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Wha hoppa.
Well, that's it, then; the AP's called the Virginia race. The entire legislature is now Democratic-controlled.
I kind of can't believe it, to be quite honest.
I also note that, while lots of attention was given to voting "glitches" on Tuesday, there are no roaring accusations of mass fraud from any notable quarter. Everyone is actually being civil about it, and the executive branch immediately acknowledged the change with its own concession, giving Rumsfeld a long-overdue boot.
All this, too, runs against my predictions.
What just happened? Holy smokes. I am shaking a little, and I have a terrible headache, as the tension breaks ker-twanngggg. It's going to take a while for me to digest all of this.
I'll reiterate an earlier statement, mostly to help me stay focused: This doesn't so much accomplish anything as clear the path for real accomplishment. The Democrats might have a lot of the same problems as the Republicans, or any other class of deep-dish politicians, but their... polarization is so very different from the other party's. They less pass through messages that the others would block. No more anti-intellectualism or anti-science thinking, at least not at the party level. This is tremendous.
I have only lately, like in the last five years, started to learn to become politically active. Suddenly I no longer need to be stuck in resist, resist, resist mode, the only one I've ever known; suddenly, I can instead join a movement to get things done. If I'm not terribly convinced that the shiny new Democratic legislature actually knows what it wants to do with itself, maybe I can join with other people and start signaling some good suggestions at it.
I kind of can't believe it, to be quite honest.
I also note that, while lots of attention was given to voting "glitches" on Tuesday, there are no roaring accusations of mass fraud from any notable quarter. Everyone is actually being civil about it, and the executive branch immediately acknowledged the change with its own concession, giving Rumsfeld a long-overdue boot.
All this, too, runs against my predictions.
What just happened? Holy smokes. I am shaking a little, and I have a terrible headache, as the tension breaks ker-twanngggg. It's going to take a while for me to digest all of this.
I'll reiterate an earlier statement, mostly to help me stay focused: This doesn't so much accomplish anything as clear the path for real accomplishment. The Democrats might have a lot of the same problems as the Republicans, or any other class of deep-dish politicians, but their... polarization is so very different from the other party's. They less pass through messages that the others would block. No more anti-intellectualism or anti-science thinking, at least not at the party level. This is tremendous.
I have only lately, like in the last five years, started to learn to become politically active. Suddenly I no longer need to be stuck in resist, resist, resist mode, the only one I've ever known; suddenly, I can instead join a movement to get things done. If I'm not terribly convinced that the shiny new Democratic legislature actually knows what it wants to do with itself, maybe I can join with other people and start signaling some good suggestions at it.
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It's extremely encouraging, and the rest of us are happy to see that American democracy is still capable of working. It was not looking good there for a while.
It doesn't look like the Democrats are going to do the things they really need to do, which are:
1) Impeach Bush
2) Do something about signing statements, like making them absolutely illegal (this is the usual cycle: leave a loophole for sane people, have it abused by insane people, have it removed altogether by fed up people.)
3) Put another 250,000 troops into Iraq. Now that Rumsfeld has cut and run it might be possible to give the military the resources they said they needed at the beginning.
4) Repeal the Military Commissions Act of 2006. I really would like to be able to travel in the U.S. again.
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