Republicans sweep the election

[dorchadas]

I admit, the main reason I'm taking this in stride is because I have an incredibly low opinion of the average person--I mean, the American electorate apparently decided that it wanted minimum wage increases, continued abortion protections, legalized marijuana, and that the Republicans were the best people to provide these things--and I'm already convinced that civilization is doomed from a variety of angles: climate change, water shortages, resource depletion, ocean acidification, the end of the antibiotic window, etc. And this isn't likely to accelerate any of that any more than the Reagan presidency, the 1994 elections, or the Bush years already did, though if the Democrats run screaming from any sort of liberalism again in 2016 I'll be wrong.

I expect two years of BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI, internationally embarrassing impeachment proceedings, and a whole lot of nothing. Though the worst-case scenario on the national level is probably the Democrats deciding they need to "move foward" and "work with the opposition" and getting a bunch of totally-shit bills turned into not-quite-totally-shit bills in the Senate and then passed in the spirit of reconciliation, and our uninterrupted 40-year-long slide into cyberpunk dystopian neo-feudalism will continue apace.

But on the local front, at least we got marriage equality passed already before a bigot got into power. And on the personal front, I only had to wait thirty minutes to vote. It helped that I went literally right as the polls opened and I didn't run into any of the problems that afflicted the judges in some precincts of the city. Not everyone I know was so lucky.

Comments

[q99.livejournal.com]

The reason I'm taking it in stride is because it was largely a structural win, they had a big advantage going in, and an even *bigger* disadvantage two years from now, and they are utterly incompetent to take advantage of their gains, thinking it'll let them do anything they want.

[dorchadas]

Well, there is all that voter suppression to worry about. They have two more years to get those laws in place and suppress turnout enough.

They will need to suppress it a lot more in 2016 than they did in 2014, that's true.

[q99.livejournal.com]

Oh, definitely, but I don't think they can do enough to make that fly. And hopefully they'll start getting bit for trying.