Funk Babblings

It was a good sign when the very first results called last night included Blackwell's defeat (despite being in charge of counting the votes), Sherrod Brown's victory (despite earlier fears of his being too liberal for statewide election), and Bernie Sanders' election to the Senate as a Democratic Socialist. That trio was a wonderful start to my evening.

Then the voters of South Dakota turned back their legislature's draconian anti-choice law, and the voters of Arizona stopped the tide of anti-gay-marriage (-or-civil-unions-or-any-legal-arrangement) initiatives/amendments.

Not to mention all the newly-elected openly-gay people that featherynscale mentions. And the U.S. even has a Muslim Senator Congressman now.

In Ohio, another reason for hope is a new inflation-indexed minimum wage in the state constitution. And enough state offices are now in Dem hands that (if two are kept in 2010) Democrats will win redistricting power after the next census. (Anyone who's looked at Ohio's Congressional district lines, especially around the cities, can see why this needs to happen.)

Sure, there were lots of other races that I would've liked to go better than they did, but in my cautious optimism I didn't really expect them to go my way anyway. In fact a lot of them turned out much closer than anyone expected, and some could still turn out well. My only real disappointment is that the Senate still has the sole member of the Connecticut For Lieberman party, who loves to flirt with the Republicans; in a closely-divided Senate he will be able to wield a lot of power.


Like many of my friends, two years ago I expended a great deal of energy on that election, leading to severe disappointment. Now for the first time since then I have good reason for political optimism again.


Oh yeah, Amanda at Pandagon has a good overview of the election trends the press isn't covering, many of which I touched on above.