Unlike most of the last several election nights, yesterday I didn’t spend much time following the race results. I actually went to bed a bit earlier than usual, which accounts for the lack of a post for the day. I woke up at 4 in the morning and checked the results, no panic inducing news so I tried to go back to sleep and wait for more news in the morning.

Good things: I still live in a completely blue bubble, Fetterman and Shapiro won in PA, MA and MD flipped their governor’s seat (why those two were ever led by Republicans I don’t know), Tony Evers, Janet Mills, Gretchen Whitmer, and Kathy Hochul all held their spots. There were actually a lot of pretty good outcomes. If Frisch manages to beat Boebert in CO that will be glorious and Mary Peltola looks to be on track to snuff out Sarah Palin’s dream of getting back into government.

Bad things: Beto. Stacey Abrams. What do those two do now? If you lose state-wide races twice, it seems like you should probably figure out some other way to keep pushing for progressive causes because you just don’t have the turn out you need. Georgia’s senate race will have to go to a run-off, we lost four NY House seats when we really couldn’t afford to lose any. If we should find ourselves back in familiar territory with Turtleface as majority leader and a Trump sychophant as speaker of the house, lord help me.

I saw so many headlines to the effect of red wave didn’t materialize or Democrats surprise with victories in x, y, and z. Hey, news media, how about you do a little soul searching and realize that your penchant for sensationalizing and engaging in harmful misinformation, or at least not coming right out and stating when Republicans are lying, is actually the reason for your surprise. You ginned up a tale that wasn’t a true reflection of the situation in the insatiable pursuit of click bait ad revenue, and you’re still doing it with these headlines. You actively undermine our ability to make progress with shitty writing that tries to present the GOP lies as valid points. Stop. You need to stop.