Gratitude Monday: Every rung

How ‘bout them elections, huh? Just one year after America’s psychotic break, the fog appears to be lifting, and voters went to the polls in multiple states last week to begin restoring the notion of government of the people, by the people and for the people.

As opposed to government of the greedy, by the corrupt and for the plutocrats.

Since Tuesday I’ve been thinking a lot about that song we learned in elementary school: “Jacob’s Ladder”, about keeping hope alive while putting one foot in front of the other. It seems an apt reminder after the appalling events of the past year, and I’m feeling that hope revive.

Here in the Commonwealth of Virginia—once the capital of the Confederacy, and scene only last August of willie-waving demonstrations by obese neo-Nazis and pimply white supremacists in Thomas Jefferson’s home town—we made tremendous strides. In the gubernatorial race, Democratic candidate Ralph Northam handily defeated former RNC chief Ed Gillespie, who ran a campaign of vile, racist ads that took many pages out of his idol, the Kleptocrat’s play book—screaming about MS-13 taking over the Old Dominion, even though crime is down here.

(As late as Tuesday morning, the dotard was spewing tweets urging Virginians to support Gillespie. As the returns came in in the evening, and it became evident that Northam was leading, there was speculation on Twitter as to how long it would take him to throw Gillespie under the bus. I may have won the pool with my “in a New York minute”; the first NBC call for Northam had barely been made before Klepto tweeted that it was Gillespie’s failure “to embrace me” that caused the loss. I’m still trying to wash the mental polaroid of what that embrace might have looked like out of my mind.)

In addition to Northam, Virginians voted in Democrats for Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General, which guards against infighting at the top of the state government structure.

More heartening were the races for the House of Delegates, where Democrats made huge inroads into Republican control—which will have a salubrious effect on redrawing gerrymandered Congressional districts down the road. At time of writing, Republicans were down to 47 (from 66) seats, with votes still being counted in three districts. (There’s some kerfuffle in Stafford County over absent ballots from active duty military that hadn’t been opened, with the county registrar blocking recounts. I hope to God the ACLU is on this.) Pulling to a 50-50 split in the House would mean that newly-elected Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax (only the second African American elected to statewide office in Virginia history) can cast tie-breaking votes.

(There were also reports—too many to be dismissed as a rumor—of calls made to Democrats in different jurisdictions, announcing that their polling precincts had changed and directing them to bogus locations. Other reports surfaced of uniformed law enforcement officers standing outside polling places “directing” Latino-looking voters how to vote. Repugnants do not change their spots.)

But even more amazing was the fact that Democrat Danica Roem became the first openly transgender person to be elected, and she defeated incumbent Robert G. Marshall, arch-conservative and proudly self-proclaimed “chief homophobe”, perhaps best known for proposing a law banning transgender people from using public toilets in accordance with their gender identity.

I purely loved the classy way she closed out the race: when asked about Marshall, she replied, “I don’t attack my constituents. Bob is my constituent now.”

In other races, Elizabeth Guzman and Hala Ayala both defeated Republican incumbents to become the first-ever Latinas elected to the House of Delegates, and Cathy Tran—who came to this country as a refugee from Vietnam as an infant—defeated another ‘Pub incumbent to join Guzman and Ayala. However the still-contested races turn out, the House of Delegates is losing its pasty complexion and getting some healthy color.

And—one of my favorites—down Blacksburg way, former news anchor Chris Hurst, whose girlfriend Alison Parker was shot dead on live TV two years ago by a former colleague—defeated yet another Repugnant incumbent. The delicious kicker? Hurst’s opponent, Joseph R. Yost, holds a “Grade A” stamp of approval from the NRA.

There were other amazing stories around the country from last Tuesday’s election, including more transgender wins in Palm Springs, Ca.; Minneapolis, Minn.; and Erie, Penn. Charlotte, N.C., elected its first black mayor, and Hoboken, N.J., elected the first Sikh American mayor in the country—despite a vicious, fear-mongering racist campaign waged by his opponent. Women and underrepresented minorities made gains across the country, despite the perceived wisdom that non-presidential elections are lackluster.

I take real hope from these events—even though I well know that these wins were the result of hard, slogging work by thousands of individuals, and we will need to replicate this work in next year’s elections, where one third of the Senate and all the House are up for grabs. Even so, I’m savoring this moment, and I am grateful for all that work that got us this far.

Like that old song says, every rung goes higher, higher.