A Holding Pattern We're Going To Stay In
No Matter The Final Results, The 2022 Election Didn't Magically Disappear The Threats To Americans, To Our Future, & To Democracy
It’s five days after the 2022 election; and the US remains in a holding pattern.
A “holding pattern” can happen at an airport when one or more airplanes can’t land, for various reasons. When that happens, airplanes are directed to fly in giant loops called a “holding pattern.” Sometimes for hours.
Flying up in the air in a holding pattern can get dicey if weather conditions change, or if the plane starts to get low on fuel. Trouble from flying in the holding pattern can be a great catalyst for high-tension movie plots. Not so fun to actually live through, though… for the passengers, or for the flight crew. Nobody likes to get stuck flying around up in the air; in an increasingly uncomfortable and risky situation.
This Holding Pattern Is Going To Stick
In this country, we’re going to stay in a holding pattern long after all of the 2022 election results are settled. We’re likely going to stay until we see what happens in the 2024 election.
We’re going to stay because the risks in the US haven’t spontaneously disappeared in this election. They didn’t dissolve. Trumpism didn’t evaporate.
Election deniers, election under-miners, and voter suppression advocates did get elected. Anti-science and anti-public-education fans did get elected and re-elected. Anti-public-health officials who have already been responsible for thousands or tens of thousands of covid-19 deaths did get re-elected; and remain in positions of significant power. Pro-Christian nationalists got elected and re-elected. Pro-gun-proliferation fans got elected and re-elected. Book banners and history whitewashers got elected and re-elected. Conspiracy theorists got elected and re-elected. Anti-abortionists got elected and re-elected. Officials who helped Roe v. Wade get overturned got re-elected. Bigoted, misogynistic, racist, anti-Semitic officials got elected and re-elected.
Results everywhere else are a bit of a mix. Clearly, lots of extremist, election-denying, conspiracy-theory-backing, and bigoted individuals still got voted in to state legislatures, at local levels, as governors, as election overseers, and even as US Representatives and US Senators. That didn’t go away. Some races remain unsettled; like the Arizona governor’s race. That’s a hot race that’s still close and still unsettled. For Arizona governor… Democratic candidate Katie Hobbs is in the lead, with election-denier, Republican candidate Kari Lake trailing slightly; and 89% of the Arizona vote counted.
We knew that election results might take a week or more to settle and clarify; and so they have. Many, many races are incredibly close.
There’s lots of celebrating… but the tight, just-barely-eked-out victories are in some cases a very narrow near-miss. A close call.
That’s a problem that needs serious work for 2024. We cannot ignore those very tight races when the 2024 stakes will be way higher than in this election.
And so…. very many of the important and critical questions about our democracy, our rights, our freedoms, and our future remain hanging in the balance. The holding pattern holds. Razor-thin wins are no guarantee of any stability or certainty. Especially in an era of increasing political violence; in an always-evolving pandemic; and in a time when many elected officials are, in fact, elderly. They cannot and will not all live forever. Really. As far as we know, they are not immortal. At any random point, any one of them could go; and at any one of those points the fragile balance could once again change.
There Is Good News
There’s good news, for sure. Way good news.
News broke today that Democrats will hold the majority in the US Senate, while control of the US House remains undecided at this point. Very, very good news. It’s a very slight majority; with the potential after the Georgia run-off to be a 51-49 Senate majority. That potential slight majority might help with at least some of the hold-ups that come from Democratic Senators Manchin and Sinema. Some. Maybe.
US House control remains undetermined. As of this post, MSNBC has projected 216 Democratic seat wins, and 219 Republican seat wins… with a margin of error of +/- 4. CNN has projections at 204 Democratic to 211 Republican Seats; with 218 needed to control the House.
In very, very good news… election-deniers were defeated in Governor’s and Secretary of State races in a range of key swing states. That’s HUGE; as Secretaries of State oversee election execution, oversight, and results-processing. That’s a HUGE win for democracy. It is absolutely outstanding. There were big Democratic wins in a few key legislatures as well. That’s also outstanding.
So What?
So what is that philosophies espousing and embracing hate, intolerance, nationalism, extremist Christian domination, a blurring of the separation of church and state, conspiracy theories, anti-science, anti-education, anti-public schools, anti-government, anti-institutions, anti-diversity, anti-public health, AND SO ON got really, really, really big voter turnouts. Really big. To the point where we’re hand-counting votes in state after state because elections are so close.
The talking head, pundit class has already declared that Gen Z “won” this election for us.
No. No, they didn’t.
SANE, TOLERANT, OPEN-MINDED VOTERS EVERYWHERE WON THIS ELECTION. HUGE TURNOUTS WON THIS ELECTION, WHERE WE DID WIN.
WE DID IT TOGETHER.
IF WE HADN’T ALL GOTTEN OUT AND VOTED, WE’D HAVE LOST EVEN MORE RACES.
^^ That’s really, really important… because in 2024, we’re going to need a WAY BIGGER TURNOUT.
Yes… yes, I’m shouting. I am so maxed out on the consultant class skewing the narrative. No one state or demographic “won” this round.
HUGE turnout helped win where we did. But we need to do way, way better.
It can certainly help for turnout in the future if we’re way more clear that WE NEEDED EVERY DAMN VOTE TO WIN where we did.
We didn’t need just one group. We needed all the groups. We needed and will continue to need a truly energized, motivated majority willing to fight for this democracy and for our future.
So how about that?
Time To Change How We’re Fighting These Fights
In lots of cities, tiny towns, rural counties, families, and communities across this country… nobody and no channel and no platform is countering the far-right narrative shouted from the rooftops through the satellite cable and radio signals of the far-right media machine.
Extremism, hate, intolerance, and the whole list of god-awful stuff persists… and with no organized or even not-organized national effort to call it out and say that’s not what we want in this country. Yet how many groups are now being actively persecuted by politicians and Americans at every level?? How many? Are we going to do more about it… or just watch it happen?
Related — in cities, counties, school districts, and state legislative races all across this country… Republicans ran completely unopposed. I’m in Iowa. In our state legislature, 32 races did not have Democratic candidates running to oppose Republicans.
How will Democrats win control of state legislatures if they’re not even running to win? Where is the ground game?
There are a zillion other issues, too. We can pick some and get going like ASAP.
What We Can Do
This nonprofit, Shift the Country, is planning to help build a ground game for 2024; with a new 5-part set of tools; designed to help us fill gap areas that don’t seem to be getting addressed by other groups or by the party.
We can build power and extend our reach through connections, community, and coalitions (Things 1 & 2); by pressuring or partnering with businesses (Thing 3); by getting better at fighting with vision and values and moral courage (Thing 4); and by getting attention, reaching into the social networks, and driving the narrative at every level (Thing 5).
As per usual, this nonprofit is constantly iterating. We announced a plan to have a set of events ready to announce right after the election. Given the nature of these election results; it’s seemed wiser to give it a few days to get more info to set up a better approach for the rest of November/December to start building a different ground game. More to come very shortly on a set of online events, and related volunteer working groups.
What you can do now to help get this shift going is to share our stuff with political people and groups you know, sign up to volunteer, or get a paid subscription or donate on the website.
We intend to build this shift fast; but our startup funding is has ended… so if we intend to keep going we’ll need real money. Not necessarily huge money, but enough to keep our tech in place and to keep one person running things full-time until we can get more traction; and grow it more. Plus it would be great to increase capacity soon to have decent videos, a podcast, etc. Anything we can do to grow our reach, and get more people involved. Starting now helps us actually implement this 5-part methodology nationally to have a real impact for 2024.
Keep the faith. We’ve got good people. We’ve had enough out voting this year to hold onto this democracy. We can build on that for what’s next. We have to. And we can.
Onward. And do a little celebrating! This is a long fight — we need to do what we can to be able to stay in it, and to grow it.
Yep. In my state, election deniers and those seeking to restrict our rights totally won, as anticipated. The Democrats did run people, really good people, but they didn't get the sort of traction they needed. And one of the first bills of the new session of the state legislature is apparently going to be a very broad bill to shut down drag of any type in public.
We need everyone to come out against this sort of thing. We need every person we can get coming out and supporting democracy and human rights. Is it important that young people vote? YES! But every vote counts. Every one. And as usual, voting is the bare minimum we're going to need.