First Aid Kit – My Silver Lining

At 1:30 a.m. I went to bed, still unsure of what the final election results would be for my state. I woke up this morning slightly more hopeful that the little blue bubble I live in was intact but not all the precincts had reported their tallies and no concession speech had been made.

My husband is not a US citizen and therefore cannot vote. I’m all alone on election night to tough it out. He knows our state’s elected officials but he doesn’t know the national picture. The ins and outs of who controls the Senate and the House and the ramifications of losing that control are things he understands in the abstract but he doesn’t get worked up about it like I do. He’s never been to Kentucky or Georgia, he doesn’t know anyone who lives there, he doesn’t see why I care so much about it.

I care about it, even for governors of other states where I will never live, because I want to move the center. As a nation, I want the discourse to be farther to the left. I think that is actually where people are, they just don’t know it or know how to articulate it because the loudest voices are so far to the right. I want a Tweet like this one from Ben Casselman to not be a head-shakingly sad but true state of affairs.

So voters want a higher minimum wage, legal pot, abortion access and GOP representation. Ok then.

— Ben Casselman (@bencasselman) November 5, 2014

But there were some small flickers of hope out there yesterday. Pennsylvania has a new governor, New Hampshire sent the carpetbagger Scott Brown packing, I still live in my comfortable blue bubble. I just wish there were more parts of the country where people hadn’t voted against their own best interests.

Like my husband’s compatriots sing, try to keep on keeping on.

* First Aid Kit. These Swedish sisters have some seriously impressive harmonies. And their covers. Wow. I link to this one, of them doing Dancing Barefoot when Patti Smith won the Polar Music Prize, every chance I get.