Something's Happening

It just keeps getting better. Even the long-shots came in, and the winners won by double their predicted margins.

Via Wonkette:

 

 Charlie Pierce:

Elsewhere, Jackson Miller, the GOP legislative whip, lost to a Marine veteran named Lee Carter, who ran as a Democratic Socialist. Late in the campaign, Miller’s people sent around a flyer linking Carter to Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx. That didn’t work, either. In the western part of the state, a Democrat named Chris Hurst flipped a Republican-held seat; Hurst’s girlfriend, Alison Parker, was a TV reporter who was shot to death live and on camera. Unsurprisingly, Hurst ran, and won, on a gun-control platform. The Democrats also elected the first Latina ever to serve in the House.

SNIP

A Sikh was elected mayor of Hoboken, and a Liberian immigrant named Wilmot Collins ran as a progressive for mayor of Helena, Montana, and beat a four-term Republican incumbent. African-American mayors were elected for the first time in Statesboro, Milledgeville, and Cairo in Georgia, and in St. Paul, Minnesota. Charlotte elected its first African-American woman to be its mayor. All of these people were Democrats.

Political Animal:

Of the 16 seats picked up by Democrats, 12 of the winners were women. Not only did trans woman Danica Roem defeat “bathroom bill” sponsor Bob Marshall, Joan Walsh described some of the other winners:

Progressive Jennifer Carroll Foy, one of the first black female graduates of the Virginia Military Institute, became the only public defender in the House of Delegates. Hala Ayala, a single mother who became a Department of Homeland Security cyber-security specialist, and Elizabeth Guzman, an AFSCME member, social worker and Latino immigrant, became the first two Latinas in the House of Delegates. Kathy Tran, who came here at seven months old, became the first Vietnamese refugee. Cheryl Turpin, who ran in a special election earlier this year and lost, defeated her GOP opponent in Virginia Beach.

Tom Periello, who lost the Democratic primary to Ralph Northam but proceeded to work his heart out to help his party win in Virginia said, “Turnout was way up where we ran candidates. And particularly where we ran a diverse slate.”

TPM:

Now, we’re a year from election day 2018. A lot can happen. But if numbers and enthusiasm look like this on election day, Democrats are in a strong position to reclaim the House and possibly the Senate. A certainty? Of course not. And it is critical to recognize that this didn’t just happen. It happened both because of the country’s basic rejection of Trump and the Trump Republican party but also because of countless hours of work organizing, knocking on doors, planning, and money to fund it all. It took lots of people simply deciding to take the effort to vote.

If there is not a Democratic candidate in Every. Single. Goddamn. Race. In. Kentucky. Next. Year. we richly deserve the down-to-bedrock stripping we are going to get from Governor I Got Mine Fuck You.