Pierce: Maybe We're Seeing a Backlash to the Whitelash

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a13450070/virginia-democratic-victories/

Maybe We're Seeing a Backlash to the Whitelash

Making sense of Tuesday night's Democratic sweep.
By Charles P. Pierce
Nov 8, 2017



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The postmortems on this one are going to go in every direction, but the general outline of what was happening was clear all over the country. The priorities of the unanimously Republican national government were thoroughly rejected. In Maine, the voters overwhelmingly approved a referendum to force that state to expand its Medicaid program. That had nothing to do with the president*. That had to do with poor people in the rural areas of the state who need healthcare, and who no longer had any use for human bowling jacket Paul LePage, the governor who vetoed the expansion five times.

If you’re looking for an unsung hero in Virginia, and if you’re looking for a role model who should embarrass all the squabbling Democrats who are still relitigating the dismal 2016 primary process, look to Tom Perriello, the former Democratic congressman who lost to Northam in the Democratic primary this year. Perriello suited up and worked tirelessly for the Democratic ticket up and down the ballot, including for the man who’d beaten him. Perriello’s performance not only piled him up serious cred within his party, it also should shame a lot of people in that party’s upper echelon.

Moreover, the noxious tone adopted by Gillespie was rejected at almost every level of government all across the country. A Sikh was elected mayor of Hoboken, and a Liberian immigrant named Wilmot Collins ran as a progressive for mayor of Helena, Montana, and beat a four-term Republican incumbent. African-American mayors were elected for the first time in Statesboro, Milledgeville, and Cairo in Georgia, and in St. Paul, Minnesota. Charlotte elected its first African-American woman to be its mayor. All of these people were Democrats. If there is a wave coming in 2018, and I’m still not sure there is, these races are the stirrings of the underwater earthquake that produces a tsunami.

It’s hard to know where this all leads. The next big test is the race for Jefferson Beauregard Sessions’ old Senate seat in Alabama. God-crazed, defrocked judge Roy Moore is running against Democrat Douglas Jones, who, as a prosecutor, sent to prison the last conspirator behind the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. Moore is barely ahead, but, if I were Jones’ field organizer, I’d have been up with the dawn on Wednesday morning, going full Knute Rockne on all my volunteers. And if I’m Tom Perez, I’m sending every dime I can find in the sofas of the DNC down there.

It’s fun to mock “diversity” and “inclusion,” especially if you’re a white conservative Republican, but diversity and inclusion had their revenge on Tuesday night, and if you happen to be a Republican congresscritter from a purpling suburban district, your next order of party business is to vote for a huge tax cut for the wealthiest among us at the expense of middle-class families. Good luck with that.

Oh, and happy one-year anniversary, gang. Still having fun, are we?