"If the November midterms stood for anything, it was that in most jurisdictions that allow for meaningful voting and proportional representation, the whiz-bang showmanship of the past two years has become stale and dull.
"A clutch of exciting young candidates ran for office without even explicitly engaging with Trump or Trumpism. Powered by energy from below, they largely ignored the wallpaper of noise and sound that is the president. The narcissism and self-love of the ’90s TV hustler has finally just become tiresome.
"But this Thanksgiving weekend, the sense beginning to emerge is of the systems of democratic governance repairing themselves—of good people standing up, of women surging forward, of teenagers answering the call, of law and truth reinstating themselves. The feeling is that some kind of fever has maybe broken."
Let us hope. The shit that has been given us by conservatives has shown us what it brings forth. Can we now get past this?
One can only hope that a tide is tuning. But the wall of hate and fear is a strong one.
Kathleen, Thank you for this (I wonder what Roberts is thinking about Kavanaugh). The one big obstacle (except for the fact that conservatives still have a senate majority) is when will the tRump puppets finally let go of their loyalty as the prime virtue idea and see him for what he is (that he cannot fulfill his promises). They will never, ever vote with liberals but we can only hope they will get disgusted enough to simply abstain from further voting.
The true-believers aren't just 45 supporters. They are so anti-liberal, they will vote against everything they think even has a whiff of liberalism to it.
They've already proven that they WILL vote against their own best interests just to vote against anything they believe is any kind of liberal threat, whether it is or not.
@KKGator I agree but the last election showed that these people are in the minority. When they start hurting fiscally maybe they will think again (or blame liberals).
@JackPedigo They'll blame liberals rather than admit they were wrong.
They worship 45 like they worship their god.
@KKGator You live in the bible belt and see things from one point of view. His pandering to the religious wrong has gotten him where he is. But there is a majority of liberal religions + us nones that outweigh the evangelicals. The coastal states especially the west coast have a different view. There are supporters here but they are definitely a tiny minority.
@JackPedigo I hope you are correct in that assessment. I'd like to be wrong. I was heartened by some of the midterm results, but there is still an awfully long way to go.
@JackPedigo, in far too many of the elections the D vs R was broken at very close to 50%. I agree with you that nationwide the moderates and Liberals outnumber the Conservatives and Nationalists who have formed a union. But in many states, and even here in Pennsylvania, the Conservatives control large segments of the voting districts, enough to maintain majorities in the state government and assure unequal showing in the Federal House. Our PA Supreme Court redraw of districts last year made a big difference in how close the elections were, but only actually affected some of those running against Republican incumbents, even though they were close.
@Barnie2years In a posting of mine I shared a column by a journalist that stated Republicans were toast in King County (Seattle area). Most of Western Wash. including San Juan Island County voted all conservatives out and our state legislature is now mostly Dems. This part of the country is progressive. The recent election showed people are starting to wake up.
@JackPedigo, your local election might have been progressive, but as long as the national map is colored as it is now below, it can hardly be called a shift to the liberal side on a national basis.
@Barnie2years So the takeover of the house and many Governor spots was a fluke?
@JackPedigo, it was a move in the right direction, but if you look at a lot of those elections, including the ones won by Republicans, they were won by pretty slim margins. So saying either party is a majority in much of the country is to ignore that it is only by a small fraction. This means that elections turn on who can get the most people to the polls rather than the true sentiment of the population. And that’s not even including the close to 40% who seem uninterested in even expressing an opinion by voting. And most of the Red areas are smaller populations, which gives them fewer Representatives (thus Democratic control) but equal Senate representation (thus Republican Senate control. In Pennsylvania Casey and our governor Wolf, both Democrats, maintained their offices because the most populated areas are Liberal (Pittsburgh and Philadelphia) while the vast middle of the state is solid red, which kept our state congress in Republican control, even with our Supreme Court redistricting.
@Barnie2years Same as for Washington. The majority is red especially east of the Cascade (we call this the Cascade curtain). Unfortunately for them and fortunately for us cows can't vote.