I have to remind myself that the global euphoria we’re all participating in really is what it feels like: an extremely important episode in American history. It comes at a time when the country is starting to feel like the end of its dominance might be in sight, but Christ, it’s seriously goddamn fantastic.
I seriously would not want to be Barack Obama, inheriting this clusterfuck of shitstorms that’s clearly going to get worse before it gets better, and his grandmother died, and he has to take the kids to the animal shelter and steer them away from the 8-year old Great Dane with the sad eyes and whose job got outsourced. Jesus.
Fuck Prop 8 and the Positive Bradley Effect that exists for convicted Alaska senators for a minute. The following things happened:
The Democrats picked up at least 5 Senate seats. I think they’ll get Oregon, and maybe one more. That’s a 56-seat majority, minimum. It might be 58. If Joe Lieberman wants to be a total douche and officially try to be the shrunken, rump GOP’s most liberal senator, fine. The Democrats will own the Senate 57-43. That’s a bigger majority than the GOP has had since before 1932.
They won at least 19 net House seats. Could be more.
Obama won Florida. He won Pennsylvania–and every other blue state. He won Ohio. He won motherfucking Indiana. It hasn’t gone blue since 1964 and unlike Virginia, isn’t exactly an electromagnet for cosmopolitan types.
Oklahoma retains its title as the nation’s worst state. Besides being ugly, tornadic and full of Christians, it was the state with the highest McCain win by percentage: 65.6% to Obama’s 34.4. (Wyoming was a close second, but the two counties home to Laramie and Jackson Hole went blue–not a single Oklahoma county did, and Oklahoma has way more.)
In New York the Democrats won the State Senate to control all three branches of government for the first time since the precambrian rock underlying the Adirondacks was vomited from a molten earth. New York City’s last Republican seat was swept away, along with two others upstate, and the last Republican Representative from New England is now gone, too. New York and New England hold a combined 51 seats in the House. 48 of those are Democratic.
San Francisco went Democratic by 85%. More than Manhattan, but less than the Bronx. Dallas County, Harris County (Houston) and Bexar County (San Antonio): all blue. There is potential in Texas.
A map of Congressional distrcits still looks overwhelmingly red at first glance, due to the agglutinated lameness of people who don’t live near many other people, but check it:
Now compare that to just after 2006, which, keeping in mind, was an even bigger gain.
The Southwest is particularly dramatic. Democrats dominate the NE, the coastal West (where everybody lives), the Upper Midwest, and even in the South, they fare much, much better than Republicans are doing in, say, New England. Now, the fastest growing region in the country is also trending blue the fastest. I think it’s going to be a long time before the Republicans get to run the country into the ground again.
Good luck, President(-elect) Obama.
Suck the Rainbow 