Bringing energy to power

As much relief and joy as so many of us have felt over the past few weeks, as we’ve reveled in the incredible results of the groundbreaking 2018 Blue Wave election, a wave that has seen 35 -40 House seats flip from red to blue, won 7 Governorships, flipped 8 state legislative chambers, at least 370 new state legislative seats nationwide and that seems to be growing in size every day,

I think it is appropriate to thank the people who made this historic election possible.

One should certainly thank the incredible candidates and their staffs, as well as the hundreds of volunteers who knocked on tens of thousands of doors in Chester County to make it clear that we do not approve of the actions of a divisive, angry, fact-challenged, and just plain mean President.

But maybe more importantly, I think we need to thank the tens of thousands of independents and moderate, openminded republican voters, who saw how their party, and certainly their President, has abandoned them.

And one should also pause to also acknowledge the thousands of Chester County voters who have changed their registration from Republican to Democrat just in this past year, according to the easily accessible Pennsylvania voter registration database.

I had to laugh when I was reminded how out of touch the state Republican party is, when I read the comments of Val DiGiorgio, the surprisingly stillcurrent chair of the state Republican party, who sneered that Chester County Republicans “…went against their own self-interests and who will soon realize that the Democrats they elected will vote in favor of a radical agenda that will implement socialism and disrespect the rule of law.”

That’s like calling all members of his party racist just because the President, after learning of neo-Nazis marching through the streets of Charlottesville, leading to the death of a young woman who bravely came out to counterprotest, said: ‘There are very fine people on both sides.’

This is a President whose political team put out an ad so racist even Fox News wouldn’t run it; a president who proudly calls himself a nationalist and berates black female journalists; and whose orders are for children to be ripped from their mothers’ arms and put into cages.

I hope for the Democrats’ sake, Mr. DiGiorgio and people like him stay in power a long, long time.

He and his extreme-rightwing brethren clearly have absolutely no sense of what the Democratic party is today, or more importantly, what Chester County voters want.

In fact, it’s heartening to see that the Democrats have already announced that their first order of business in January will be to pass a bill that, among other things, takes away redistricting power from state legislatures and gives it to independent commissions; overturns the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling which declared political spending is First Amendment free speech; establishes automatic voter registration; mandates more disclosure of outside money and establishes a public financing match for small contributions; expands the antibribery law AND requires presidential candidates to make their tax returns public.

This is what democracy looks like.

One should certainly thank the incredible candidates and their staffs, as well as the hundreds of volunteers who knocked on tens of thousands of doors in Chester County to make it clear that we do not approve of the actions of a divisive, angry, fact-challenged, and just plain mean President.