(no subject)

[trouble]

Spent the evening doing Stuff. Can someone just tell me if I should sad, mad, or glad about the US election results? I don't need to know what they mean or anything like that. Just... sad? mad? glad? What?

Comments

[starlady]

I think all three, depending on your perspective.

[trouble]

*sob* this doesn't help! No one will tell me what I'm to think or feel! Woe!

[dancesontrains]

Well, from what I gather things will be a bit crap for the next two years depending on the state one lives in, but Obama is very likely to get a second term (which itself could be good or bad, depending!).

There isn't a one word answer and a simple emotion. It's politics.

[trouble]

Okay, that actually is helpful, I think.

I honestly do not get this midterm election thingy at all. It confuses me. As does a Congress and a Senate and a President being all different things, and all elected. (We have a Senate, but it's appointed, and there's a whole Thing there because our current government ran on a "we'll get rid of the senate!" sort of thing and that's not happening and it's all very complicated.) So I just don't understand this whole Midterm Election thing except people are upset.

<3

[phoenixsong]

Uh, how much logistical information do you need to explain why it's called a midterm election? s:)

[capriuni]

Personally, I'm wavering between "sad" and "meh."

Sad because my party has lost control of the Congress, and I really don't like the person who will be the next Speaker (the person who kinds of runs things, more or less)

Meh because my party still has Control of the Senate, but just less control, and also, probably, the results will end up being neither as good nor as horrid as the pundits are pontificating like, but stuff will just keep going on, regardless.

Translation: Congress is the like the British "House of Commons" and the Senate is the "House of Lords," sort of -- at least, it's more like the British system than the Canadian one. ...I think.

And only half the Congress and a third of the Senate are up for election at any one time, so there's always some overlap between old and new folks, for the sake of continuity, I guess. Perhaps to allow for a change in government without putting everything on pause to figure out coalitions? Or that might be an unintended consequence.

[trouble]

My head hurts. :(

[capriuni]

Yeah, me too. That's why I'm mostly leaning toward Meh.

...I'm sorry. Have an old Pete Seeger music clip to make up for it. This is the song that's been going through my head for the last three days.

Pete Seeger and Jean Ritchie sing "Jenny Jenkins" in 1965

[automaticdoor]

That's pretty much what I was going to comment. That with a large helping of "Democrats [the ... more left ones who aren't all that left at all], how did you do this again?"

One factual error: All of Congress is up for reelection every two years.

[silveradept]

Excuse me, please, but that's not quite correct.

All of the lower house of the legislature (House of Representatives) is up for election every two years. Only one third of the upper house (Senate) is up every two.

(Congress refers to all members of both houses of the legislature, so they're not all up for it every two years.)

[automaticdoor]

From the way in which zie used Congress, I was assuming zie meant the House of Representatives, which is why I answered in the way I did. But yes, you are absolutely correct.

[silveradept]

Thank you for reminding me of the context. I was hoping to avoid possible headaches further down the line if at some point we forgot zie's context.

[automaticdoor]

Oh, of course. As a USian and a law student, it's very, very hard to check my government privilege.

[silveradept]

The armchair political junkie at this keyboard agrees. It can be hard to check that privilege and remember that not everyone is from your country or shares your interest.

[maevele]

I'm currently pissed, sad, and scared, if that helps. Also gonna drink

[trouble]

:( I'm sorry. I wish I had something helpful to say.

[nicki]

(The Senate has longer terms theoretically in order to make them look more to the long term, the House does 2 year terms theoretically to make them more directly responsive to their districts. Each state has 2 Senators regardless of population, the number of representatives is dependent on population. Basically, theoretically, the House and the Senate are supposed to balance each other out with the Senate being sort of more thinky and the House being more impulsive to immediate needs)

It isn't as bad as it could have been seems to be the consensus on the Dem side.

Personal analysis of a non-expert political hobbyist: For the dems less will get done but ultimately not much will change. For the Republicans, I think they will have a unity problem. Most of the party changes were very very very close which means that the new Congress people are on shaky ground already with their districts going into the next term. This leaves them a problem. They need independent voters, but their base tends to be very conservative so they are stuck there. They probably need to get things done in a term where the national party has basically said they aren't going to work with Dems in order to do anything, so they are stuck there. The new Congress people will ultimately have a choice to agitate for some kind of movement or clinging to their base. If the newbies decide they need to get things done, there may be a fair amount of governmental activity. If they decide to cling to their conservative base there will be total gridlock and nothing will happen over the next two years. So, um, nobody knows what will happen.

My state elections (California) went well, but I wish more of the close calls had gone Dem. Sigh. (Can Bennett please to be winning Colorado despite my wrongheaded relatives? Oh, and Go Patty Murray!)

[owlectomy]

Things are not as bad as they could be, but one of our new senators doesn't believe in the Civil Rights Act. He thinks that businesses should be allowed to deny service to black people. That makes me spitting mad.

[ilyena_sylph]

Sad.

Very, very sad, and you can throw in scared for me and anybody else that's GLBT while you're at it.

Also I'm furious with my party for fucking up so badly that this shit even happened, but that's internal politics.

[meloukhia]

Uhm, the results are...mixed, I think. Everyone is crowing about how it's a 'referendum' on the Presidency, which it really isn't, midterms usually result in a shift of power because voters are petulant and unable to think beyond the very short term for the most part. Some politicians who were doing good stuff got shoved out of office, which sucks, but there were also some good outcomes (like in California, where Whitman got defeated in the governor's race and so did Fiorina in the Senate). Ballot measure wise, some good and bad stuff happened nationwide; in good news, for example, the fetal personhood amendment in Colorado failed.

Here's a recap of me reading the results on the California propositions:

'Damn this page is taking forever to load...oh, 19 failed, that's too bad...wait...DAMNIT! DAMNIT! DAMNIT! Oh, good, 23 failed...WHAT THE FUCK, CALIFORNIA!'

It's like they voted the exact *opposite* of how I wanted them to, contrary little fuckers.

[gamerchick]

Short answer: It's bad but it could have been worse. Also, cross your fingers that my state does NOT elect the guy for governor who thinks that it is moral and correct to murder gay people (less than 1 percentage point separates him from the other candidate right now, AUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH).

[furikku]

Toward my state, frustrated pity is probably the appropriate response, as it often is.

Although I guess maybe you could be heartened that some of the races were close here.

[silveradept]

If you want a single emotion to describe, the word "frustrated" will do nicely. The people coming in to power will be frustrated that they can't snap their fingers and undo everything that's been done so far, as they attempt to appease their highly conservative base by doing what they always do - tax cuts for the rich and wedge issues like gay marriage and abortions on the agenda. The people leaving and reduced in power will be frustrated because they won't be able to do nearly as much as they could before, and their Sisyphean task of pushing good legislation through a permanent filibuster (a technique that raises the requirement of passage from simple majority to 60-40) gets much heavier.

[allies_person]

It's pretty bad overall, but could have been worse, as the Democrats have retained control over the Senate.

In California things went pretty well, as we did not elect a Republican governor and we kept Barbara Boxer in office, thank goodness. The propositions are a mixed bag. Prop 19 (marijuana legalization) failed, but we also voted against repealing our carbon emissions standards law.