Deserves

The thing I keep saying about this whole experience is that I don’t deserve it. And I feel like people hear that and think I’m somehow disparaging myself. I’m not trying to, though. I’m trying to get across something of the magnitude of gratitude that I feel about this strange and amazing thing y’all are doing for us.

It is just beyond what one person–any person, not just me–could expect or hope for or even wrap my head around. I want to laugh and cry at the same time. I wish I could know that I was giving you guys even 1/100th of how this feels.

It feels like a miracle.

I don’t know how to embed just the section I want, but if you fast forward this to an hour and twelve minutes into this movie, when he starts skipping, that’s me, people. That is me.

 

Which I guess makes you guys Jacob Marley. I hope that’s cool.

Free Advice to the TNDP

From here on out, just let Sean Braisted speak to the media and, when he speaks to the media, go ahead and let him do that chagrined laugh of his and say, honestly, “It’s a clusterfuck, isn’t it?”

Because this?

Well, Tennessee has a very low threshold of 25 signatures to get on the ballot. So it’s not difficult to offer yourself as a candidate. We have a very small window of five days after candidate paperwork is filed and there are 99 House seats, 33 Senate seats, nine congressional seats. So we have five days to withdraw or not allow a Democratic candidate to be placed on a ballot. And it’s also a slippery slope to keep a candidate off the ballot.

This is terrible. And guess what? There isn’t a slippery slope from “You can’t run as a Democrat and belong to a hate group” and anywhere else. It’s not slippery. There is no slope.  There’s just looking at who your constituents are and then not letting the people who are actively working for their elimination run as fucking Democrats. That is a flat, smooth, safe surface for a motherfucking party to walk on. I mean, why would we be embarrassed to be dismissive of people who want to get rid of our constituencies?

And then this?

Well, I certainly spent a lot of time and the staff spent a lot of time talking to prospective candidates. It is difficult when the Republican has a $10 million war chest and a personal checkbook that is in excess of that, to recruit a candidate against that kind of campaign war chest is difficult.

We did not get involved in the primary, we don’t get involved in primaries, so we had a number of candidates that filed and it’s a difficult mountain for us to climb when your Republican opponent has that kind of financial resource.

This is so hilarious I can’t even be mad. “We’d have kept the dude from the hate group off the ballot as a Democrat if we’d had more money, like those fancypants Republicans”? So, it’s your donors’ fault now?

That sentiment doesn’t really make people want to open their wallets, I’d guess.

Like I said, send Braisted. Let him cuss. But don’t bullshit.

Monday!

Monday begins the official process of getting my living room back and safe. I am thrilled.

Holy Cow! Remember this morning?

By Tom Humphrey’s count, the Democrats lost 5 incumbents, all but one of whom had been pitted against other incumbents in redistricting (right? I think that’s the case). The Republicans lost 7 incumbents to newcomers.

It’s going to be a weird legislative session.

The Election

I didn’t vote. My new registration card is in the dining room behind all the stuff from my living room and so I went to the polling place I had last time and it obviously wasn’t a polling place so I just went home. Sorry, America.

We lost our strongest advocates for women’s rights–Marrero and Richardson over in Memphis–so that really sucks. But, hey, we retained G.A. Hardaway, so someone is left to co-sponsor all of Campfield’s “Protecting you from lying bitchez” legislation. Oh, wait. That really sucks.

But at least we can take some joy in knowing that we mostly lost incumbent Democrats because of redistricting. Republicans lost incumbents because their base hates them.

And their base hates them even though, with the exception of guns in cars in other people’s parking lots, they did exactly what their base wants. Seriously, their base got 99.98% of what they wanted and they’re still so pissed that they voted incumbents out. I do not envy the Republicans who are left trying to figure out how, then, you appease the base. If winning on what rounds up to everything doesn’t do it, what will?