The results were very upsetting.
There was no Blue Wave. The Democrats won the House, but just barely. This despite many more people voting for Democrats than for Republicans. I suppose we can chalk that up to gerrymandering. The results in the Senate were of course even worse. There is some small hope in the results for governors.
One mistake is just a mistake. But with this election's result we have to consider the possibility that Donald Trump and his party simply represent the American people better than the Democrats do. We have to look this right in the face and admit the possibility that Donald Trump shows us what we have become.
That makes me very, very sad.
1. The Dems control the House by around thirty votes. That's a pretty safe majority, not "barely". Gerrymandering hurt, but the ~36-seat gain that is likely once all the dust settles is of a piece with the larger gains of the last few decades. The only one that stands out is the Republican 60-seat gain in 2010, which had more to do with the collapse of a
humongous post-2008 Democratic majority than anything else. The Republicans in 2018 didn't have as far to fall. The most important thing, of course, is that House control flipped. Trump no longer has an iron lock on the government. He can be investigated. His budgets can be meddled with. The House can send up bills on big-ticket issues and force the Senate to put no votes on record. This is
huge.
2. If the Dems won the popular vote by a mile and made big gains in the House despite gerrymandering and vote suppression, how on Earth can you even come close to the conclusion that Donald Trump and his party represent the American people better? That is literally the opposite conclusion from the one that makes sense.
3. Don't forget the progress made in flipping governor's mansions (now recovering from the Republican dominance of the 2000s and 2010s) and statehouses this election, too. Democrats are increasing the areas that they have under full control and making inroads in places where they don't have full control. These are the first steps in reversing all the monstrous hot garbage that Republican-controlled state governments did over the last two decades. We can start to roll back the Koch brothers' constitutional convention, improve access to voting rights, expand Medicaid, and do all sorts of similar
useful things, in addition to, y'know, governing the states. Before Tuesday, some people were worried that the Republicans would get the chance to turn more states into Brownback's Kansas. They, uh, are not going to get that chance, to say the least.
The Dems didn't run the slate in the election. It wasn't perfect. The highest-media-profile candidates, like Beto, didn't win. But the reason they had the highest media profile was because they were "reach" candidates in the first place! You think that the Republicans are
happy that a Dem got within three percent of flipping a
Texas Senate seat? No. You think they're
happy that they have to go to three Florida recounts for statewide offices? Pft. You think they're
happy that Abrams is within recount territory even after Kemp's corrupt voter roll purging? Not even a little. They had
so many of the advantages this time around. They had a relatively strong economy and job market - two of the more decisive advantages any president can have - and an absurdly favorable map in the Senate. But they're unpopular because of their trash policies and their trash president, and the Dems out-hustled them. In 2016 pundits were predicting even tighter Republican control after the 2018 election. They'd have the opportunity to put the Senate on lockdown (if they were to get more than 56-7 Senate seats, the Dems wouldn't be able to retake the chamber in the 2020 elex when more Republicans are vulnerable) and maybe even keep the House if the economy stayed strong. Instead, they've got divided government, and came away with what might be only a two-seat Senate gain when they were expecting as many as ten. That's
huge.
![[pissed]](/images/smilies/pissed.gif "Pissed [pissed]")
