Celebrating the Election, Along With Odds and Ends (Together Again)

Texas governor-elect Democrat Gina Hinojosa

Wednesday night after turning on the telly I turned to the missus and said: I want to watch that show that we saw last night. That was great.

I was referring to the television coverage of the mid-term elections. What fun it was. Victory after victory was declared for Democratic candidates across the country. Defeat after defeat was announced for Republican candidates across the country. Many of the victories were upsets. No, not merely upsets, HUGE upsets. I’ve never seen an election night quite like it and feared I never would.

I’d been battling depression again Tuesday night. The election results brought me right out it. As I’ve chronicled on this blog I’ve been growing quite pessimistic about the future of this country. It seemed democracy was damn near dead and the oligarchs had won. We have a brain dead president who literally cares nothing for the common people. Trumpy lives to serve himself and incidentally his wealthy cronies. We’ve been stuck hearing his ramblings for over ten years and for nearly six of those years they’ve come from the office of the presidency.

Tuesday night signaled that the era of Trumpyism may soon be entering its death throes. We can only hope.

I love all the money that Musk and his ilk unsuccessfully poured into the Republican coffers. I love that there was a Blue Flood despite the efforts to gerrymander and suppress the votes. Clearly a case of the bad guys getting what for.

The good guys also one a bunch of governor races and we now have more Democratic then Republican governors by 29-20 with one still undecided. 

A few odds and ends:

Does anyone ever just offer odds or ends and not both? A British podcaster I listen to offers bits and bobs but never just bits or bobs. This is kind of like the perpetual pairing of flotsam and jetsam.

I’m still perplexed by the fact that in our society we seem to need some people to be content creators. We never used to need them. What happened to our content supply that people need to dedicate themselves to creating more?  Also, where do people create this content? In laboratories?

Speaking of which….I’ve been given to understand that something called “social media influencers” now abound on the internet. My question is: are any of them bad influences? 

I’m a long-time season ticket holder for the University of California women’s basketball team. It’s inexpensive and great fun. This season at games there is an “emcee.” He seems to be very much like the “hype man” (can be a woman) that they used a few times in the past. I think this is a terrible development. College sports has cheerleaders, a dance team, a rally committee, a band and mic men (and women). They are students who help create the fun atmosphere of college sports. Among the things they do is to lead cheers, always part and parcel of college sports. Now they’re bringing a mercenary, someone paid to “hype” the crowd. It’s insulting, it’s sad, it’s just plain wrong. I hate a lot of what’s happened to sports in my lifetime. This is a prime example.

You want fans to come out, cheer and be raucous? There’s one sure fire way: win games. Everything else is secondary.

Speaking of politics: I heard that the Democrats control enough state legislatures that they could abolish the electoral college and do it without a constitutional amendment. I say…go for it. I asked ChatGPT if this was true. Here’s part of its answer: “First, the Electoral College would continue to exist constitutionally, but its traditional function of allowing a candidate to win the presidency while losing the national popular vote would effectively disappear. Second, reaching 270 electoral votes would activate the agreement under its terms, but would not guarantee that it survives judicial review.” In other words the electoral college would still exist, it’s just that states will have pledged to give their votes to whoever wins the popular vote. Also it might require the Supreme Court to give it a thumbs up, so to speak. So not impossible.

I also heard that not a single sitting congressional Democrat lost their seat on Tuesday. Of course, scads of Republicans did. The good news keeps a comin’

Democratic senators from Kansas, South Carolina and maybe Mississippi? The latter an African-American? Wow.