While the races in Texas, Florida, Ohio and Georgia didn’t go the way most Democrats wanted, it could’ve have gone a lot worse nationwide. Kari Lake, a big supporter of The Big Lie, ia losing to Katie Hobbs to be governor of Arizona. John Fetterman beat out Dr. Mehmet Oz to be Senator of Pennsylvania. Maura Healey has been elected not only as the first woman governor of Massachusetts, but the first openly gay governor. And as of Saturday, Nov. 12, both Mark Kelly, of Arizona, and Catherine Cortez Masto, of Nevada, have won the Senate races pretty much ensuring Democrats have control of the Senate with Vice-President Kamala Harris as a tiebreaker vote.
In Wisconsin, Tony Evers, a Democrat, will remain governor as his Republican challenger, Tim Michels, flat out said that if he is elected, Republicans will always win in Wisconsin no matter what. Mandela Barnes almost became the Senator of that state as he was about 27,500 votes away from taking the spot from Republican incumbent Ron Johnson. Democrats were that close but it’s a start. There are almost six million people living in Wisconsion and about 2.65 million of them voted in the election. That’s very impressive. That’s about 44 percent of the total population taking into account some people are not of age to vote yet.
In Georgia, my native state, Brian Kemp regain his seat as governor. But I’m not surprised. There are still a lot of racist and sexist people in Georgia. To them, Stacie Abrams is a threat because she’s a woman and she’s black. And it doesn’t matter if they’re liberal or conservative, Democrat, Republican or Libertarian. Outside of the metro-Atlanta area and smaller metropolitan areas such as Augusta, Columbus and Savannah, it’s mostly conservative people who worship the Civil War just as much as they worship God and their guns.
Marjorie Taylor Greene won because Marcus Flowers, her Democrat challenger, is a black guy. And there’s still too much Confederate Civil War monuments in that part of the state. Greene knew what she was doing when she “moved” there to run in 2020. There’s still so many Southern Democrats and Dixiecrats there who still don’t care. This is ironic because there’s so many backward, third-world communities outside of the metro Atlanta area. As a matter of fact, Atlanta keeps Georgia from being Alabama or Mississippi. And while many white women consider themselves moderate, I don’t see some of them voting for Abrams or Warnock.
As of this posting, Democrat incumbent Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker are scheduled for a run-off in December as neither got the needed 50 plus one percent of the votes. Warnock was close. Both men are black, but Walker is the house negro for the Republican Party. The best we can hope for is that voters who voted for Warnock and Chase Oliver, the Libertarian challenger, make sure we can keep Walker out. I think some conservatives who voted for Kemp couldn’t vote for Walker.
And that’s kind of the way it should be. Party loyalty doesn’t mean much when someone is running that is very unqualified. I also know that many people in Georgia wouldn’t vote for Walker if he was a Democrat. I’m not even sure he knows about any policies. He was living in Texas outside Dallas for more than a decade. The Republican Party thinks black people will vote for black people because they don’t care for black people. And I’m sure if Walker loses (and I hope he does), he’s going to get on the road back to Texas.
The Republican Party tried this back in 2004 when a state legislator named Barack Obama ran for the Illinois Senator seat and won because the GOP got conservative Alan Keyes to run against him. Keyes is black and was vocal in 2000 about Hillary Clinton running for Senator of New York. Apparently, the state law indicated that a long as someone woke up in a residence or lodging somewhere within the state limits of New York on election day, they were a resident of the state. That lodging can be a hotel/motel.
So far the race for the House of Representatives can go either way with as votes are still being counted. For a while it looks like Lauren Boebert was going to lose to her Democrat challenger Adam Frisch but as of this posting she is up by over a thousand votes for the third Congressional district of Colorado. If the Republicans do take their house, they’re more than likely going to appoint Kevin McCarthy (R-California) as Speaker of the House. Some people think that McCarthy, a Trump supporter, will be the next Newt Gingrich. If this is the case, he’s probably going to fail as badly as Gingrich did, who only served two terms and was blamed for the 1995-1996 government shutdown. This, I think, also led to people choosing Bill Clinton for a second term.
But the biggest loser of the 2018 election was Donald J. Trump himself, which news of Cortez Masto’s win coming while his youngest daughter, Tiffany, was having a wedding at the Mar-a-Lago resort. Many people who supported Trump and Trump endorsed lost. The Big Lie took a big hit as many secretaries of state candidates also lost. People have had enough of Trump and the MAGA movement apparently.
But the one reason it didn’t go as the Republicans thought is simple. They underestimated that younger voters would turn out in huge numbers. While most people were counted on traditional reactions from voters who are now in their 60s, 70s and 80s, they failed to see how voters in their late teens, 20s and even 30s would vote. In Florida, Maxwell Frost, a Democrat, at only 25 is the first Gen Zer to be elected to Congress. Madison Cawthorn, at 27, doesn’t count because he’s technically a Millennial as 1997 is considered the beginning of Gen Z.
Also, many states, like Georgia, went to the point to make voting harder for people, mainly BIPOC. If someone is trying their hardest to keep you from voting, it’s best to make sure they are unsuccessful. The armed people hanging around polling places in Maricopa County, Arizona probably didn’t help. Also, many young people are smart enough to see that inflation wasn’t happening on a global scale so it wasn’t just Joe Biden’s vote.
Even if the House does go to the Republicans, some elected officials of them might see that still supporting Trump and Mitch McConnell might cost them their seats in 2024. Last week, I got Domino’s and a few doors down in the shopping center was the Cherokee County Republican Party Headquarters in Tahlequah, Okla. They had a life-size Trump cutout giving that thumbs up with the shit-eating grin and a Trump 2024 flag in the window.
I drove by there on Friday, less than 72 hours after Election Day and there wasn’t anything in the office space. And even though not one single Democrat won a Congressional seat in the state, it’s a sign that people are tired. I exercise at the fitness center at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah. I remember overhearing some young adults talking about how the health care in this country is a joke. Of course, the young woman had a nose ring and skin tight spandex and another person would think one word – slut. But I didn’t think anything at all except it’s time for younger people to step up.
That’s also why I think if the Democrats do keep the House, it’s time to make someone else the Speaker. I got nothing against Nancy Pelosi but we need younger representation. And after the attack on her husband, Paul, she might need to focus on other issues. (I also think the way people acted about this vicious, violent attack might have changed some undecided voters. Or it might have encouraged some people to head to the polls who weren’t planning on voting.) Katie Porter or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might be the better candidates for speaker.
Trump has said he’s going to make a big announcement on Tuesday, Nov. 15. But even if he does announce he’ll run for President again, it might not go over the same as it did before. News organizations may not give him the coverage he wants nor they should have given him back in 2015 or 2016. He reminds me of the person who still hangs around with high school students years after they graduated. They can’t take the hint that their time is gone. He’s peaked and doesn’t realize it.
But right now, we’re in a waiting period still on Congress. One thing is certain, we need to get back to way things were before Gingrich and this Republican Revolution that has caused so much problems over the last 25-30 years. Younger voters are tired of it. Gen Xers, like myself, are tired of it. And I’m sure, people 60 and older are tired of it. They remember there once was a time when politics was boring and they didn’t have to focus on it as much.
The red wave didn’t happen and now we need to send it back to be lost at sea.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 