Wednesday, November 7, 2018 12:01am EST
A Great and Terrible Night
If you’re a Democrat, this was a difficult night to define. A lot of people were hoping for a political earthquake that would heave these Trump-addled Republicans fully into the sea, but that didn’t happen. A lot of people looked at candidates like Andrew Gillum and Beto O’Rourke as the future of progressive politics, but that’s on the shelf for now. Heidi Heitkamp properly and honorably voted against Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, and that – along with some filthy dealings with the voting laws in her state – sealed her political fate. Steve King won. Etc.
And yet the separation of powers is intact again. Adam Schiff will be a committee chairman, as will many other good men and women who do not call Donald Trump their friend. The radicals of the GOP Freedom Caucus will grow in strength, further exposing the Republican Party as a bastion of extremism and hate. Washington, DC will bog down in even deeper partisan gridlock, but with Trump in the White House, doing nothing will be the best thing this government can accomplish. Rashida Tlaib is going to the House, and Kris Kobach will not be a governor.
It was a great and terrible night, and it’s all but over. We will find out soon enough about Walker in Wisconsin and Abrams in Georgia. There is always more work to do. Turn the page.
Thank you so much for joining us tonight.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 11:05pm EST
Gillum Concedes
Another jagged pill to swallow tonight. Andrew Gillum has been defeated in the Florida Senate race by Trump clone Ron DeSantis. I hope someone sniffs around this one; the last Quinnipiac poll, taken two days ago, had Gillum up by 7.
Find his concession speech on YouTube tomorrow morning. It is a thing of beauty.
California is coming in. Spanberger won in Virginia. Waiting on the Walker race in Wisconsin.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 10:50pm EST
That Was Fast
Rep. Richard Neal of Massachusetts will become the new chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee come January. A few minutes ago, Neal announced that his first order of business upon assuming the chairmanship will be to demand the IRS hand over Donald Trump’s tax returns. He is entirely within his power to do so, and doesn’t need Senate approval. Nancy Pelosi is reportedly on board.
This is already fun.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 10:30pm EST
Who’s Gonna Tell The Donald?
NBC News has officially declared that the Democrats will take majority control of the House of Representatives.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 10:20pm EST
Gut Punch
Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp has been defeated in North Dakota, putting the chances for a Democratic takeover of the senate at virtually nil. When Heitkamp first won in 2012, it was with the massive support of Native American voters. In response, North Dakota Republicans passed a law requiring a street address in order to vote. Native Americans living on reservations do not have street addresses. It’s a filthy win for the GOP, period, end of file.
NBC has called the Texas senate race for Ted Cruz. We have not seen the last of Beto O’Rourke, and his presence is still positively affecting the down-ticket races in that state, but this one stings.
Waiting on Florida, and word has it that Scott Walker guy in Wisconsin might be in trouble.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 9:55pm EST
Down Goes Kobach, and More!
Kris Kobach has been defeated in Kansas, and soundly.
Democrats have picked up a pile of additional House seats – Rose in the New York 11th, Wild in the Pennsylvania 7th, Luria in the Virginia 2nd, Phillips in the Minnesota 3rd, Sherrill in the New Jersey 11th and Sharice Davids in the Kansas (!!!) 3rd. The Davids victory is noteworthy because it’s Kansas (Thanks, Kris), and because she is an openly gay Native American woman who won in Kansas. Did I mention it’s Kansas?
Oh, and Mitt Romney will be the freshman senator from Utah. Meh.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 9:55pm EST
A Close One
Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts narrowly secured re-election by the nip-and-tuck count of 60-36.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 9:35pm EST
19
Two more Democratic House seat pickups – Scanlon in the Pennsylvania 5th and Crow in the Colorado 6th – puts the magic number for a majority switch at 19.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 9:05pm EST
Florida Passes Constitutional Restoring the Vote to People With Felony Convictions
About 1.6 million people with felony convictions in Florida just got the vote back, thanks to the passage of Constitutional Amendment 4. Those convicted of murder and sexually-related offenses are excluded, but the rest will see their rights restored after completing their prison sentence.
Truthout reporter Mike Ludwig covered the issue today:
Of all the efforts to combat voter suppression and gerrymandering appearing on statewide ballots this year, Florida’s Amendment 4 has perhaps received the most attention. That’s because the initiative would automatically restore voting rights for an estimated 1.6 million people. Nationwide, 6.1 million people have lost their right to vote due to a prior felony conviction — including 1 out of 13 would-be Black voters, according to the Sentencing Project.
