I finally have a few minutes to get back to this blog, the election, and my involvement therewith, having taken up a lot of time, including more than 2 hours standing in the rain and wind holding a sign. Does that sort of thing really change any minds?
Anyway..
When I went to bed Tuesday night, Lamont was behind, but unlike that horrible night two years ago, there was hope, considering where the ballots were uncounted, that things would turn around. And they did. Ned will have a Democratic legislature, which should make life a little easier for him. I’ve heard from some folks that Ned doesn’t project a strong enough image, etc., but I think he’ll have more steel than people expect. It was Ned, after all, that stepped up and took on Lieberman, when no one else would do it, and it’s thanks to him that we finally saw the back of Lieberman. It’s an extra bonus that besides taking pleasure in Tuesday’s Democratic victories, we can wallow in schadenfreude at the thought of how pissed Lieberman must be at the thought of Lamont in the governor’s chair while he is reduced to bleating out bothsiderisms.
On a purely local level we did pretty well here in Groton, winning both state rep seats, and hopefully seeing the last of former one term state rep John Scott, who specializes in mud slinging campaigns. Unfortunately, Heather Somers, our incumbent Republican State Senator, was re-elected by the gun toting yahoos (Heather is an NRA fave) in the northern part of our district. Here in her home town of Groton, where we know her well, she lost to her far superior opponent, Bob Statchen.
The good people of Groton also surprised in another respect. A proposed charter revision, which would have allowed for mandatory multiple budget referenda every year, was voted down rather decisively. The proponents were a group of, for the most part, tea party types. Had it passed it would have been particularly bad for the schools, whose budgets were the main targets. Those of us on the “No” side had a tough job of it, since the “Yes” side could make their argument on a bumper sticker: “It’s your money, you deserve a vote”, while the “No” side’s argument was that political loser: nuanced and complicated. It’s always a stunning surprise when the right side wins in one of these situations, so it was one of a number of satisfactory outcomes on the local level.
Okay, so I was slightly wrong when I said that as go the Red Sox so go the Democrats. The Red Sox actually did better than the Democrats. I guess, geezer that I am, I can’t quite grasp that this is a new century, and the storied losers have changed their ways. Anyway, despite the fact that we didn’t win the long shot races that would have been delicious, such as the Texas Senate race, we did do about as well nationwide as could be reasonably expected, especially considering the degree to which the vote is suppressed in so many states.
Now the Democrats face a daunting task. It has been an honorable Democratic tradition for many decades now for the Democrats to get the shit beat out of them in years ending with zero, so that they are faced in as few places as possible with the moral question of whether they should engage in the same sort of gerrymandering that has enabled the Republicans to get into position to destroy the Republic. They will want to keep that purity intact. The odds are stacked against them. Trump will be running for reelection, and the odds are he’ll be even more hated then than he is now. We will quite likely be in a recession. It will be well nigh impossible for the Democrats to lose big time in 2020. But I have faith. They can pull it off. Unlike the Red Sox, they have not changed.
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