The Smurfs had great turnout as well.
I think it’s time to move on to the “Reluctantly – Fuck Florida” thread.
How much more fucked up can Florida get?
Yeah, I’m not sure anyone could muster much reluctance.
Let’s not count those chickens yet.
I’m waiting for the new bunch to take office in January and then, tentatively, there may be an unfuckening. There’s about 3 decades of fuckery that will take some time to work through.
Wanted to post this here… 
Let’s just enjoy the moment, okay? We’ve waited long enough.
Katherine Sparks is very familiar with the State Capitol’s grounds.
She’s gone many times to protest an array of policies. As a middle school teacher in Austin, she holds education issues close to her heart.
Tuesday night, for the first time, she came to the Capitol to celebrate. Within minutes of Gina Hinojosa and James Talarico claiming victory, she rushed to downtown Austin.
“I just feel like the hope is back again,” Sparks said, wearing a bright blue sweatshirt.
Sparks was joined by more than 100 revelers who hurried to the Capitol to see it for themselves: a blue Texas.
A crowd of revelers — still processing a mix of joy and shock — gathered under the live oak trees lining the Capitol’s entrance. Bubbles floated filled the air, joined by a mix of cheers and honks from people driving by. Some were still in their pajamas because they wanted to get there as soon as they could. Celebrations lasted well after midnight.
“I teach the poorest of poor kids, and Talarico has had my vote since day one,” she said. Looking at the glowing Capitol, Sparks added: “We took it back, it’s ours.”
No Democrat has been elected to statewide office since 1994, meaning that for much of the younger-tending crowd, this election marked the first time they witnessed a Democrat secure a statewide seat in Texas — let alone a slate of them.
Hilary Delham, 37, hopped in a car with her partner and headed straight to the Capitol with the windows down doing her best impression of Paul Revere: “I was yelling at the top of my lungs to spread the news, we won.”
“I think that women all over Texas should feel a lot safer tonight,” she said. “My heart feels so full knowing that Gina Hinojsa is in office. I really feel like she’s going to address a lot of the things that Texas women have been worried about.”
…
I’m enjoying the irony of seeing this thread bumped. While the unfair stacking of statehouses makes me loth to blame any red-state voters for the redness of their state, and I hate the idea of us giving up on anyone, I wasn’t giving Blexas a fair enough shake. That’s on me, a Georgia voter ought to have been more open-minded.
Let this thread remind us of what’s possible, and go harder after places like Montana and Florida and Tennessee next time. The race Moody won was a special election. She’ll be up again in 2028 and I bet we’ll get Blorida next time around.
I’m going to ask the mods to retire this thread. I’m sure that there will still be times – even with Democrats at the helm – that I will grow exasperated with the governance of my home state. And I know that political fortunes will continue to ebb and flow as they have always done. But the main thing that made Texas “fuckworthy” IMO – a seemingly eternal, intransigent, avaricious, corrupt, conservative ruling regime – has passed.
I may create future Pit threads about particular officeholders or issues, but never again will I cast my net wide enough to capture the whole state. The people of Texas deserve better, have always deserved better, and have woken up to their own power to make Texas better.
And so I say to this thread, in the immortal words of a former Governor, “Adios, mofo.”
For now. They’re not gone, just bruised.
'Zactly.
All over the Board people are crowing that the beast is slain. Nonsense. It’s been wounded a little. Idjit trump and his criminal enterprise may be mortally wounded. May.
American Christo-Fascism as aided by foreign bot armies is doing fine.
We need 15 - 20 consecutive years of hard expensive slogging to kill the beast and create the instiutions and widespread bipartisan citizen buy-in that will keep it dead.
If it bleeds, we can kill it.
As a native Texan (now living in New England), let me just say how proud I am that a majority of my home state finally woke up and threw the bums out.
I’m going down there next week to visit family and to attend my 35th college reunion. For the first time in decades I’ll be a little less embarrassed about the politics there.
And I’ll also get some karmic satisfaction after a relative went on and on about Trump’s 2016 victory when I attended my last college reunion (my 25th).
I think it was wounded a heck of a lot more than a little, though I doubt it’ll be dead until Trump is or at least when Trump fades into irrelevance. That being said, I also agree that MAGA isn’t the end of it, any more than the Tea Party was the end of it. There will be something new.
I’d rephrase that a bit.
If it can bleed, we now know it can be killed. Whether “we” have the oomph and numbers and determination to kill it is a very different and higher hurdle.
Yeah, it it almost didn’t work out that well for Dutch.
But “we now know it can be killed” counts for a lot. Historically, there have been a lot of minorities who don’t vote because “everyone knows” that the System is rigged against them, and “the Man” will make sure they can’t make a difference. This might be a wake-up call for them.
That’s a common mistake. There is nothing remotely Conservative about Trump and MAGA.
If anything, Trump and MAGA have become even more radical than the left wing of the Democrats.
Trump is simultaneously the least liberal and least conservative president in our nation’s history.
And crookedest by far. He truly is outstanding in his field.
To be disputed but probably in a different thread.