On The Elections And What I Know So Far (Which Is Already Out Of Date)

AS I'M TYPING THIS (in the morning), they still don't know who is going to control the Senate but they seem to think the House is going to flip to Republican-fascist control, I would suspect that is an expression of Republican-fascist legislatures gerrymandering and not the will of the majority of Americans who voted in the election, which is an endemic problem under our failed Constitution.  The Georgia Election between a man of character and substance and a Republican-fascist useful idiot of malignant character is too close to call and will likely be subject to a run-off.  I don't know if there were other people in the race but if they had ranked choice voting that might be obvious within a shorter time than with the clunky contraption of a run-off vote.  Though either is preferable to a person a majority didn't want to win the election gaining office, another of the major defects of our defective Constitutional system.

In my state Janet Mills soundly defeated the bargain-basement Trump, Paul LePage and from what I understand the Democrat I run luke warm on, Jared Golden may be on top but the results will await the tabulation of ranked choice for peoples' second choice added to those whose first choice was Golden.  Though I don't like him much, I'd have voted for him if I lived in his district, I'm voting a straight Democratic ticket from now on, I've only not voted one twice and in one case I regretted it. Though I'll vote for Angus King if he runs again, he caucuses with Democrats and used to be one so I'll consider him one.  Chellie Pingree trounced the Republican.  

In New Hampshire it was nice to see Maggie Hassen won over the Trumpian Bolduc, my brother tells me that Trump whined at his low-energy celebration that if Bolduc had stuck to the lies he started running on instead of running for cover he'd have won.  I doubt that, New Hampshire is still more of a Republican State than a swing state and if anyone denominated Republican loses, it's because they lost it on their demerits.  

Elsewhere the news was mixed, I was glad to see that the Huckster of Oz was seen for the snake oil peddler he is (Oprah sure can pick 'em, can't she).  Mark Kelly may win in Arizona, even with the armed voter intimidation campaign.  Arizona like Florida has too many selfish retirees to have consistently decent politics.  That's my generation, now, you know, the one that was touted as the one that was going to save the world, which I am proud to say I knew was bullshit in the 1960s.  

As of now it looks like under President Biden the number of seats lost by Democrats is a small fraction of those lost under Clinton and Obama in their first mid-term, though that's going by what's being said in the media.  As I said, Democrats are always running an uphill battle against gerrymandering so I'd count that as a positive sign that more voters prefer Biden's policies to those of the Republican-fascists and the media that has been pulling for a big red wave that doesn't seem to have washed over America except in those places that seem to be permanently benighted.  The anti-democratic features embedded into our Constitution (exacerbated by the Supreme Court)  are the overriding fact of American politics along with the Supreme Court permission for the corporate media to lie on behalf of the rich and Republican-fascist.  That is always going to be a truth of American politics until the damned Constitution is amended to remove the anti-democratic features of it and to amend the First Amendment to say that there is no right to lie in politics or about public figures just as there was no right to lie about public figures before 1964.  The Second Amendment needs to be drastically amended too, but that's an issue for another post.

There are some real downers, Grassley in Iowa, Vance in Ohio.  I'm not holding any candle for those states anymore.  I will await more news before I go on with this. I have no more hope for the state that once provided a Tom Harkin than I am the one that provide a George McGovern.  As far as I'm concerned, Ohio is just a sleazy state, Louisiana or Mississippi just a bit upriver.

I hope Kevin McCarthy's life is hell from now on because it sure as hell should be.  If Joe Biden wants to do something, starting as soon as the new Congress starts, he should start issuing very popular executive orders and policies and campaign against the Republicans in Congress and on the Supreme Court as they try to quash them, every chance he gets.  Pretending he can get along with Republicans might be something he does as a pose, but it was exactly trying to do that in fact that made both Clinton and Obama far weaker presidents than they needed to be.  I suspect he knows something about that which those two neophytes didn't from being in the Congress with them for so long.  

He should get as much aid to Ukraine as he possibly can before January, Kevin MaCarthy has already announced he'd try to cut it.  Biden should make speeches in states with large Ukrainian and other Eastern European populations, especially states which have put Republican-fascists in charge.  Democrats should take every chance they can to stick it to Republicans, every single chance they get.  They should tell the Republicans to go back to Russia.