gracchusdixit

Like millions of Americans, I have been deeply depressed and more than a little angry for a year.  I simply could not wrap my head around the notion that anyone, no matter how much he or she may have reviled Hillary Clinton, could have been foolish and spiteful enough to vote for Donald Trump.  My gloom deepened as the months wore on and it became increasingly apparent that most Trump voters were standing by their man, even as evidence of his boundless ignorance, bottomless narcissism, total unfitness for office, and shameless personal corruption mounted. I began to feel that, if so many of my fellow Americans were so stubbornly gullible, there was little hope for the country ever to recover from the calamity of Trump’s election.  It seemed as if a new Dark Age had descended.

Adding to this cloud of despair was the apparent fecklessness of the Democratic Party.  Riven by ideological divisions, the various factions in the party seemed to be more interested in assigning blame for the results of the 2016 election than in getting their you-know-what together. For all the internal conflicts among Republicans, the fractures dividing Democrats seemed to be even worse.

Then, Tuesday happened.  In a series of important off-year elections, which are frequently thought to be harbingers of the mid-term elections that will take place next November, Democrats quite simply ran the table.  Not only did they win the big-ticket races, they won up and down the ballot, in state houses, counties, and city halls.  Not only did they win the races they were expected to win, they piled up victories where no one thought they had a chance.  And even where they were expected to win, the magnitude of their victories was breathtaking.

The Democratic candidate for New Jersey governor not only won, which he was expected to do, but won by double digits.  Indeed, the race was called within one minute of the polls closing.  Democrats now control all three branches of government in that state and by bigger margins than ever.

The outcome in Virginia was a bigger surprise.  The Democratic candidate for governor had an early lead in the polls, but that began to evaporate as his Republican opponent went full-court Trump, running an advertising blitz that was unsubtly racist.  As election day neared, the race became a toss-up, and the smart money was betting that the Republican would come out ahead.  Just 24 hours before the polls opened, Steve Bannon, Trump’s former “strategic adviser” was already taking credit for what he predicted would be a big win for “the Trump agenda”.

That didn’t happen.  On the contrary, the Democrat won by an historic margin, and Democrats swept every statewide office.  Even more surprising (though “stunning” might be the better word), Democrats completely erased a 30-seat Republican majority in Virginia’s House of Delegates, despite gerrymandering that made such an outcome seem all but impossible.  Recounts are underway in four Virginia districts where the final margins were razor-thin.  If even two of those go against Republicans, Democrats will have a majority for the first time in a generation.

The Democratic wave didn’t just roll over New Jersey and Virginia.  In the affluent exurban counties that ring Philadelphia, which have been solidly Republican for more than a century, Democrats swept into office everywhere.  In two affluent counties bordering New York City, incumbent Republicans with huge war chests and considered by all the pundits to be shoe-ins, were trounced by their Democratic challengers.  In more than two dozen mayor’s races across the country, established and well-funded Republicans were washed away by the Democratic wave.  Even in red-as-blood Georgia, two special elections for the state’s general assembly went to Democrats.

Many of these outcomes will have long-term effects no less important than the electoral results themselves.  In Virginia, for example, a federal court recently overturned the gerrymandering imposed on the state’s congressional districts by its Republican House of Delegates, which it found to be blatantly racist.  With a Democrat in the governor’s mansion, and without a decisive majority in the House of Delegates, Virginia’s Republicans have no chance of opposing the court’s ruling.  What’s more, the newly elected Democratic governor will still be in charge when the 2020 census is conducted and the boundaries of districts are reset.  There are 11 congressional districts in Virginia today, seven of which are held by Republicans, despite the fact that Democrats comprise a majority of the state’s voters.  That imbalance is about to flip, and there is absolutely nothing Republicans can do about it.

The loss of two Republican seats in Georgia’s general assembly may seem like a small thing, but it is anything but.  It has denied to Republicans the super-majority they needed to alter the state’s constitution, which they were hell-bent on doing to suppress voting rights, discriminate against the lesbian and gay community, and impose an evangelical Christian agenda on the state.  Republicans still have a majority in Georgia, but they no longer have the ability to do their worst.

Perhaps more significant than the election itself are the Democratic candidates who won that election.  To begin with, there were many more of them.  In Virginia, for example, Democrats contested fewer than half the seats in the House of Delegates four years ago.  This year, however, they contested nearly all of them.   As Woody Allen once quipped, “Eighty percent of success is just showing up.”  It seems that, when Democrats show up,  they win.

Many of these candidates, not only in Virginia but throughout the country, were brand new to politics, never having considered running for office before. Most are ordinary people, from all walks of life, who decided that they had had enough, that they had to stand up and do something.  An extraordinary number of them are women, persons of color, immigrants, and members of the LGBT and transgender communities.

That these candidates were embraced by so many voters across the land is a sign, not of deliverance, but of hope.  It is as if Americans chose to rise up and affirm with a single voice that this is who we are, this is what America truly is.  Whatever else this election may signify, it a rebuke by a large part of the electorate to Donald Trump, a repudiation of the politics of bigotry, hate and division, and a warning to those Republicans who continue to support or enable Trump and his vile agenda.

It is far too soon to cheer.  Too many of our fellow citizens cling to their prejudices and to the lies of those who stoke them.  But it is not too late to hope.   Thanks to the election of November 7, 2017, we now know that millions of Americans are determined to reject the worst impulses in our political life and embrace the best.