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Last night was, without a doubt, a disaster for Democrats.
But it reminds me of a story about a little boy who desperately wanted a pony for Christmas. On Christmas morning he wakes up to find a pile of horse manure under the tree instead of a pony. The child, an eternal optimist, immediately starts digging through the pile repeating to to himself, “There must be a pony here somewhere.”
I don’t know if Democrats will find a pony in last night’s dung pile, but let’s see if we can find a silver lining.
Women, especially — Democrat or Republican — touched that silver lining.
First, there is the good news that North Carolina Democrat Alma Adams, by winning a special election last night, will become the 100th female member of Congress — the highest number in history.
West Virginia’s Shelley Moore Capito will become that state’s Virginia’s first female senator — albeit a Republican.
New York’s Republican Elise Stefanik, also a Republican, at 30, became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. The formerly youngest elected Congresswoman was also a New Yorker: Democrat Elizabeth Holtzman was 31 when elected to Congress in 1973.
Utah’s Mia Love becomes the first-ever black female Republican representative.
Rhode Island’s Democrat Gina Raimondo, will become the state’s first female governor, and the first Democrat the state has elected since 1992.
An indirect but good consequence, because her husband won the Texas gubernatorial race, Cecilia Abbott will become Texas’s first Hispanic first lady.
Democrat Maura Healey became Massachusetts’s next attorney general and the first openly gay attorney general.
West Virginia’s Saira Blair, a Republican, by winning a seat in her state’s House of Delegates, became the nation’s youngest state legislator in the nation. She is 18.
It was also a good night for women (and men) reproductive rights advocates who oppose the radical “personhood” movement, as voters in North Dakota and Colorado resoundingly defeated two ballot initiatives that would have redefined life to extend legal protections to fertilized eggs, according to ThinkProgress, which adds, “This election marks the fourth and fifth times that a personhood measure has failed within the past six years. In addition to Colorado’s previous two attempts to pass personhood, Mississippi voters also rejected a ballot initiative in 2011 that would have defined life as beginning at conception.”
On the “men’s side” there are not too many silver linings to celebrate for Democrats, but casting the Party label aside for a moment here are a few firsts:
Arkansas’ Tom Cotton — yes, a “neocon” — becomes the first Iraq War veteran to be elected to the Senate. At 37, he will be the youngest senator currently serving.
Texas’ Will Hurd, elected to the House last night, is the first black Republican to win a federal election in the state since Reconstruction.
Also, South Carolina’s Tim Scott, a Republican, became the first African-American senator to win election in the South since Reconstruction.
And another related first, not necessarily a silver lining but perhaps a sign of the times, “with the loss of Rep. John Barrow (D-Ga.), for the first time in a long time there are no white House Democrats left in the Deep South,” says the Washington Post, the source for several of the “firsts” above.
Also in the “silver lining column,” measures to raise the minimum wage did well.
Voters in Alaska approved a measure to raise the minimum wage to $9.75 from its current $7.75. In Nebraska, a similar push to hike the hourly wage to $9 from the federal minimum of $7.25 also passed. And in Arkansas and South Dakota, which both currently use the federal minimum wage, voters decided to change the minimum wage to $8.50 an hour. The non-binding referendum in Illinois to raise the minimum wage to $10, from the current statewide $8.25, won as well.
The Huffington Post also reports as a “small victory” the fact that voters in Washington State approved a ballot measure to require background checks on all gun sales. However and as expected, Alabama voters passed an amendment to declare that every citizen “has a fundamental right to bear arms and that any restriction on this right would be subject to strict scrutiny.”
Overall, as the New York Magazine reports, “Democrats took a drubbing last night, but there is a silver lining for liberals, or at least a way to dull the pain: marijuana.”
The piece explains, “Oregon voted yes on Measure 91, making it the third state to allow the recreational use of cannabis, after Colorado and Washington in 2012. Anyone over the age of 21 will be allowed to partake starting July 1, just in time for summer barbecues.”
It continues:
Alaska, which decriminalized pot way back in 1975 and has had medical marijuana since before Y2K, also legalized.
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In Washington, D.C., 69 percent of voters agreed to legalize possession of up to two ounces of marijuana for those over 21, although selling is still illegal.
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Guam also joined the 23 states that allow marijuana use for health reasons, passing its own ballot measure covering “debilitating medical conditions.
In Florida, however, those in search of a pony will only find, well, manure: “A proposition for medical marijuana won 57 percent of the vote, but needed 60 to pass.”
Some may say, “With news like this, who needs news?”
All I can say is, “Hang in there, Democrats. One day ‘our pony’ will rise out of the dung.”
Lead image: www.shuterstock.com
