Posted by AzBlueMeanie: After gay marriage rights died at the polls 32 times in the past, on Tuesday they passed for the first time in at least two states, and changes in state legislatures makes securing gay marriage rights more likely. Same-sex marriage victories go beyond Maine and Maryland: Supporters of gay marriage succeeded Tuesday … Read more
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
As Vice President Joe Biden said to President Obama on the passage of the Affordable Care Act, Democratic Senate wins on Tuesday are a "big effin' deal" for liberals. Greg Sargent writes, A big night for Democrats and liberals:
Obama has been reelected with a resounding victory in the electoral
college (the popular vote is outstanding). Democrats have routed
Republicans in the Senate races. A progressive champion has been sent to
the Upper Chamber in the person of Elizabeth Warren. The first openly
gay Senator — Tammy Baldwin, another solid liberal — joins her. The Dem
majority will be more progressive and energetic.
* * *
Obamacare will survive. It will continue to be implemented, and provided
that it works, it will grow in popularity as its benefits kick in. The
health law will slowly get woven into the fabric of American life, just
as the major progressive reforms of the 20th Century did over time.
The economy is likely to continue to recover. If Mitt Romney had won, he
and his ideas (tax cuts, deregulation, unshackling the free market)
might have been associated with the recovery, leaving Keynesianism and
stimulus spending thoroughly discredited.
Instead, Obama and Democrats
will hopefully gain more credit for the ongoing recovery, and perhaps
the idea that government can act to fix the economy will get
rehabilitated. Warren’s victory is important here, too: The most vocal
advocate of progressive taxation in the country was sent to the Senate,
at a time when the argument over whether to raise taxes on the rich to
help fix our fiscal problems is about to climax.
Posted by AzBlueMeanie: In the first presidential election of unlimited campaign contributions and undisclosed donors in the Citizens United era, "People Power" defeated the plutocrats, or the "47 percent" defeated the "one percent." This time. The plutocrats will do what they always do. Next time they will throw more money at their objective of overwhelming … Read more
Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Watching FAUX News Fraudcasting's coverage of the election last night, and the utter disbelief in the faces of the wingnuts that Willard "Mittens" Romney had not won the landslide FAUX had been predicting and that Tea-Publicans were losing to Democrats in the Senate, it reminded me of the scene in The Grinch … Read more
By Craig McDermott, cross-posted from Random Musings
Note: all Maricopa County results below should be considered in the light of the fact that somewhere near 400K ballots remain to be counted, with approximately half being mail-in ballots that were dropped off at polling places and provisional ballots that were filled out on Tuesday.
And based on reports of voter suppression/general incompetence on the part of Maricopa County
Elections (it's one of the two; I'll wait for an honest investigation to determine which it was) in Democratic and/or Latino-heavy precincts, those provisional ballots could affect a few races.
Maricopa County results page here.
AZ SOS results page here.