Florida accounts for roughly 25 percent of those who have lost their right to vote due to felony convictions. Rules in Florida and 11 other states make it extremely difficult to get voting rights restored, even after serving a sentence and probation or parole. If approved, Amendment 4 would automatically restore voting rights for people with prior felony convictions upon completion of their sentences, except those convicted of murder or a felony sexual offense.
A significant victory for social justice that strikes a blow against the molecular-level racism of the penal system. More voters is always a good thing. Always.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 9:05pm EST
The Wave Is Looking Smaller by the Moment
Those who were expecting some kind of “Blue Tsunami” should probably brace themselves for disappointment. Indiana looks to be a pretty comprehensive wipeout, with Democrat Joe Donnelly losing his Senate seat. Democrats Gillum and Nelson in Florida have seen their margins evaporate, with Gillum now down by about 90,000 votes. Joe Manchin held on to his Senate seat in West Virginia, and the Texas Senate race is a dead heat.
It’s a long night and a lot of seats are still in play, but the “Blue Wave” appears to be shrinking right now.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 8:45pm EST
Rashida Tlaib Is Going to the House
From Vox:
Former Michigan state Rep. Rashida Tlaib has become one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress, after winning her race for Michigan’s 13th Congressional District on Tuesday. Tlaib is one of two Muslim women who were considered extremely likely to win the general election; the other is Ilhan Omar, a Muslim-American woman running in Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District.
Michigan’s 13th District, which includes part of Detroit and suburbs near the city, was previously held by former Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat who resigned earlier this year in the wake of sexual harassment allegations. Since there were no Republican candidates vying for the seat, Tlaib ran unopposed and easily won the general election in the heavily Democratic district.
Happy news indeed.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 8:40pm EST
Pritzker Wins Illinois Governor’s Race
Democrat JB Pritzker handily defeated incumbent Republican governor Bruce Rauner in Illinois by a margin of 51-43. Progressives everywhere heave a mighty “meh.”
But seriously folks, Bruce Rauner’s mission in life was the annihilation of vital social programs. Pritzker is no prize, to be sure, but he doesn’t go to bed at night trying to think of bold new ways to screw over poor folks.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 8:20pm EST
So Shines a Good Deed in a Weary World
Kim Davis appears to have lost. The clerk in Rowan County, Ky., became a folk hero to social conservatives after refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses. She trails Democrat Elwood Caudill by 54 to 46 percent, with 89 percent of precincts reporting
— GOVERNING (@GOVERNING) November 7, 2018
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 8:05pm EST
Another
Democrat Donna Shalala has defeated Republican incumbent Maria Elvira Salazar in the Florida 27th by a 51-46 margin as of now. Another Democratic pick-up, the margin is now 21.
The polls in Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Texas just closed.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 7:45pm EST
Brown Wins
Democrat Sherrod Brown holds on to his Senate seat by a 61-40 margin as of now. The Republicans really wanted this one. Nope.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 7:45pm EST
Democrats Get First House Seat Pickup
It’s official: Democrat Jennifer Wexton has defeated Republican incumbent Barbara Comstock in the Virginia 10th by a 58-42 margin at this point in the counting. Democrats now need 22 seats to take control of the House.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 7:20pm EST
Important Exit Poll Data You Can Probably Ignore
Exit polls, in the main, make me want to run up a tree. My mistrust for them predates the Great Exit Poll Disaster of 2000, when all of them were wrong because so many people didn’t want to tell a reporter they had actually voted for George W. Bush.
People lie to exit pollsters all the time, sometimes out of sheer bloodymindedness. “My vote is my business alone, go away.” Besides, if you’re an Iowa voter living in the 4th District, are you really going to be comfortable telling someone who works for the public prints that you just voted for Steve King after a week of him getting (further) exposed as a white supremacist?
No, I don’t trust them. If even a few people lie to an exit pollster, it skews the total result which is then breathlessly reported by the national media, which then skews reality itself. They only report on exit polls after the polls close now, one ancillary benefit from 2000. Hopefully they’ll hold to the habit.
