On Monday, I wrote a story with 5 reasons why Democrats would win last night, despite all the polling and pundits calling the race for Republicans long before the first vote was counted. I get it, too. Conventional wisdom says that the president’s party loses seats in the first midterm. Inflation is the highest its been in 40 years. Biden’s approval ratings are in the tank (despite an extraordinary set of accomplishments the past two years). Gas prices are sky high, grocery bills are consuming our paychecks, and housing and rental prices are insane. The crime rate is up. The birth rate is down. Even young people are having less sex and fewer relationships than any generation before them. Things are bleak. Republicans *should* have won, and yet…
The Democrats have won. Regardless of what happens now, there is no doubt that this election is already a total repudiation of what the Republican party is offering. Even if the House flips (thanks mostly to the implosion of the New York Democratic Party), the GOP majority will be very small and ungovernable. Here’s hoping that doesn’t happen, but it’s certainly not the 40-60 seat majority that they were crowing about three days ago. The Senate is also a toss-up at this point, and there have been a few real disappointments there, but the odds are still in our favor. Everything was working against the Democrats in this election — the economy, inflation, crime — everything that normally shifts power between the parties, and the Dems outperformed all the so-called expert predictions. Our wins in statehouses and governorships and Secretaries of State that no one expected is well worth celebrating today.
The Democrats won thanks primarily to those meddling kids and women who, for some reason, think self-determination and bodily autonomy are worth fighting for. They deserve our praise, our support, and our attention. The party leadership needs to recognize and listen and engage with those voters by offering real solutions to their problems if we want to keep winning in the future. But let us also not forget the many Republican voters who switched sides in protest against the growing fascism of their party. Turns out a lot of Republicans actually DO still care about democracy and the rule of law. This election is already a game-changing political haymaker to the MAGA crowd, and this coalition of Democratic voters is strong and growing.
It’s been entertaining to watch the Faux News pundits lose their shite today… and apparently TFG himself is melting down like a 3-year old with a broken toy (that he broke). That alone is enough to lift my spirits today. It will make his planned announcement on the 15th that much more pathetic. It is still sad, of course, that so many in our nation today want to destroy democracy and enforce their vision of Shar-Yee-Haw law on the rest of us, but this election shows them and the rest of the world that the majority of us, but a long shot, prefer democracy, freedom, autonomy, and the rule of law. And THAT, my friends, is really worth celebrating today. Yee Haw indeed.