Down-Ballot Was Big Trouble for Democrats, But There Are Some Rainbows Out There

Let us allow the soon-to-be-ex-president* and his followers have their cloud cuckoo land all to themselves for a couple of days. There are lovely little rainbows over the landscape elsewhere. The most glorious one is the simple fact that the demographic groups that have the most reasons to hate the government for its empty rhetoric and broken promises—Black Americans and Native Americans—turned out like champions in a result that ought to shame the rest of us. That goes from the high-profile organizers all the way down to the door-knockers, phone-callers, envelope-stuffers, and election observers.

Stacey Abrams is a power who now may well have the fate of the Senate in her hands. Congresswomen Deb Haaland and Sharice Davids, whose embrace on the floor of the House in 2019 still moves me when I think about it, both won re-election to the House. (Republican Yvette Harrell won a seat from New Mexico, too.) Indigenous voters very likely were a big part of Joe Biden's margin of victory in both Arizona and Wisconsin. From the High Country News:

Indigenous people in Arizona comprise nearly 6% of the population — 424,955 people as of 2018 — and eligible voters on the Navajo Nation alone number around 67,000. Currently, the margin between Democratic candidate Joe Biden — who has released a robust policy plan for Indian Country — and incumbent President Donald Trump is just under 41,000 as of Friday morning...

...In Montana, though the state went for Trump overall, counties overlapping with the reservations of the Blackfeet Nation, Fort Belknap Tribes, the Crow Tribe and Northern Cheyenne Tribe went blue. The divides were often stark; Glacier County, encompassed by the Blackfeet Nation, went for Biden by 64%, the highest in the entire state, while the neighboring county voted for Trump by 75%. The Native vote in Montana has made the difference before, when Indigenous voters helped Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat who has advocated for Indian Country in legislation regarding water settlements, missing and murdered Indigenous women, and tribal recognition, get elected the last three terms in often-close races.

Wisconsin, a closely watched swing state, went narrowly for Biden by fewer than 21,000 votes as of Friday morning. There, the Indigenous population is 90,189 people as of 2018. Wisconsin counties overlapping the lands of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, the Menominee Tribe and the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans show that voters there helped tip the count to a Democratic majority. Menominee County, which overlaps the Menominee Tribe’s reservation, voted for Biden 82%, compared to the state as a whole at 49.4%.

Sharice Davids was also victorious.

South Dakota went for Trump by 61% — except on tribal lands. Counties overlapping the lands of the Standing Rock Sioux, Cheyenne River Sioux, Oglala Sioux, Rosebud Sioux and Crow Creek tribes went for Biden. In Oglala Lakota County, which overlaps with the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s Pine Ridge reservation, Biden won with 88%. In Todd County, which overlaps the Rosebud Sioux Reservation, Biden won 77% of the vote.

It's easy for a lot of us to have faith in The System. These are people with every reason in the world not to have any faith at all, and they turned out to vote for a new president and, in local races, to elect more of their own. There's something very John Lewis about all this. From The Guardian:

In Kansas, Stephanie Byers, who is Chickasaw and a retired teacher, became the state’s first transgender lawmaker when she won her race for a seat in its house of representatives. “We’ve made history here,” Byers said on Tuesday. “We’ve done something in Kansas most people thought would never happen, and we did it with really no pushback, by just focusing on the issues.” Also in Kansas, Christina Haswood, a Navajo Nation member, became the youngest person in the state legislature at 26. A third member of the Kansas house , Ponka-We Victors, a Tohono O’odham and Ponca member, won her re-election campaign.

Let's stay in Kansas for a minute. Riley County was established in 1855 on land west and a little north of Kansas City. It was a railroad town; the most important city was named Manhattan in order to curry favor with a financier in New York. Two years later, Manhattan was established as the county seat, but not until after a nasty fight over election fraud. The establishment of Fort Riley, General Custer's home ballpark, helped the county grow, as did the establishment of Kansas State University in Manhattan. While Democrats across Kansas were having a bad night, especially considering the gains they made in 2018, by 50.1 to 46.8, Riley County voted for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time ever.

Florida voted for a $15 minimum wage. The "war" on drugs was rolled back in Oregon, South Dakota, New Jersey, and Montana. An elected judiciary still is the second-worst idea in American politics, but the Democrats did flip the Michigan Supreme Court. Now, down-ballot was every bit the landfill that people are saying it is; the redistricting process in 2020 is going to be gerrymandered from hell to breakfast. But there are rainbows and some of them are our fellow citizens.

Charles P. Pierce

Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.