All that being said, here is some interesting exit polling data from ABC News:
In results so far, 44 percent of voters approve of Trump’s job performance, while 55 percent disapprove. And while the House races will be fought district by district, voters by 53-43 percent say they’d rather see the Democrats than the Republicans in control of the House after this election.
Antipathy toward Trump doesn’t reach majority support for impeachment – 41 percent of voters support impeaching the president and removing him from office, with 55 percent opposed. Still, 39 percent say they cast their ballots to show opposition to Trump, vs. 26 percent who say they voted to show him support. (33 percent say he didn’t figure in their vote.)
There are a lot more numbers that dig down deep into issues of race, Brett Kavanaugh and the #MeToo movement, immigration, health care and so forth. If exit polls are to your taste, you’ll have plenty here to chew on.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 7:05pm EST
Bernie Wins
Bernie Sanders has been re-elected in Vermont. Tens of people are surprised.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 6:55pm EST
Polls Closing in Several Key States
The polls close at 7:00pm in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia. Of these, the most interesting are Florida and Georgia, where Democrats Gillum and Abrams face Republicans DeSantis and Kemp in the governor’s races. Florida’s Senate seat is also up for grabs. We won’t see results from Georgia any time soon, but Florida may be ready to deliver the goods.
Virginia will tell us a lot about where the balance of power in the House is headed. New Hampshire might see a surprise upset in the governor’s race.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 5:45pm EST
Record-Breaking Volume of Voting Problems Reported All Over
From The Washington Post (paywall article, all apologies, here’s the gist):
Civil rights groups and election officials fielded thousands of reports of voting irregularities as voting began across the country Tuesday, with voters and advocates complaining of broken machines, rejected ballots and untrained poll workers improperly challenging Americans’ right to vote.
A coalition of voting-rights organizations reported more than 10,000 calls by 11:30 a.m. — a higher call volume than in any recent midterm election — and referred many of them to state and local election officials, the groups said in a news conference in Washington. Together, the organizations have deployed about 6,500 lawyers and monitors across 30 states to protect ballot access — more than in any previous election.
(Emphasis added)
This would seem to jibe with the reports we’ve been seeing from a variety of other sources. A whole bunch of today’s elections are going to wind up in court, I think.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 5:45pm EST
Shady GOP Shenanigans as Indiana Polls Close
The polls close at 6:00pm in Indiana, a few scant minutes from now. As I explained last week, this is one of the states that will indicate if a “Blue Wave” is happening, and if it is, how big it may turn out to be:
In Indiana, Republicans enjoy the fat end of the state’s nine House seats by a score of 7-2. The 4th and 6th District seats are currently vacant because their previous Republican occupants ran for Senate and were defeated in the primary. The odds favor GOP candidates winning those two seats (Greg Pence, brother of Mike Pence, is the Republican candidate in the 6th), but the 9th and 2nd Districts are another matter.
In the 2nd, GOP Rep. Jackie Walorski faces health care company executive and former minister Mel Hall. The district leaned Democratic until Republican gerrymandering in 2010 altered the math, so Hall’s chances are better than most. In the 9th, GOP Rep. and notorious carpetbagger Trey Hollingsworth faces Bloomington attorney Liz Watson in what has become the race to watch in the Hoosier state. Victory is a very hard dollar for Democrats to make in Indiana. We will know the “Blue Wave” is high if Walorski and/or Hollingsworth lose their gigs next week.
An indication of how hotly contested this state has been comes in this report from Valparaiso. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but it seems Republicans don’t want to make sure everyone has a chance to vote.
The opening of 12 polling stations in the area was delayed today due to a “shortage of workers and access problems,” so a judge ordered they be kept open an extra two and a half hours to compensate. GOP attorney Chris Buckley asked the judge to reconsider. One voter was told the polls were delayed in opening because the Republican inspector never showed up and no ballots were delivered.
Nah, not shady at all.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 5:04pm EST
Trump’s Immigration Stance Could Backfire for GOP at the Polls
President Trump’s hardline immigration policies and his inflammatory rhetoric about border security and the migrant caravan in Mexico could backfire at the polls today, according to a survey of likely midterm voters released today by Families Belong Together, a migrant rights group.
The survey, conducted by ALG Research and backed by Democratic strategists, found that a majority of likely voters (54 percent) support ending the Trump administration’s policy of indefinitely detaining humanitarian asylum seekers from Central America at the southern border. A whopping 66 percent of likely voters oppose the Trump’s family separation policy that devolved into a full-blown scandal and humanitarian crisis earlier this year.
