Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez beat Joe Crowley again last nightThe NY Times defines what happened as a wave. It didn't feel like a wave to me last night-- not with Beto, @IronStache, Andrew Gillum and Stacey Abrams losing-- not to mention all those Senate races. But the Democrats did take back the House-- pretty substantially, and appear to have defeated Putin's favorite congressman, Dana Rohrabacher. The Senate is very bad news. Although Jacky Rosen beat Dean Heller in Nevada, Kyrsten Sinema appears to have lost to Martha McSally in Arizona. Marsha Blackburn defeated Phil Bredesen in Tennessee and, tragically, Beto O'Rourke lost to Ted Cruz in Texas. Democrats also lost Senate seats in Missouri (Claire McCaskill), Florida (Bill Nelson) and Indiana (Joe Donnelly) and Jon Tester may have lost in Montana; still too close to call-- with 83.4% of precincts counted, Matt Rosedale is leading narrowly-- 48.9% to 48.2%. Sorry... this was meant to be a good news post.So far, though, Democrats have managed to flip several state legislatures-- both Houses in New Hampshire as well as the state senates in New York, Connecticut (which had been tied), Colorado, Maine and Minnesota. So, preliminary numbers show that of the 900 state legislative seats, the Democrats lost during the Obama years, about a third of them were won back last night. Unlike the DSCC and the DCCC, both of which failed again, the DLCC did very well and deserve to be congratulated.Voters in Idaho, Nebraska and Utah voted Republican for virtually all the offices they could-- with the likely exception of Utah's 4th district where Blue Dog Ben McAdams leads Republican incumbent Mia Love 93,994 (51.3%) to 89,280 (48.7%) this morning with 68.4% of the vote counted. BUT voters in all 3 states approved propositions to expand Medicaid (under ObamaCare) that there legislatures had refused to do. That brings the total to 36 states who have opted to bring low-cost, quality healthcare to individuals who can't afford expensive healthcare.USA Today reported this morning that "Florida voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to restore voting rights to an estimated 1.5 million former felons, including roughly 500,000 African-Americans" and that Michigan Utah and Missouri legalized marijuana.Democrats, though losing crucial governors races in Florida and Ohio, as well as in Iowa, took 7 gubernatorial mansions away from the Republicans: Kansas (Kobach gone), Wisconsin (Scott Walker gone), Nevada, Illinois, Michigan, New Mexico and Maine.
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