Following up on my comment about feeling like I’ve stumbled into a dystopian timebreak, I just got a missive from the alternate timeline that we should have been in. It’s an article by Jeff Stein and Sarah Frostenson on Vox, published at 8:47pm on the night of the election. He is reporting that the early results show that the Democrats will almost certainly fail to attain a majority in the House of Representatives, and commenting on the consequences:
The Republican Party will keep control of the House of Representatives, extinguishing Democrats’ hopes of a new progressive era in Washington.
Failing to retake the House is a sign that liberals will have to somewhat temper their expectations after Election Day. With both branches of Congress and the White House, Democrats could have passed a cap-and-trade bill to combat climate change. They may have tried thrusting through immigration reform. There could have been a real chance at implementing a nationwide paid family leave program or universal pre-K. Perhaps there were enough congressional Democrats to dramatically raise the minimum wage, or pass campaign finance reform, or tackle any of the rest of the party’s key agenda items.
All of that is now probably off the table. At the very least, the odds of any of those things happening are massively diminished.
Still tempering…
Common Infirmities 