Since his election campaign, Trump has attempted to paint immigrants as violent “criminals” in order to rile up his nativist base and stoke fear among older white voters. Trump ramped up his racist rhetoric as the midterms approached in an effort to bring right-wing voters to the polls, but it does not appear to be resonating with most voters. Only 26 percent of likely voters believe that immigrants commit more crimes than other groups, a sentiment based entirely on Trumpian lies that have been debunked over and over. Only 36 percent said immigration levels should be decreased.
The poll also found that healthy majorities of voters favor comprehensive immigration reform that would provide undocumented immigrants with a path to citizenship and allow undocumented immigrants who arrive in the country as children to stay in the US. President Obama pursued these policies after reform efforts failed in Congress, while Trump has repealed or threatened to repeal them.
– Mike Ludwig
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 3:00pm EST
The Joy of Andrew and Beto
The East Coast rain described in an earlier post has gone all aggro on me here in New Hampshire. It looks like rain out my window but sounds like people are pelting my house with stones. Serious rain, granite New Hampshah rain ya flatlandahs, better believe it. I’m going out to vote in this angry flying soup soon, and am hoping my umbrella is up to the drill.
Before I go, however, I want to take a moment to say that while I am tied in absolute knots of anxiety over the outcome of today’s elections, I must acknowledge that this has been just about the most interesting, inspirational and hopeful election season I’ve ever experienced. Exciting progressive candidates have been popping off like fireworks all across the country, and winning!
Watching Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum make Ron DeSantis look like a guy who fell asleep at the baseball game has been a true and undeniable joy. DeSantis has been playing from behind since the night Gillum was nominated, and Gillum has occupied a fair portion of DeSantis’ head for a while now. “A hit dog’s gonna holler” and “I don’t think you’re racist; racists think your racist” will go down in political history as two of the most decisive “owns” ever dropped.
The latest Quinnipiac University Poll, released yesterday, had Gillum up by 7. We will know what’s what in a few hours.
And then there is Beto O’Rourke of Texas, running for the Senate against one of the worst humans in government, Ted Cruz. Cruz is what you get when you leave butter out in the sun for too long. The last poll I saw had O’Rourke pulling within three points of Cruz, but the odds are stoutly against him.
O’Rourke – he of the Willie Nelson endorsement and the heartfelt defense of athletes taking a knee – is a politician with a great mind and a bright future. Ted Cruz misunderstood “Green Eggs & Ham” on live television while trying to shut down the government, again. One does not have to underscore the difference between them any more vividly.
However this day shakes out, it has been a pleasure to watch them both. One way or the other, we have certainly not seen the last of Andrew and Beto. That, too, gives me joy.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 1:00pm EST
Problems at the Polls
When voters in Detroit arrived at Martin Luther King Jr. High School to cast their ballots this morning, they were greeted with an empty room. There were no voting machines to be found. The machines were eventually located in a locked closet for which no one had the key. In the 90 minutes it took to resolve the situation, a number of would-be voters left without voting.
Such events are all too commonplace in a nation that needs to upgrade its election infrastructure right along with its roads and bridges:
My mom also said that in Fort Greene all but one scanner is broken so there’s 200 people waiting to scan their ballot at one machine https://t.co/iD5sKJDMcI
— sarah sklaw (@NotSklawface) November 6, 2018
And:
The State of Georgia now admits that power cords were not provided for the voting machines here.
Power cords. https://t.co/FywMLKGbsY
— Shaun King (@shaunking) November 6, 2018
And:
I’m at Annistown Elementary School in Snellville, GA, where hundreds of voters have waited 4.5 hours to vote today because electronic voting machines weren’t working pic.twitter.com/4BJLYVtiEL
— Kira Lerner (@kira_lerner) November 6, 2018
And:
Am told 3 people trying to vote at the courthouse in Fort Yates on Standing Rock were told no because their ID had an address saying “Avenue” instead of “Street.” @StandingRockST officials issued new IDs. #NDNativeVote Background on tribal efforts here: https://t.co/yuf1bLK78O
— Carrie Levine (@levinecarrie) November 6, 2018
And:
Ready to wait? Hundreds of voters stand in line for hours this morning at this SW Atlanta polling place. Only three voting machines! What’s going on here? Live report at noon. pic.twitter.com/lewTPUZnf1
— Tom Regan (@tomreganWSB) November 6, 2018
And:
One out of four voting machines in Flatbush, Brooklyn (dist 42/43) is broken and one “never worked,” per a poll worker. So there’s >200 people here now waiting to use two machines pic.twitter.com/pMVYsXjHWZ
— Zoë Schlanger (@zoeschlanger) November 6, 2018
There is an old quote attributed to Mark Twain: “If voting made a difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.” Pithy, to be sure, but of dubious accuracy. One could argue ad nauseam about the relative value of voting in these United States, but one fact is beyond dispute: A lot of Republicans have been expending a lot of energy to try and keep a lot of people from voting in this election, and a lot of those people are Black, Native or Latinx.
