what percentage of americans are going to vote in the 2018 midterms?
Commentary
Faith Not Fright: Trumpism Was Never Going To Be Undone In 1 Nighttime
Like many citizens of expert faith, my hopes for the mid-terms were overblown. What I wanted — on a practical and psychological level — was a complete repudiation of Donald Trump'due south political fashion: the shameless fear-mongering, the tireless sowing of discord, the abiding lying, naked corruption, all of it.
In some childish but understandable way, I wanted to disengage the shocking result of the 2016 election, in which we handed 100 percentage of the presidency to a candidate who lost the popular vote by three one thousand thousand.
That didn't happen. Given the partisan divide in our country, the profit motive of our Fourth Estate, and the systemic flaws in our electoral organisation, it was never going to happen.
At that place were no "new lessons" from these midterms, in fact, only the confirmation of hard truths that have long been with us.
Moral progress, after all, is an incremental process.
We already knew that the media operated in a tacit alliance with Trump. I don't just mean the for-profit demagogues who brand millions peddling ecstatic white victimization. I mean the news organizations that still slavishly encompass every inflammatory tweet, amplify every conspiracy theory and dutifully acceleration reporters to his rallies to be used as props.
Rather than focusing on policy, the boring business of governance, the real threats posed by income inequality or climate change, the media allowed Trump to drive the coverage. This is why nosotros heard all about "the caravan" in the closing days of the campaign, and next to nil well-nigh how many Americans stood to lose health insurance.
Donald Trump didn't make the midterms about himself. The media did that for him.
Nosotros were also reminded (one time over again) that the U.South. Senate is designed in a manner that distorts the popular volition in favor of white, rural voters. Autonomous candidates won nearly 45 million votes, while Republicans won non quite 33 1000000. And yet the GOP gained at to the lowest degree 2 seats.
Democratic House candidates also won by a whopping seven pct overall, and flipped the House. In a world costless of gerrymandering, they would take won dozens more seats.
These midterms revealed that voter suppression is alive and well in America, that GOP officials volition do everything possible (if not legal) to brand it harder for poor and minority citizens to vote. This is what you take to do when you lot're a party with plutocratic and wildly unpopular policies.
But the toughest truth we accept to face is also, in a sense, the most inspiring.
Trumpism overran the GOP past unleashing some of the ugliest aspects of the American spirit: overt racism, misogyny and a tribal loyalty driven not past pride but shame. There is no disputing that his dark formula, when applied to a rigged organisation, tin can be converted into raw power.
Just it's also true that Americans turned out in tape numbers to vote in these midterms, topping the 2014 tally by more than xxx one thousand thousand votes. More young voters showed upwardly at the polls, and more female candidates and candidates of color were elected than always before.
The truthful and lasting impact of these midterms has yet to be measured. It resides in your faith.
What nosotros saw on Tuesday was, in a sense, just the start of a demographic wave that hasn't even begun to crest.
When citizens become engaged, they grow hopeful. And information technology can exist discouraging to accept some of those hopes dashed. Simply the central lesson of these midterms — the one I'm holding on to, at to the lowest degree — is that moral progress doesn't happen in a day. The Ceremonious Rights Deed didn't pass just because Rosa Parks decided 1 day to refuse to give up her seat on a bus. Millions of Americans have to ascent upwards, one at a time.
Moral progress, after all, is an incremental process. At that place's always fierce resistance to whatever smashing crusade, from abolition to suffrage to labor rights. That resistance is how you know it's a great cause. The drastic measure the GOP now employs — from overt propaganda to flagrant voter suppression — are a measure of its desperation.
Fear and rage are powerful motivators. Nosotros learned that lesson, yet again, on Tuesday. But we also learned that most Americans are warning to the danger of those forces.
So I say to all of you lot who may be struggling with disappointment (every bit I am): stay focused on the progress fabricated.
The true and lasting bear upon of these midterms has notwithstanding to be measured. It resides in your faith. It resides in your determination to work for change, not but wish for information technology, to reject anguished passivity in favor of renewed activism.
It's a sunny morning in autumn and the trees are aflame with colour. I'll take religion over fear any twenty-four hour period.
Source: https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2018/11/07/democrats-win-the-house-2018-midterms-steve-almond
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