Pennsylvania has medical marijuana, but not recreational. I think recreational is in our future, as we are now surrounded by recreational states. I think every state bordering Pennsylvania other than West Virginia has recreational now.
I for one will miss my friends from Ohio coming up here to Michigan to give us tax monies and try out what they bought.
My brother recently moved from Michigan (where he regularly got his cannabis delivered to his home) to Colorado where his condo is a 2 minute walk to a dispensary.
I’d say yes. For a long time abortion was the GOP goose that laid the golden egg. As long as you threatened to overturn Roe v Wade, that was good enough to get a lot of people to vote Republican. But by actually overturning Roe v Wade, the GOP has effectively killed their golden goose.
What needs to be pounded into people’s heads from now until the 2024 election is that Biden is NOT going to be nominating people like Gorsuch, Barrett, and Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. If you want to keep your reproductive and other civil rights, you vote for Biden no matter what.
In Kentucky, good news. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, was reelected Governor.
Bad news. Every other statewide race was won by Republicans.
And he will continue to be overridden in everything he does by the Republican supermajority in the Kentucky legislature.
Yesterday was encouraging, but it didn’t change the political dynamics of these states or reveal much about what we can expect in next year’s election.
Still, you do have to take pleasure in the little things:
But if every race had gone the opposite way, would that have still not revealed much? Or would it have been a devastating blow to Democrats and signaled trouble for Biden in 2024? This is something I’ve wondered about recently, and this was my opportunity to bring it up.
Agree w @Leaper. These results are huge. Even the wackiest most ignorant of hard red states still have room for some blue. And blue gains are happening.
We have another year to keep hammering on the whole wacky red problem. More gains here and there add up.
As @Leaper said, had we seen the opposite outcome we’d have a very different road ahead of us.
Just saying’, one of the reasons I can no longer be a Republican is the mainstream media bashing.
I do appreciate that you aren’t calling them the enemy of the people. But the idea that there is a New York Times party line on such as question is, to say the least, mistaken.
Right, my point was that I could see the logic that no matter what the outcome, it wouldn’t have a lot of relevance for 2024.
What I’d find harder to accept is an argument that anything in the range of outcomes could only be actually good for one side and not the other.
Strong words like devastating are thrown around too much in such discussions. So I say — no.
As to whether it would have signaled trouble for Biden, well, sure. For one thing, it would have meant that abortion is no longer a politically helpful issue for Democrats.
As to whether Tuesday was a positive sign for Democrats, yes. And it was a truly bad sign for the anti-abortion crowd. It tends to show that the whole project of outlawing abortion was a generation-long mistake if the goal is to reduce abortion. Frankly, trying to make women feel badly about getting an abortion is probably more effective at achieving that reduction goal than trying to outlaw the practice.
In 2021, Republicans made big gains in the off-year elections in Virginia and New Jersey leading many (including me) to predict a red wave in the 2022 midterms. Didn’t happen. I’m not saying this week’s results weren’t instructive – abortion clearly remains a millstone Republicans haven’t figure out how to handle – but it’s a mistake to read too much national import into these quirky off-year elections.
I slightly disagree. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely feel LGTBQ rights and the defense of such are critical, BUT it’s an issue that the GOP, MAGA, and most right-leaning neutrals find easy to attack as happening to “someone else”. But even many of the GOP et al group can see a possibility of needing an abortion for themselves / their families in the cases of rape, incest, or medical needs. So (IMHO) the huge bans with minimal exceptions for such made even largely pro-Birth groups somewhat uncomfortable.
But many of those people still demonize and hate LGBQT and buy into all the fear-mongering of groomers who give “Good, God-fearing 'Murrican’s teh Gay”.
So again, it is important, it cannot be neglected, but it isn’t a winning issue in the way abortion rights are.
You make good points and I agree with you. I think the right course is to stand up for every marginalized group. Of course the political efficacy depends a bit on which group you’re standing up for.
And we are again in full agreement.
You forgot the “exception” need for my knocked up niece because I have money/access and want her to go to college. Hypocrites abound amongst the true believers.
I would likely have explicitly made such a crack in the Pit. In P&E I truly try to mitigate my sneering cynicism a tiny bit. 
But aside from that, those with money/access didn’t need exceptions so much as they can afford to send their niece for a nice “two week mountain vacation” in some Blue state that allows such things and no one ever speaks of it again. It’s the Red State equivalent of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” for states that criminalize abortion and make it profitable to attack those who seek it out elsewhere: Looking at YOU Texas!
The Monroe County Legislature has 29 seats. Two years ago the D’s won 15 of those seats. So they take control of the county, right?
Immediately after the election, one of the D’s revealed that she would caucus with the R’s. She did that on the condition that they name her President of the Legislature. They did and she did.
Sounds like a tv program, I know, but I swear that’s exactly what happened.
This year the D’s got their act together. They primaried her and won. With her out and with the flipping of another seat they now have a safe 16-13 margin. D’s haven’t had control of the county in more than 30 years. And they re-elected the County Executive, the first time ever that a D County Exec won re-election. Additionally, five town councils flipped to D.
All because they worked at ground level to get results.
My hope is that this presages a national effort to get out the vote nationwide in the coming years, on every level from the lowest on up.
Uh, which Monroe County? From a quick search, there are at least a dozen Monroe Counties across the country.
The Althing would like a word.