The case of Brian Kemp’s brutal voter suppression efforts in Georgia has already been noted on this blog, but Kemp is far from alone. Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state currently running as the Republican candidate for governor, has turned that state into a laboratory for experimenting on innovative ways to disenfranchise inconvenient voters … and, of course, there is the president of the United States of America, who turned Kobach loose in that disgraceful and now-defunct “commission on voter fraud.”
There are ways to suppress voter turnout, and then there are ways. A report out of Texas this morning described a “crowd control exercise” being planned by the US Border Patrol in El Paso. The media was lavishly invited to attend so all of Texas could watch armed, armored agents flexing their muscles at the border.
This brazenly conspicuous show of Election Day force did not sit well with leaders of the Latinx community. State Reps. Rafael Anchía and Mary Gonzalez, chair and vice-chair of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, raised several shades of Hell. “This administration continues to use immigration policy for political purposes,” they said. “The made-for-media ‘crowd control’ drill, conducted on Election Day, is a cynical effort to suppress the Latino vote in a region seeing record turnout.”
Someone heard them, because the “demonstration” was abruptly called off by the Border Patrol, even though members of the media had already showed up to cover it. No reason for the cancellation has been forthcoming.
While such tactics are about as subtle as a car accident, they may not be having the effect desired by those deploying them. Google’s “top trending search term in the U.S. on the morning of Election Day,” reports The Hill, was “dónde votar” (“where to vote” in Spanish), which could suggest that a substantial number of Latinx voters were “looking to get out the vote in Tuesday’s midterm elections.”
The effort to thwart voters is pervasive and all too real. The Brennan Center for Justice has provided an important guide for what to do if you encounter problems at the polls. Read it and pass it on.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 11:55am EST
Does Rain Help Republicans?
If you’re east of St. Louis and planning to vote today, be prepared to deal with some interesting weather. The entire Eastern seaboard, from north Florida to the Maine/Canada border, will be collectively wetted down with rain and thunderstorms. Thunderstorms could be significant in and around New York City, Washington DC and Raleigh NC, and they’re talking about possible flooding on the panhandle.
It is going to be good and wet in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Farther west, look for morning showers and wind in Chicago (no, really), rain in Michigan, rain and snow in Minnesota, and rain with some mountain snow in Washington State. Pretty much everything from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean will be blue skies all around, with some possible snow in the Rockies to be aware of.
The weather in the Eastern US could play a critical role in the outcome of today’s vote, if history is any guide. “So who benefits from the bad weather,” asks US News & World Report. “In cases studied between 1948 and 2000, decreased voter turnout benefited Republican candidates for the White House, with every inch of rain above normal garnering the Republican candidate an extra 2.5 percent of the vote.”
Not everyone agrees, however. “Thomas Fujiwara, a Princeton University economics professor, told The Washington Post in 2016 that ‘the effect of rain on turnout has been getting weaker in recent years, and it might even be zero now.’ Early voting and mail voting could lessen inclement weather’s effect on elections, he said.”
One GOP candidate is thrilled about the rain. Republican Bob Hugin, running for Senate in New Jersey, calls it “Republican weather” and welcomes the deluge with open arms. “This election is about who gets the vote out and who doesn’t,” said Hugin at a Toms River rally, “and I hope it rains hard tomorrow.”
