As you no doubt know by now, Democrats will soon hold a majority in the House, somewhat ending one-party rule in the nation. I'm disappointed we didn't take the Senate as well, but that was always a long shot. Nonetheless, we had the largest gains in 40 years and I believe that's largely the result of the political labor, advocacy, and organizing of millions of marginalized people, primarily women.
Hilariously, religious freedom fighter Kim Davis, who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in contravention of a federal court order, lost her re-election bid for county clerk in Rowan County, Kentucky.
I will never not have schadenfreude when bigots lose.And it's a big swing and a miss for Kim Davis. (That's lesbian for "the homphobe lost"). https://t.co/5I1mCbqpeq— Fannie Wolfe 🌈 (@fanniesroom) November 7, 2018
Regarding Beto's loss in Texas to the unfathomably unlikeable and terrible Ted Cruz, this tweet sums up my thoughts pretty well:
I like Beto a lot but it's wild to me that all these women of color won tonight and people go right to talking about how presidential the white guy who lost is— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed) November 7, 2018
When white men lose in politics, it seems like their loss is often framed as, in some way or another, actually a win. They're not automatically categorized as irredeemable losers who need to retreat from the public sphere forever. And yet, we still see regular media pieces demanding that Hillary Clinton Go Away. There are regular think pieces on whether Nancy Pelosi should do the same, especially now that Democrats have won the House. And no such speculation for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, even though Democrats lost seats in the Senate? Mitt Romney gets no heat for running for Senate in 2018 after his big loss to President Obama in 2012? And what about Bernie Sanders, who lost to the candidate who lost to Donald Trump? We're all just fine with him boning up to run again in 2020?
ANYway, multiple election contests still have uncertain results. In Florida, it was initially being reported that Republican Ron DeSantis had won, but now it seems to be headed for a recount. In Georgia, Republican Brian Kemp is acting as though he's won, even though ballots remain uncounted, numerous irregularities were reported in the election, and Democrat Stacey Abrams has refused to concede. And, in Arizona, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema has taken the lead for a Senate seat over her Republican opponent.
What I continue to find disturbing are the mechanisms of our political system - such as the Senate and Electoral College - that grant conservative, rural white people disproportionate political power over a more-liberal, more-diverse majority. For instance, the states in which voters have the most voting power as determined by the number of federal elected officials per adult population are Wyoming, Nebraska, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Montana, and Delaware.
Given that the US Supreme Court majority very likely does not reflect the will of the majority on many important issues - such as economics, environmental issues, reproductive justice, and LGBT rights - the 2020 presidential election is going to be critical (I mean, in addition to the obvious critical necessity to remove Donald Trump and Republicans from executive power). Two presidential elections in my lifetime have been decided by a conservative minority and the results for our nation have been largely disastrous, particularly with respect to George W. Bush's SCOTUS appointments and Iraq War and Donald Trump's.....*gestures wildly at everything*!
A successful 2020 Democrat candidate is going to have to be able to effectively withstand Trump/Russia/Wikileaks/social media hit jobs and carefully unite the smattering of coalitions who both form the anti-Trump resistance and have a lot of schisms with each other. Many of these schisms, after all, were leveraged for Trump's electoral college win and likely will be again.
