I wish I could just let loose and celebrate unrestrained. However, the national media becomes consumed with two personalities battling it out every four years and I have continued to place great value on all the other seats in contest. I no longer enjoy so much the hilarious viral videos, or winning on Twitter for the day. Thousands of Americans die each year, because our country is so backward on social policy, and more and more I can’t let that go. At one point months ago, I asked myself if the Senate win was more important than the WH (especially in light of 2022 expectations).
In our polarized times the actual contest is between Team Blue and Team Red, because it takes many elected leaders and others in coordination to move major policy forward. It takes “farm teams“ at the state level to win the “long game”. This is hard to remember because the convenient fiction of the president being all important in our government consumes nearly all the oxygen among the media frames. Ezra Klein made this observation in 2008:
The centrality of the executive is something of a convenient fiction in American politics. Convenient for the media, which can tell the story of national affairs by following a single character. Convenient for the party that holds the White House, which can outsource the messy work of constructing an agenda to one actor. Convenient for the party that does not hold the White House, which can create an agenda out of simple opposition. And convenient for voters, who can understand politics through the actions of a discrete player and offload their dissatisfaction onto the failures of a hapless individual.
Maine
Maine Results (AP, 7:40pm Central)
Biden |
430,023 |
|
Gideon |
342,698 |
Trump |
359,502 |
|
Collins |
414,970 |
So I am heart broken that of the ~430,000 Maine voters tallied for Joe Biden (enough to win 3 of 4 EC votes there) ~87,000 who voted for him declined to help him out by making sure he had another desperately needed member on the Dem Senate Team. Had ~44,000 of those folks decided “I want Uncle Joe to have a little help so we don’t get 2-4 years of McConnell obstruction.”, we would be in a much better position right now — for GA runoffs, for the 2022 Senate contests, for the lives of American and Maine citizens.
Illinois
It is also heartbreaking for me to check the current results in IL-14 to see that of ~380,000 votes cast, Representative Lauren Underwood is behind by 558 votes — that’s a margin of 0.15%. (This is a campaign I volunteered for.) She won her office in 2018 in a R+5 GOP district. We need her expertise in healthcare so badly. Her opponent this year is a nasty bigot and xenophobe, plus he maintains a house in Florida in his wife’s name to avoid Illinois income taxes. Now we’re still waiting on portions of votes from various counties in that district:
The Lake County clerk's office is expected to update its public tallies Nov. 10 and again Nov. 17. The McHenry County clerk is expected to release all its final totals Nov. 18.
DuPage and Kane counties have updated totals since Election Day. Kendall and Will counties are waiting until Nov. 17. DeKalb is waiting until Nov. 18.
This is going to be a long wait for a lot of us.
Also in Illinois the fair tax measure failed because a billionaire, the odious Ken Griffin, put $20 million into lying about it to defeat the measure. We are still stuck with a regressive flat tax in our Constitution instead of a more fair graduated income tax.
Even the contests that go against Team Blue will not discourage me for a moment. In the end, regardless of results, it is the people we’re working with in this struggle that redeem everything.
Thanks for reading.
Oh never mind. Let’s watch a great video hit from the past !!! You have to click the link to watch at Youtube.
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