Liberals Lost, But Liberalism Won

If you're reading this, you are probably alternating between anger and depression.  As am I.  I've been doing that for most of the past five days.  How do I overcome it?

Simple.  By coming back to facts.  And this is the most important one about last Tuesday.  Other than the determination by the people of Kansas that they're going to experiment with economic suicide (and a senator who will continue to live in a La-Z-Boy in Virginia).

Liberals lost.  But liberalism won.  All over the country, in fact.

Start with what should have been the signature issue for Democrats in this election:  the minimum wage.  In referendums to increase it in four red states--three of which elected Republican senators the same day, with a fourth likely to follow suit--voters supported increasing it, as the also did in San Francisco and Illinois.

And it gets better from there.  Voters also rejected ballot initiatives restricting abortion, and approved ones to legalize marijuana.  And, in several instances, approved paid sick leave.

And fracking?  It lost.  In Texas, in the town that invented it, despite proponents outspending opponents by a 10-to-1 margin.  This is like a successful effort to ban tanning in California.

And where were the Republicans, the nominal big winners on Tuesday night?  What did they think of all of this?  We won't find out, I guess, until they take office next January.  Because they were too busy doing what they do best--deceiving the public--by trying hard to sound like Democrats, rather than the Tea Party.

What about the Democrats who sounded like Democrats?  Well, I have to admit there weren't a lot of them, because of bullying from the GOP and its media allies.  But they were there, and they won.  In Florida, and in Michigan (where the Democratic Senate candidate was the only Senate candidate not to run from President Obama).

So, unlike the media, and the Republicans, who have jointly concluded that conservatives have been given a century-long lease on life, what conclusions should we draw from the election disaster?

That it was about anger.  And GOP gimmicks.

The New York Times has described it as "The Tornado Election," saying that voters were simply so angry as to flatten everything in sight, without regard for who or what it was.  If that's the case, however, it's impossible to read this as an election whose outcome favors either party.  As I've said many times, anger isn't a philosophy, a policy or a program.  It's just anger, and it destroys everything it touches.

And if the Republican future now really depends on a combination of dark money, gerrymandering and voter restrictions, the party has effectively forfeited any claim it might otherwise have had to holding the hearts and minds of the American people.  The ballot initiative results forfeits it for them.

People, especially politicians come and go.  Issues are what ultimately drive politics, and dictate the outcomes.  The issues are clearly on our side.  It only remains for the Democrats and their supporters to remind people of that fact.  Every day.  From now until we're back in the saddle by November of 2016.

Which leads me to my next point ...