A short and dull post is better than no post at all, right? At least I assume it is, if the goal is to keep up a habit of blogging regularly. I have a draft I’m working on to discuss some of the back-and-forth about (and on) Mastodon/the Fediverse lately, but there’s a lot to cover there, so I’m not going to try to rush it today. I hope that once it’s done, it will be at least a little useful and informative.
In the meantime, well, that “Red Wave” everyone was so excited about sure was a bust, huh? I guess it turns out that Americans like abortion and democracy, don’t love fascism, and also don’t really hate trans people nearly as much as the fascists want. As of this writing, three Senate seats and 30 House seats remain too close to call, and it looks very plausible that the Senate might remain 50-50 instead of falling into fascist control. The House is even more uncertain, and I’m not equipped to make any major prognostications there. Democrats vastly overperformed both historical midterm expectations for an incumbent party with an unpopular president, and a lot of polling that made Republicans look stronger than, in the event, they were.
Here in Massachusetts, there were no real surprises. Whatever rational elements might have remained in the MAGOP are represented now only by the lame duck Governor, the rest has been subsumed into the Trump cult, and accordingly nominated a democracy-hating psychopath, for whom even Massachusetts’s electorate — historically, shall we say, reluctant to elect women — wouldn’t vote against Maura Healey, an accomplished AG who ran on a relatively moderate platform. In fact, that aversion to putting women in positions of power may finally be substantially eroded, as MA elected women to every statewide constitutional office except (of course) Secretary of State, which Bill Galvin will hold on to just as long as he pleases, thank you very much, they don’t call him the “Prince of Darkness” for nothing. Also very importantly, the fascists failed to stop Question 1 (albeit narrowly) and Question 4 (with a slightly more comfortable margin) from passing, which hopefully will mean Massachusetts continues to become a better place to live for everyone.
If only we could get some more housing built and fix the goddamn T.
Scott Madin 