DENTON, TEXAS — It’s a few minutes past midnight, November 4, and I finally left the chair in front of my television after six hours of watching increasingly amazing results from the election.
Like it or not, it’s apparent that this country is facing an enormous change in the political climate. I know a lot of Democrats, and not one of them anticipated the extent of the blue tsunami that just swept over this country.
The last I checked, Colorado’s 5th District—the Colorado Springs area, where I first lived when I moved to Colorado almost exactly 30 years ago, and still known then as the hate capital of the country for having foisted the anti-gay Amendment 2 on the state—may have just elected its first Democratic representative since the district was created 54 years ago.
Even more shocking, Texas, where I live now, has not only elected the first Democratic senator in nearly four decades, but also dethroned its three-term Republican governor and replaced him with a Democratic woman who just spoke in her victory message about love overcoming cruelty.
We also, it seems, replaced the lieutenant governor and every other state-level office holder with Democrats. Texas has apparently become a blue state.
Across the country, red districts and states have turned from red to blue. Democrats have taken control of both the Senate and the House—or will, in January. Perhaps more importantly, most of the newly elected senators and representatives are relatively young (Texas’ new senator, James Talarico, is 37), creating what one talking head this evening called a “generational revolution.”
I cast my first vote in 1964, for Lyndon Johnson. That makes me anything but a member of a younger generation, I know. But I have to admit, my heart soars at the idea of a government consisting of people with new ideas and new energy to implement them. At the same time, I hope that we elders are not thrust aside as irrelevant, but are seen—at least at times—as sources of wisdom as we move into a future many of us simply did not see coming.
I am hopeful.
Meanwhile, local (Peak to Peak) elections weren’t nearly as exciting, since our community tends to trust known figures. There’s something particularly lovely about living in a place so small that you see your local representatives on a regular basis, and feel free to call them up to discuss your particular issues.
We like to know our politicians on a personal basis, and that’s who we tend to elect. See local election returns elsewhere in this issue, and please continue to be grateful for the friends and neighbors we choose to elevate to local office.
