About That “Red Wave”

As I write this, it’s evening, the day after Election Day. Not all the races have been decided yet. It seems that Donald Trump’s Republican party had an unbelievably bad night, the worst performance in a midterm for the out-of-power party in decades. When the dust settles, they are expected to have control of the House by a tiny margin, but even that is not certain. And the Senate is looking even worse for them. It was supposed to be a landslide, but it wasn’t. If the Republicans get control of Congress, their advantage will be so slim they won’t have the teeth to do much more than drag their feet and be a nuisance for two years. Their prospects range from lackluster to grim. This is nearly unheard of after a midterm.

I call them “Donald Trump’s Republican party,” because that’s what they are. They had countless opportunities to disown the would-be autocrat, but they refused. There’s nothing left of the party of Lincoln and Eisenhower. It’s now the party of Fox News and fascism. And it hasn’t gone well for them.

For months leading up to the midterm, the media ran with the narrative that we didn’t have a chance in hell. We were going to lose our democracy to a massive Red Wave of election deniers and white supremacist Christian nationalists.  Meanwhile, people who watched the actual numbers of registered voters and the high turnout for absentee and early voting kept protesting that they must be wrong. And here we are. A lot of pundits have a lot of egg on their faces. This happened because massive numbers of Americans got angry and voted, more than the polls knew what to do with. Millennials and first-time voters from Gen Z voted in droves, and they don’t answer their phones to take a poll.

I am not very proud of the United States of America. I’ve been a harsh critic and will continue to be a harsh critic. I view my country as a deeply flawed democracy built on a history of the most horrific injustice. But this election has proven that we are a democracy. We still have a say. We don’t have enough of a say. Very few people actually want what the current Republican party has been selling. The midterm ought to have been a blue wave instead of a red drizzle. But in spite of America’s gerrymandering and voter suppression, we got this far. And if we fight like hell, I am certain now that we can hold onto our deeply flawed democracy, rather than sliding into fascism. I wasn’t certain before.

And if we hold onto this deeply flawed democracy, and if we all just keep fighting like hell, I think there’s a chance that we can build a better democracy: a real democracy, with liberty and justice for all.

Gen Z can vote now. That cat isn’t going back into the bag. It used to be true that Millennials don’t vote very often, but we voted this time. Even more of us need to vote next time. It’s not going to be easy, but we can do it.

Whatever happens from here on, we had a good night.

image via Pixabay