OB Rag

Editordude: This Op-Ed by NY Times columnist Michelle Goldberg reprinted in the LA Times helped me to understand that I was truly grieving — in grief — about the death of democracy — and it helped me get through the weekend. I wanted to share it.

By Michelle Goldberg / The Spokesman Review – New York Times /Sat., Nov. 9, 2024 

When Donald Trump won the first time, I spoke to a journalist friend in Turkey to commiserate. I told her about all the protests that were planned, and she gently tried to prepare me for disappointment. She and her friends had protested Recep Tayyip Erdogan when he was prime minister, she said. But in time, the protests subsided, and life within a country of diminishing freedoms ground on. This conversation stayed in my mind throughout the Trump presidency as a warning against letting down our guard. When Trump was finally ejected from the White House, I felt patriotic pride in the endurance of the anti-Trump resistance, which had never for a moment accepted his grotesquerie as our new normal.

It won’t be that way this time.

By Laura Meckler and Andrew Jeong / Washington Post / November 9, 2024

For most of the country, predictions that Election Day would morph into election week or election month did not come to pass.
Then there’s California, where millions of ballots remain uncounted.

The most populous state in the union has one of the longest vote-counting processes. That’s partly because California has so many ballots to count and partly because the state makes it easy for its citizens to vote, which means election officials have to work harder to certify that ballots are valid.

The result is — it may take a while for results. As of midday Saturday, 10 House races in California had yet to be called, with control of the House on the line. Also uncalled were a few closely fought ballot initiatives, including one that would gradually raise the minimum wage to $18 per hour.

As of Saturday, there were nearly 5 million uncounted ballots, including more than 950,000 in Los Angeles County alone. County officials have 30 days to count their ballots and report them to the secretary of state, which then certifies the results.

The Washington Post reports :

As of Saturday, there were nearly 5 million uncounted ballots in California, including more than 950,000 in Los Angeles County alone. County officials have 30 days to count their ballots and report them to the secretary of state, which then certifies the results.

Days after Republicans won the presidency and control of the Senate, the exact makeup of the 119th Congress remained unclear, with control of the House uncertain and one Senate seat left to be called.

Early Saturday, Sen. Jacky Rosen (D) was projected to win Nevada’s Senate race, according to the Associated Press, marking a victory for Democrats in one of the last Senate seats to be called.

On election night, Republicans secured enough seats to attain the Senate majority. Arizona’s Senate race remains the last one without a projected winner. There, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D) leads Republican Kari Lake. If Gallego wins, Republicans will have a 53-seat majority.

The current balance of power in the House is 212 Republicans and 203 Democrats, with 20 races remaining uncalled. Republicans need to win six of them to secure a majority; Democrats need to win 15.

What’s left to be called

Neighbors upset. They seemed to be finding out about a developer’s plans in their neighborhood — but the City of San Diego wasn’t helping them.

Sound familiar?

It’s a story that’s resounding across San Diego communities these days – and this time it’s in Emerald Hills and the Chollas area. And this time, it involves a low-income community that is mainly African-American and Latino.

Two tall radio towers sit on the highest point of Emerald Hills which is a huge empty green lot behind wire fencing. Yet, it’s private land and two years ago, the city announced that a housing project would be constructed there.

Neighbors had wanted a  park there, something akin to Kate Sessions in Pacific Beach with maybe a youth or senior center. But now these neighbors are finding out about a developer’s plans to build more than 120 units on the empty lot. Yet, the zoning map showed that only about 70 houses would be allowed on the parcel.

By Brae Canlen

The recriminations were swift, against Biden, Harris, and the Democrats. He should have stepped down sooner. She ran a lousy campaign. They should have given us a better candidate.

True or false, these are not the reasons why Donald Trump will become the 47th president of the United States. As of late Thursday, more than 72 million people voted for him. I’m pretty sure that most of them knew – they knew – he was not a good man. And they didn’t care.

It would be easy to demonize these people, and let’s face it, some of them are wackos (Proud Boys, QAnon, Oath Keepers, etc.). But when I looked at all those red states on the election map Tuesday night, after the polls had closed, I tried to think of the average people who lived there. The parents who had 2.5 kids, pay a monthly $2,209 mortgage payment, and carry a credit card balance of $6,642.

Sen. Bernie Sanders is blaming the Democratic Party after Vice President Kamala Harris lost to now President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans gained control of the Senate.

In a statement shared on social media Wednesday — see below — the U.S. senator from Vermont said party leadership must have “serious political discussions” about Latino and Black workers voting for Republican candidates.

“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” Sanders wrote. “While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.”

Sanders, 83, highlighted several issues he believes the nation has failed to address under the Biden-Harris Administration, from wealth inequality and a worsening standard of living to high prescription drug prices and the lack of guaranteed medical leave.

By Rex Huppke

We are a country that just elected – that just willfully chose – one of the most cruel, unscrupulous and transparently self-serving political figures in modern history to be president. Again.

I never want to hear the words “America is better than this” again. I never want to be told about America’s better angels.

I want honesty. I want an admission of exactly who we are as a country, and let’s be damn clear about that definition: We are a country that just elected – that just willfully chose – one of the most cruel, unscrupulous and transparently self-serving political figures in modern history to be president. Again.

by Ernie McCray

That poor excuse
for a human being
is going to the White House again.
And I was thinking about him
as I played
with Jackson,
my youngest grandson,
the other day
because at the same time
my mind was also
buzzing frantically

By Mat Wahlstrom

Hunter S. Thompson famously raged at the impending outcome of the 1972 Presidential Election, where another crook looked to beat the better man. With a true patriot’s love of country, he lamented:

The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes and all his imprecise talk about ‘new politics’ and ‘honesty in government,’ is one of the few men who’ve run for President of the United States in this century who really understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon.

But unlike back then, people could still believe that the system worked and could be counted on to ensure wrongs would eventually be righted. Now, I don’t see how there can be a Watergate

By Kate Callen

Last night, when presidential election returns started going horribly wrong, my sister said to me, “Don’t try to spin this. You always do that.”

Guilty as charged. When life ruptures, I look to Stoicism, to the belief that while we can’t control our fate, we can control our reactions to it. But this moment is too searing for that balm. The shock needs to wear off. That will take time.

What to do as we struggle to breathe again? Right now, it might help to turn away from the national conflagration and look closer to home at some encouraging local election results.

Here are local trends that augur well this Wednesday morning: