I’m not sure if there’s a more fitting tea name to describe various pundit thoughts before last night’s election.

 

Loon Call in the Dark is a sweet, robust tea that starts opaque at the first steeping and ends dark, like many of the horses that find themselves surprisingly in first at the moment. I got steep after steep after steep from this lovely tea. It‘s a gift that keeps on giving.

 

Can be sipped in appreciation on beautiful mornings after a storm.

A few weeks ago I said that I felt optimistic about this election, and I feel pretty justified in that right now. Pundits were expecting a blow out for historical reasons. This is a mid-term election with a fairly unpopular president, and that’s the way mid-terms usually go.

 

But that didn’t happen. Some major takeaways.

 

 

For me, the race that most brings me hope is Colorado’s District 3, Boebert versus Frisch. Pundits had this race as Boebert +14, and gave Frisch almost no chance at winning. Frisch expected himself to be competitive and built a campaign that tirelessly worked for every possible vote. Meanwhile Boebert did what she does best, which was spread toxicity everywhere she went.

 

It’s still not known whether Frisch will take the seat, but with a small handful of votes remaining, he’s leading by a few thousand votes in a district that six months ago, I would have said was so solidly, deeply red that it would take a miracle to tint it purple.

 

(Colorado’s redistricting was done under a bipartisan process, as required by Colorado law.)

 

We will win the Senate if we do the work. Rafael Warnock’s senate seat in Georgia is almost certainly going to a runoff election. Walker is deeply unpopular; without Kemp and other Republicans on the ticket, he’s got even less of a chance to pick up voters who are voting a straight ticket.

 

What we need to do now: Rafael Warnock is going to need to survive a run-off election, which means he’s going to need to dig deep into his emergency fund and have the support he needs to get out the vote in just one month.

 

We’ve created ActBlue pages to make it easy for you to help him out.

Note: if you’re using Apple Pay, Act Blue (who is processing the information) may not process the donations to all the organizations. Just be aware when choosing a payment method.

 

If we win the Senate, it means that if something happens to Thomas or Alito in the next two years, Mitch McConnell can’t delay their replacement until after the next Presidential election. And I have confidence. We are going to win the Senate for the future of the Supreme Court.

 

Don’t wait for blue waves. Build blue bricks. People keep talking about “red waves” or “blue waves” or “tsunamis” as if voting is a thing that comes in and out like water without our having to do anything about it.

 

This wasn’t a wave election. It was a brick election. 

 

The GOP won where their bricks—gerrymandering, reducing polling places, making it harder to vote in many little ways—had been placed. The Democrats won where their bricks—access, voting rights organizations, and talking and listening to people—had been placed.

 

Long-term results are built up by bricks: solid decisions made by Secretaries of State and local voting commissioners who, piece by piece, make voting accessible and easy to all who are legally qualified. Choices to make ballots easy to drop off, to make polling places available to all, to create a state apparatus to make sure that everyone who wants to vote has the opportunity to do it.

 

Adam Frisch turned more counties in Western Colorado blue than Biden did in 2020–but that local effort also meant that more people voted for Governor and Senate. Those counties weren’t just blue when it came to Boebert. They were blue for Jared Polis and Michael Bennett.

 

We didn’t win everything, but we won a lot. More importantly, even in places where we didn’t win, don’t discount the value of the bricks we’ve put into play. If we don’t get discouraged, those bricks we have built in this election will be a base for the future. 

 

Let’s keep laying blue bricks.

I wrote this book—about elderly lesbians who join forces to take on a terrible man, and ended up burning things down—in a fit of anger and despair at Brett Kavanaugh. I really think there is a place for anger, despair, and burning things down. But just as importantly as the anger and the burning things down in this book is the quieter building things up: building relationships, building self-confidence, building belief that if you do what must be done you can win and the determination to keep doing it until you do.

 

The anger and despair I felt when Kavanaugh was confirmed to a lifetime Supreme Court seat (sigh) have burned down, but what remains is not lifeless coals. Every decision he makes steels our determination to make sure that he will not win.

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