A new wave is calling BS on you.
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All of my years as a faithful voter have taught me that it’s important to keep trying. Eventually, I hope our country will get what it needs.
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Fiorello! is a wonderful musical about New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia (yes, he’s the one for whom the airport is named). It ran on Broadway from November 1959 through October 1961. I went to see it with my mother on Election Day 1960. One of the songs in the musical, “Politics and Poker,” contains the lyric “if politics seems easier, it’s because you can’t stack the deck.” Now, of course, we have learned that you can.

Here are the things I want to remember about the 2018 midterms:

The results were better than I feared, but not as good as I hoped.

The Democrats took back control of the House of Representatives. This is huge, because it will impede Trump on everything except judicial appointments. Assuming Nancy Pelosi becomes Speaker, we can only hope that both Trump and Pence either go to prison or die, and then she will become President.

More than 100 women have been elected to the House, including two Native American women and two Muslim women.

The Senate results were another story. Dems didn’t gain any seats, in fact they lost seats. Even though Democratic Senate candidates nationwide got 45 million votes, and Republicans got 33 million, the result was a Republican gain of 3-4 seats. Something is out of whack with the whole electoral process.

I am the most sad about Beto O’Rourke losing in Texas, I really thought he could beat Ted Cruz. We gave him money and then more money, and I did phone banking for him . . . it’s hard not to think that maybe if I had just done a little more he would have won. I know there were volunteers on the ground in Texas who did a lot more than I did, so obviously it’s ridiculous to think that I could have made a difference. But still . . . .

In the races for Governor, the Democrats picked up seven seats, which is great. These include the first openly gay Governor in Colorado, and four new women Governors in Maine, Michigan, Kansas, and New Mexico. It is very satisfying that Scott Walker and Kris Kobach were defeated. Andrew Gillum losing in Florida (by 0.6 %) was sad, and in Georgia the outcome is still unknown, so I’m holding out hope for Stacey Abrams.

Best line of the night?  After Ann Coulter tweeted “Kansas is dead to me,” someone replied “You’re just mad because that house landed on your sister.”

It’s nice that the county clerk in Kentucky who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples was defeated.

As of Wednesday morning, in the Arizona Senate race Republican Martha McSally was leading Democrat Kyrsten Sinema by about 16,000 votes. A Green party candidate received 39,000 votes. Even though she dropped out a few days before the election, she may have caused a Republican victory. However, they are still counting ballots, and say that it may be a couple of days until the final results are known.

All in all, it’s a relief, and I feel pretty good. Certainly a lot better than the way I felt the day after the election two years ago.

But there is still a lot of work to do!

Through the bus window, through my own reflected image, the solitary lights in the rural landscape were comforting. And exciting. Tomorrow was Election Day, and each light represented at least one potential vote.  That was an astonishing notion, which I had never before focused on — the collective power of democracy, and it made you glad to be an American.

It was 1970, and I was the press secretary for a candidate for the U.S. Senate from Virginia.  Everything that could be done – last-minute press releases, radio and TV interviews – had been done.  Now, as with all those people in those lighted houses – it was time to vote.  That’s why I was now on a bus heading home.  It was a three-hour trip from campaign headquarters in Richmond to the small town where I had grown up and was still registered to vote.

The next morning, when I voted, it felt good.  I was part of something so much larger than myself, and yet I had worked very hard to bend that something to my will.  Even though my candidate lost, I’ve never again felt so good about voting.  Even when my preferred candidates actually won, I never felt so good.

I wonder why.

This Election Day, 6 November 2018, I see out my window an especially beautiful sunset, with streaks of bright pink in the dissipating clouds that had brought rain to many polling places in the East.  Why, then, am I so afraid when I imagine the lights turning on in rural America?  The people inside are no doubt looking at their television sets to learn the latest results and predictions.  Which I’ll avoid doing for as long as my fear remains stronger than my curiosity.

Then what?