Today will be my last post till after NERFA. I have a CT scan first thing tomorrow morning and I’m going to NERFA directly from there. My guess is not many people bring a suitcase to a CT scan. I also guess is that other people wouldn’t be as amused as I am that I’m going from a CT scan to Stamford CT. Should I bring the cats to the CAT scan?
Here’s how my Election Day went. Before I left the house I checked to find my ED/AD. That’s Electoral District/Assembly District, that’s is how we assign voters in New York. Mine was 33/78. I’ll never forget that, it’s vinyl record speeds. I changed my voting residence right after the Democratic Primary in September. When I checked online the change hadn’t taken effect. I called the Board of Elections and told them what happened. They said these things take time and to not worry. If it hadn’t gone through by Election Day cast a provisional ballot. I’m registered and it would count. I got to the polling place, M.S. 80, and went straight to 33/78, the closest station to the door. I told the worker my name and. She looked it up. As I suspected, I was not on the list. She didn’t believe me that I had the right ED/AD. We went to another table and she looked up my address. Guess what ,the Board of Ed had gotten it right when I looked it up. It was right on my phone, I couldn’t have screwed it up. I had to cast a provisional ballot. The worker felt it necessary to tell me how to fill out a ballot, something I’ve done many times and I told her that. What she didn’t do was tell me the two things that were unusual. The first is that this was an extra long ballot on two pages. They two pages must be separating by tearing across a perforation. I read that before going in, so I knew, and it’s on the ballot, but that was the only thing on the ballot that was not routine, and that’s what she didn’t tell me. She also didn’t tell me what to do with my ballot when I was done. A provisional ballot isn’t scanned. I was given an envelope with a form on it. Filling it out was obvious. The problem is that the ballot was too large to fit in the envelope. I folded it in half. And it fit perfectly so I take it that was the right thing to do. As it still has to be fed into an optical scanner that was not obvious. I searched for a marked place to fold it. There wasn’t one. When I finished filling it out I brought it back to the check in desk. It should be counted but there’s no way of knowing for sure. I didn’t vote in any tight races so it doesn’t make a difference. I suspect that every candidate I voted for will win, not sure about the ballot proposals. I did far less than I should have this election but I did the most fundamental, I voted; I fought for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. That’s not a joke, it’s the essence of citizenship.
As I couldn’t find my Irish tweed hat at Melissa’s I went to see if I could buy another one at a reasonable price. I found an Irish Gift Shop in the Bronx that I could get to in one bus. I went. It took me 44 minutes to get there and 10 minutes to find they didn’t have what they wanted and that if they had, it would have been too expensive. I hopped on the next bus going back. I took it to Stop & Shop where I bought some things l needed. When I got home I realized I forgot other important things. Have I mentioned that I’m an idiot?
I did not watch the election returns on TV, I watched the Gifted and ate dinner. I followed the election on FiveThirtyEight.com. it went close to the center of the probabilities. The Democrats took control of the house, but not by an overwhelming amount. The lost two seats in the Senate. That’s not as bad as I thought, I misread something. The GOP controls the Senate by 53-47. Three seats more than they needed. I thought they gained three seats. That would be bad for the Democrats to have any hopes of taking the Senate in 2020. The map was terrible for the Dems this year, they were defending many seats in states where Trump had won. They got millions of more votes than the GOP but that’s not how Senate elections work, it isn’t based on total votes. They also won a landslide proportion of the votes in the House, but again, that’s now how we apportion representatives. For must of history that’s not been a big deal, but now it is. The way the electorate is distributed, the GOP though a minority, can control both houses of Congress and the presidency, as they do now. It’s not morally right but it’s the reality, Democrats will have to work around it.
The Democrats also did well in the State Houses but not as well as they might have. The Great Black Hopes in GA and FL, lost. Beto lost in Texas. It was never likely he’d win; people were far too emotionally invested in that. People who donated their money to Beto would have been better off giving to lesser known candidates with a better chance of winning. It’s not that I don’t like Beto, Gilliam, or Abrams. I love them all. Well at least Beto and Abrams, Gilliam has ethical baggage. But none were a great fit for their states. Beto is a remarkably charismatic candidate and he was facing Cruz, the most disliked man in the senate, and all he could do was make it close. Moral victories don’t count. If you are thinking Beto as the Dem candidate for president in 2020 you are fooling yourself.
The best national news was in Florida. Florida? The state where the GOP won both the governorship and Senate seat? Yes, the bill to enfranchise ex-cons passed. That means millions of people that couldn’t vote this year will be able to vote in 2020. They are overwhelmingly Democrats. If they can be drawn into political engagement, Florida will cease to be a swing state and have a clear Democratic majority. That is not a given. There are no givens. When I said people thinking Beto in 2020 are fooling themselves, I don’t mean that it can’t happen, just that it’s very unlikely.
The Democrats too full control of New York State at a crucial time. They need to get right down to business. The key parts of the progressive agenda, in order of difficulty to enact, are, enshrining the right to Abortion given by Roe v Wade into New York State Law, in case the Supreme Court overrules it. Election reform; instituting early voting and no-excuse absentee ballots. Getting rid of onerous rules for getting on the ballot and changing party registration. Creating anti-corruption laws with teeth to clean up the quagmire in Albany, and giving proper financing to New York City’s buses and subways. Instituting congestion pricing should be the first step.
Was it a good day for progressives? It was a day, some good, some bad. That’s usually the way the world works. Accept the things we cannot change and do better next time.
Wise Madness 