Karen Dolan argues that rather than a real trouncing, what Dems got was a purging of those too conservative. Be ye hot or be ye cold, but none of this lukewarm BS is what the people said November 2nd.

Most of the good news comes from California, Delaware, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Vermont and Nevada where hate seems to have been momentarily defeated, albeit narrowly in most places but defeated nevertheless. Particularly interesting is Nevada where Latino voters are credited with pulling Harry Reid’s chess-nuts from the tea party’s bonfire. Latino’s voted for Harry Reid at a rate of 68% as opposed to 30% for Sharon Angle. It is uncertain whether the tea party is even capable of learning this lesson.

California

In California, Dems won big time. You should ask your republican friends (if you still have any) how that happened in this “historic” election. This is a midterm and traditionally they don’t do as well on the turnout dept. However, one can see what happens when the youth vote does turn out. In proposition 19 going to the vote, we see that 46% of Californians support legalization of Marijuana (53% said no to 19). Youth came out to vote in this particular California election cycle partially because of this historic vote on the legalization of Marijuana. Historic because for the first time, people are talking about this issue properly, as a civil rights issue.

Illinois

Pat Quinn beat Bill Brady by a slim margin. On Thursday the AP called the race for Pat Quinn…Bill Brady had been consistently leading in the polls and in fact was (troublingly) picked as the winner of that race by even my favorite pollster Nate Silver with an 87% chance of a favorable outcome for Bill Brady and Republicans. Big upset there.

This is clearly a huge win for workers in Illinois as it is widely believed among labor that one of the first acts of a Republican Governor in Illinois would be to kill the unions ability to raise and spend political money. Right, they’re ok with mega corporations blowing cash in the billions into our political process but it’s not ok for organized workers to collectively bargain or donate money to candidates. Seems a little one-sided if you ask me.

Iowa

The new (old) governor elect Terry Branstad (53%) was re-instated over Chet Culver (43%). Bruce Brailey hung on to his seat and Chuck Grassley of course held on to his post. Not a big change at all for Iowa it seems.

Vermont

Another interesting development is the Governor elect of Vermont, Democrat Peter Shumlin, has pledged to shut down the states leaking nuclear reactor. In making that promise to voters he cinched his win with a full 14% of the vote being attributed to that pledge in exit polls. The town closest to the reactor, Brattleboro, has voted 2,387 to 1,826 to take the plant by eminent domain to guarantee its shut-down.

Entergy, the owner of the reactor has put it up for sale in an attempt to subvert the will of the people.

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