We Win

In Virginia. In New Jersey. In California. In our fair city. (I also think the right guy won in Minneapolis, a race between two Dems with no national implications: the re-elected incumbent promised good management, and the defeated challenger just promised more police.)

Where else did Dems, and sensible people sick of religious zealotry, win last night?

In Dover, Pennsylvania, six Dems who believe in actual biology beat six GOP'ers (a full slate) who don't. Atlanta's popular mayor, Shirley Franklin, won in a walk. So did Houston's popular mayor, Bill White.

In Maine, 55% of voters rejected a ballot measure that would have canned the state's legal protections for gay people (protections which also cover cross-dressers and transgender folks). Washington State rejected a measure to cap the state's gas tax. (Last week, remember, Colorado voted to weaken the anti-tax straitjacket written into its state constitution.)

Seattle also re-elected its Democratic county executive and banned smoking, which I support (unless they banned smoking outdoors). Virginia and NJ gave Dems state House pickups, though the VA House remains GOP-controlled.

Where did Dems not win? Well, Texas banned gay marriage. (Big surprise there.) Manchester, New Hampshire turned out its Dem mayor. And the Reform Ohio Now ballot measures, which would have shifted the state towards nonpartisan redistricting, restricted the role of the partisan Sec of State, and made absentee balloting easier, all lost big: the liberal blogosphere loved them, but the national Dem party never got behind them, preferring (perhaps correctly) to fight the redistricting in California without supporting it in Ohio. (RON also looks like the only statewide issue where polls proved less than accurate: some of the RON measures polled ahead just ten days before the race.)

Also in Virginia, the race for Attorney General will likely require a recount, though the Republican has a slight lead. (Virginia limits its governors to one term: the Lt Gov and AG office thus take on added importance, because they create statewide constituencies for future Gov candidates-- in this year's Gov election there, our guy was Lt Gov, and the bad guy was the AG.)

The pithy and efficient Taegan Goddard, who usually bends over sideways to appear nonpartisan, sums up reactions and offers his own: "an 11th hour campaign visit by Bush to Virgnia sealed the victory for Democrats. In 1993, Republicans swept the off year gubernatorial elections and predicted big gains in 1994. They were right then and they should be worried now."

Kos calls it an appetizer. Sounds about right. ABC News points out that nothing's guaranteed. If there's a new generation (a Dean generation?) now entering electoral politics, we should get used to winning-- but we shouldn't just expect it: other than the big-city mayoral elections, a lot of these races were close.

I wonder how many Dems who won downticket races graduated from Camp Wellstone? Now there's an institution we can use.