Still Ain't No Wave

We've got an awful lot of fretting and hand-wringing going on - with good reason, me thinks.

But we've finally got a lot more people paying a lot more attention now, which is the only thing that makes a democracy work, which should be obvious, which apparently isn't obvious because we've been having these elections where 60-70% of us seem to take it all for granted, refusing to do the one goddamned thing we all have to do if we expect our little experiment in self-government to keep going.

We can't sit on our asses letting everybody else do the work. Shitty things happen when we get comfortable having other people make our decisions for us.

Slate:

Democrats have lost their one-vote lead in a state election that will determine control over the Virginia House of Delegates. The race is now a tie, and the State Board of Elections will determine a winner by drawing lots. If Democrat Shelly Simonds wins, Democrats will break the GOP’s 20-year chokehold on power in the House. If Republican David Yancey wins, the GOP will retain unified control of the state legislature.

-and-

If Simonds loses, incoming Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam will have to govern with both houses of the assembly controlled by slim Republican majorities. This divided government will not reflect the will of the voters. In November, Democratic candidates won the state’s total House vote by nine points. Thanks to gerrymandering, their ability to break Republicans’ grasp on the House has come down to pure chance. In a democracy, the outcome of a wave election should not depend upon names drawn from a fishbowl.

So we get to sweat this one out, waiting for the fates to settle it for us - partly because too many of us rationalized our way into thinking one vote doesn't matter.

Decisions get made by the people who show up.

So show up or shut up. Especially now. Don't start thinking we can fix it all with one or two elections. We have a very long way to go because we've just now started to fight back.