Remember: The people who support everything you despise will vote today even if it is raining live, ravenous jaguars outside. I’m just sayin’.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 11:00am EST
Dirty Dealing Down in Georgia
Greg Palast, the peerless investigative journalist whose indispensable work has spanned the last two decades, has been covering the election shenanigans in Georgia for Truthout. His latest deep dive into the odious actions of Republican secretary of state and candidate for governor Brian Kemp, titled Purged Voters’ ‘Provisional’ Ballots Could Decide Georgia Governor Race, is required reading today:
Rahiem is just one of more than 340,134 Georgians Kemp has purged from the voter rolls based on dead-wrong evidence they’d moved from the state or from their home county. It took a federal lawsuit — which I filed jointly with voting rights advocate Helen Butler — to force Kemp to divulge the names and addresses of those whose registration he canceled in a single year, 2017.
And, while Kemp may believe that the tidal wave of purges may overcome a Democratic Blue Wave, there is another possibility: When a voter turning up to the polling station discovers his/her registration is missing or canceled, the voter has the right, under federal law, to cast a “provisional” ballot.
However, the man who decides whether these “provisional” ballots will be counted is … Brian Kemp.
But Kemp should stop grinning. “Federal judges may feel differently about Kemp’s right not to count these provisional ballots,” says Jeanne Mirer, lead attorney on the lawsuit filed against Kemp in October. If the court determines that Kemp misused his power as Georgia’s “Purge’n General,” it could order that those provisional votes be counted.
Georgia bears watching all day long.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 10:00am EST
Let’s Talk Enthusiasm
One of the more amusing aspects of this line of work is that, on days like this, I get no peace from friends and family. They all know what I do for a living, they all know what day this is, and they all do me the solid service of letting me know after they’ve voted what turnout is like in their little corner of the world.
Over the nine national elections I have covered for Truthout, I have found these messages from all across the country to be a genuinely reliable barometer for national election enthusiasm. It is anecdotal, to be sure, but like Varys’ little birds, they seldom steer me wrong. I trust them more than I trust the TV people, anyway.
As usual on Election Day, my phone is blowing up. My favorite message so far this morning came from the all-important state of Georgia, where Democrat Stacey Abrams is in a brutal neck-and-neck race for the governorship against Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp. Kemp has become notorious for his efforts to strip hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Black, from the voter rolls. A few days ago, he coughed up an evidence-free accusation that the Democrats were tampering with the process, because irony is still free of charge.
The message came from just outside Atlanta, where my friend tells me people are waiting in the rain for nearly an hour to vote. This is a very hopeful sign, as the Georgia governor’s race is a key bellwether for the size of the so-called “Blue Wave.” If Abrams pulls out a victory in Georgia to become the first Black woman governor in US history, it suggests that wave is cresting pretty damn high indeed.
There is also this, from progressive activist and writer Sally Kohn:
ELECTION DAY HIGHLIGHT: According to data from @LetsMobilizeUS at least 300,000 people volunteered knocking doors, making calls, etc., for #midterms2018. @swingleft volunteers alone knocked more than 2,000,000 doors THIS WEEKEND ALONE in 84 of the closest House races.
— Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) November 6, 2018
It’s still very early, but it does seem to appear that folks put on their voting shoes this morning.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 9:00am EST
It Begins
Three years and five months ago, Donald Trump descended on a golden elevator and fired the first salvo of the strange, callous, racist war he has been waging ever since. Trump is not on any ballot today, but that is in name only. Today, he gets his first real report card, and the rest of us get to find out what kind of country we really live in.
The first key state polls close at 6:00 pm in Indiana, followed by Virginia, Florida, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Pennsylvania closes at 8:00 pm. Check here to see the poll closing times in your state.
Almost as if he specifically wanted to remind us of what is at stake tonight, Trump once again rolled out his oft-repeated lie about “voter fraud” yesterday with the help of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The Trump/Sessions “warning” carried ominous overtones of doom and calamity for that 0.0003 percent of the populace who dares to actually commit voter fraud.
The way I see it, the purpose of this gruff grumbling was twofold: First, to intimidate as many voters as he could. Second, to set the stage for a push to de-legitimize tonight’s election results, should matters not turn in Trump’s favor.
On the upside, the grassroots organization Healthcare-NOW has been tracking House races with candidates who support Medicare for All (HR 676), and you might be amazed to learn that such candidates are running in more than half the races that will be decided tonight. If you support Medicare for All, here are the names to watch tonight as the results roll in.
It’s a big night, folks. Stick with us and we’ll roll through it together.
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