I'm surprised at myself for not writing sooner about this year's Election Night, almost two weeks ago at this point. On the other hand, as I mentioned previously, I did wait 12 days to write about last year's disaster, as it took me that long to recover enough to write about it. So I guess it's fair to say that I had to wait this long before the excitement over this year's progressive victories died down within enough that I could write about them meaningfully. Or even coherently. My initial reaction was to start planning, for next year's Election Night, a march on the White House from all sides, right up to the fence, with thousands of people participating, all yelling a single phrase: "LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP!"
OK, I think you get the idea. And I'm literally knocking on wood in between typing sentences. I'm not one for tempting fate. But I believe next year's election results may be able to support a rally at that level. I'll outline my reasons for believing that in a moment.
First I want to emphasize that Election Night 2017 was not just a victory for the Democratic Party. It was, in every sense, a progressive victory. Organizationally, by taking the Governor's mansion in New Jersey away from Chris Christie (and who isn't grateful for that), and by flipping a state Senate seat in Washington state, the party gained unified control of two state governments. And, depending on the results of recounts in races for the Virginia House of Delegates, they may yet gain a third. As it is, the number of seats gained there by the Democrats exceeded even the most optimistic projections.
But the victories extended beyond merely picking up offices. Voters in Maine approved the Medicaid expansion made possible by the ACA, and thus far stubbornly resisted by the state's Neanderthal Republican governor. And in Virginia, New Jersey, and local offices all across the country, diversity won the day and offered a stinging rebuke to the white-nationalist politics currently coming from the White House. Take a look.
And I'll use that as a starting point, with apologies to David Letterman, to provide my top ten reasons for believing that next year's Election Night will be no different than this one.
10. The so-called civil war in the Democratic Party is effectively over. Progressives control the agenda. Progressive candidates are getting on ballots and winning. Even the party establishment in Congress now pays effective lip-service to the progressive agenda. Whatever battle was going to happen between Hillarycrats and Berniecrats is effectively over. The Berniecrats have won. It's time to move on, because America is dying from a lack of liberalism, not a surplus of it. Maybe, just maybe, that explains why this guy won.
9. Governors know what's happening in their states; they have to, or they won't be governors for very long. If the Virginia and New Jersey results were only explainable by the states status as perennially blue states, governors in red states wouldn't be worried. But they are. Oh, boy, are they.
8. Buyer's remorse, which always occurs after every presidential election, is alive and well after 2016. And it's possible to find it in some of the most unlikely places, such as North Carolina, which, despite being carried by Obama in 2018, has lurched very far to the right in every election since then. But it's just possible that Tar Heel voters, and their counterparts elsewhere, may be ready to lurch in another direction.
7. As a matter of fact, they have already been spending a good part of the past year lurching in that direction. Despite what you may have heard about GOP victories in special elections for the House of Representatives, they were all in deep-red districts where the Democratic candidates outperformed their predecessors. And there have been many more special elections in which Democrats have done far more than outperform. 14, in fact.
6. Suburbs, once a reliable source of Republican votes and victories, have also shown a readiness to move toward the Democrats. That was certainly true in Virginia this year, and there are signs that it may be true across the country. David Brooks, no one's idea of a blue voter, thinks that way, for example.
5. Virginia also illustrated, as did Obama's victories, the importance of the African-American vote to Democratic fortunes. It's past time for Democrats to embrace this fact and make the most of it. Hopefully, what happened in Virginia will inspire them to do so.
4. GOP Representatives and Senators are retiring from Congress in droves, as they fail in one attempt after another to pass rancid legislation over the objections of the American people. And their last-gasp effort, the so-called "tax reform" bill, may suffer the same fate; it's certainly helping to drive Republicans out of Washington.
3. On the other hand, if the bill becomes law, it will all but certainly destroy the economy, as it is structured in such a way so as to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. Even worse, it is a warped version of Robin Hood economics, as it takes from the productive social-welfare states to benefit those that have time and again adopted failed policies that favor the rich.
2. The bill's only redeeming value is that it sums up the state of corruption in the current government; it is at DEFCOM 5 and climbing. Especially when the party pushing so-called "tax reform" admits that it is doing so solely to reward its supporters and get re-elected.
AND (drum roll), the number one reason to expect 2018 will be like 2017 is ......................
1. Trump himself, a consistent breaker of promises whose only talent is his ability to create a moral vacuum. Politics, like nature, abhors a moral vacuum, and voters will empower Democrats to fill it.
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