Believe it or not, good things also happened on Election Day
Since Election Day, it’s been too easy to focus on the negative (or rather, it’s been too difficult to focus on anything else). However, we shouldn’t gloss over the significant progressive wins that happened on a state level that will see those states through these next four years!
New voices in Congress and the U.S. Senate
Delaware is making all kinds of history! Delaware State Senator, Sarah McBride, has won her race for Delaware’s U.S. House seat, becoming the first openly trans member of Congress! This is after winning three elections in her home state to get to the State Senate and becoming the first openly trans person to speak at the Democratic National Convention in 2016.
Meanwhile, the congresswoman she’s replacing, Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D), has won her Senate race, making her the first woman and Black person to represent Delaware in the U.S. Senate.
Maryland’s Angela Alsobrooks has also made history, becoming the state’s first Black senator. Rochester and Alsobrooks will be the first time that two Black women will be serving in the U.S. Senate at the same time—a mind-blowing fact that is both thrilling and infuriating (in that it’s taken this long for this to happen).
State governments protecting the rights and communities the federal government won’t
Citizens nationwide have used their votes to ensure their states become havens for the marginalized, codifying certain protections into their state constitutions in anticipation of increased federal rollbacks of those protections.
New York passed Prop 1, an Equal Rights Amendment that not only protects abortion rights and specifically protects against discrimination based on gender but it’s become only the second state (after Nevada) to specifically include LGBTQIA+ folks in their gender protection language.
Interestingly, many progressive measures and propositions also passed in “red states” that ultimately went to Trump. You’d think that if the state voted for Trump, a majority of those voters must want Conservative policies, right? But that’s not entirely true.
As reported by MSNBC, of the 10 states with abortion on the ballot, seven passed constitutional protections for abortion, among them Arizona, Missouri, Montana, and Nevada—four very red states that overwhelmingly voted for Trump. This was true for other progressive measures in red states across the country, signaling that despite voting for a man who is vehemently against the policies they prefer, most voters favor progressive ideas.
Apparently, they just don’t value them enough to enshrine them at the national level for everyone.
We shouldn’t gloss over progressive wins, but we must acknowledge U.S. misogynoir
We need to acknowledge and celebrate all the state and local elections nationwide where progressive policies won the day. It’s easy to believe that the American people are more divided on policy and values than we are.
However, the discrepancy between voting for Trump and voting for progressive ballot measures makes one terrible blight crystal clear. More than half the country would rather vote for an actual felon who is against the policies they value than vote for a Black woman.
This is misogynoir, the specific intersection of sexism and anti-Black racism.
Here’s some infuriating evidence reported by MSNBC:
A few weeks before Election Day, YouGov conducted an interesting survey in which it asked respondents for their opinions about Trump’s and Kamala Harris’ policy priorities — except the twist was that participants weren’t told which policies were associated with which candidates.
The results were remarkable: Harris’ agenda was far more popular than Trump’s, but many people had no idea that the Democrat’s priorities were, in fact, her priorities.
Asked what they wanted, voters backed Harris’ vision. Asked who they wanted, voters backed the candidate offering the opposite of her vision.
Individualism, scarcity, and fear
Our biggest divisions clearly aren’t about rights or values. They are about who gets to benefit from those rights and values. From abortion to education to economic policy, the American people are more united than they might think as far as the policies individuals want for themselves and their immediate communities. Yet too many people believe that for them to have what they want, other people need to have less.
The biggest obstacles to a truly “great” America are individualism and a scarcity mindset. Too many American voters are ignorant of how government works, and too willfully shortsighted to see how more people having more opportunity benefits everyone.
Then, those in power (who fear losing that power) use racism and sexism as their best fear-inspiring tools to ensure certain privileges remain with the privileged few, making it seem like they’re giving their supporters what they want—until it’s too late for them to do anything about it.
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