Red Wave Rising

Twenty-eight years ago today, when the Republicans won the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time since 1952 (and also won back the Senate) , making Newt Gingrich Speaker of the House, I was in full-blown panic.  Today, I know for a fact that the GOP will take over the House again and Kevin McCarthy will be Speaker - and, although Lawrence O'Donnell insists otherwise, the tight Senate elections  that decide control of that hamber will mostly go Republican and put Mitch McConnell back in charge. 

And I'm quietly resigned to the so-called "red wave" washing over and likely drowning America.

Although a few Democratic candidates for Congress have been responsive to concerns about the economy and inflation - and Lawrence O'Donnell has hosted all of three of them on his show - most of them have stressed the issue of abortion at a time when few people care about the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision and they've stressed the issue of democracy being in danger when even fewer people care about that.  Many Americans still are unaware of the Republican plan to gut Social Security and Medicare.  Democratic bigwigs like Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, who has been in charge of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee,  thought it would be better spend money promoting Republican election deniers in primaries than the spend it warning people about the GOP hit job on the elderly.  Maloney is now in danger of losing his seat. Serves him right. 

Me, I just quietly sit back and shake my head.  I've gotten used to this pattern.  Democrats win Congress in the midterms.  Democrats win the Presidency and the future looks bright.  Then Republicans win back Congress in the next midterms.  Repeat!

And Democrats will learn the wrong lessons from their terrible losses, as usual.  If Tim Ryan, who's been running a great campaign for the U.S. Senate in Ohio by focuses on the economy and avoiding "woke" politics, loses, the "woke" progressives will say, "Well, of course he lost, he wasn't woke enough, he was too moderate."  They don't get it.

Every time I feel like the country is heading in the wrong direction, I've tried to fight back - if not to stop the tide, at least to stem it.  I've written my House members and senators about issues I care (or cared) about, I've gritted my teeth and waited for the next election, and I've even signed petitions and contributed the odd dollar to this cause and that, but I'd always wonder if maybe I should just give up on the United States and find a way to leave it. Then something miraculous would happen - the country would come together after 9/11, Obama would be elected President, Trump would be voted out of office and lose every lawsuit in an attempt to stay in power, Kevin McCarthy and Lindsey Graham would immediately distance themselves from Trump after 1/6 - but then, without warning, America would always go back to being America, and I tear my hair out over it.

This time it's different.  Nothing surprises me anymore - not even the fact that QAnon-believing election deniers are about to take charge and turn the U.S. into der Amerikanische Reich.  Before Trump, before 1/6, I'd never thought that democracy itself would be under threat, because there was always the next election.  Now, it looks like, after 2024, elections in America will have one candidate per office because the Democratic Party will be outlawed.   

In years past, I'd threatened to leave the country, only to have my passions cooled by a major event re-affirming the goodness of America (like Barack Obama winning the Presidency) or the promise of another election when the current election goes the wrong way.  Now I'm on the verge of planning my escape from America.

One hope - one small modicum remains for the future of These States, as far as I see it.  What's that? You'll find out soon enough.  Hint: it involves "new leadership."  

And that doesn't work out, I give up completely.  I'm going to start looking at emigrating before Dear Leader Trump closes the borders not just to those trying to come in but to those trying to get out.

As George Harrison once said, see you 'round the clubs.