
Several state legislative bodies were flipped in addition to the U.S. House. And Democrats erased most of their gubernatorial deficit in one night – even if CT flips Rep., they’re +6 and a helluva lot closer to parity. The Democratic Governors Association annual meeting could now field both sides of the ball on a football team. Those fears of Republicans having such a stranglehold on state politics that they were on the verge of being able to call a constitutional convention have subsided.
At the end of the day, it’s clear to me that the cloud of this election is not seeing the overwhelming rejection of Dotard that any healthy democracy would have produced. The silver lining, however, is that these local and state elections are not driven by our national mood and how we’re feeling about the direction of the country generally and feelings about the current President. They’re driven by local and state matters and the candidates. And right now Democrats are fielding better and better candidates. Which bodes well for the future. There are a hundred Betos and Gillums out there, and a bunch of them just won office for the first time yesterday. We’ll get healthier again as those folks move up in the system and inspire others to take up behind them.
I hope.
Steeplejack
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack:
Butbutbut it’s not racist to say those things, because they’re all true!
/American Nazi
Seriously, though, racists really do believe all of that stuff is true rather than believing their own lying eyes. If Barack Obama is genuinely smarter than Donald Trump, then their entire worldview crumbles along with their unearned self-esteem.
MCA1
@MCA1: Too late to edit, but just saw that the GOP candidate for CT Gov. conceded. So Democrats stay +7, I think, in gubernatorial races last night, getting to 23, vs. 26 Republicans and an independent in Alaska. That’s huge. I know it could have reached a Dem. majority in governorships if Gillum and Abrams had won, but two months ago either of them winning was unthinkable, and we certainly didn’t expect to beat Kobach, or that Iowa and South Dakota would be really close. The only surprising loss was the non-flip in Ohio, I guess. In any event, I’ll take 23 Dem governors right now, including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Tenar Arha
@Tenar Arha: Stacy Abrams needs funds too. If you’re going to continue to fundraise I’ll wait for a combo list before I donate too much more.
Tenar Arha
@MCA1: NEVER FORGET that what you’re seeing would be a huge blowout if not for gerrymandering & the restrictionist Senate that hasn’t added any states (though we should have by now) since the 1959 (57% of voters voted for a Dem Senator)
ETA Added factoid. I should note that reminding myself of this helps me realize how much the contours of our current problems are based on deliberate design, & therefore can be changed. I know that’s not always helpful to everyone.
MomSense
Sessions out!
MazeDancer
Out all day, and Sessions will have killed this thread.
But will mention that plans are afoot for new ways to use the Power of PostCards.
And here’s a fixed link to the broken one above Click “Election Night” to see a bigger version of the map.
MCA1
@Tenar Arha: Oh, I know. I’m sure there at least 10 seats that stayed red last night that shouldn’t have with appropriately drawn maps. An added benefit of starting to do better at the state level is putting an infrastructure in place to fight the gerrymandering in purple states. We’re not going to get a Utah (or wherever) where 90% of the Democrats aren’t cordoned into a single house district anytime soon, but making sure that kind of bs is stopped in Wisconsin and Michigan is helpful. And having at least a governor or one house of a bicameral state legislature allows Democrats to shame any Republicans who aren’t willing to go along with basic electoral and voting rights reforms.
I’m a firm believer that one of the biggest structural problems in U.S. government currently is the Senate model in an increasingly citified nation, where conceivably Democrats could get 15% more votes in a 6 year Senate cycle and still not get a Senate majority. But I don’t know what to do about it, practically, since the GOP stranglehold on the entire non-coastal West outside of Colorado, and the Confederate states, is so strong.
oldgold
I am a bit confused about the legality of today’s chain of events.
The Saturday Night mMassacre unfolded like this. Nixon ordered the Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, to fire Archibald Cox. He refused to do so and resigned. This put Deputy Attorney General, Donald Ruckelshaus, in charge. He too refused to carry out the order and resigned. This put the third most senior official in the DOJ, the Solicitor General, Robert Bork in charge. He fired Archibald Cox.
My confusion here is that rather than the Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, moving up upon Jeff Sessions resignation, as occurred in the Saturday Night Massacre, an interloper, Matt Whitaker, who has not been confirmed by the Senate, has been named. I am not sure that is legal.