Election Post-Mortum

   Well, it's mostly good news coming out of the election. Let's see what I can all remember.

National

Good news!

• Obama wins!!!
  
• Voter suppression efforts in Ohio fail. I had some concerns that Obama supporters would get frustrated with the long lines, no thanks to early voting having been cut. I was confident that a majority of Ohioans supported Obama; it was just a matter of securing those votes. I was quite sure Romney shot any chance he may have had with his "Jeep moves manufacturing to China" ads. (It is important to note that those were his ads and not those of a supportive Super PAC.)
  
• Elizabeth Warren will be in the Senate! This is good as she should be a voice for the 99% and should be supportive of policies that reign in big banks. The problem will be getting such policies to the floor.
  
• Alan Grayson is back in da House! He's another good voice for the 99%.
  
• Some Tea Partiers have been (or likely will be) sent home or were asked to stay home: Allen West, Joe Walsh, Richard Mourdock, and Todd Akin who was served up a double-whammy as he had to surrender his House seat to run for the Senate.
  

Bad news :(

• Wingnuttia High School prom king and queen (Steve King and Michelle Bachmann) held on to their seats.
  
• Democrats really didn't make any gains in the House like I would have hoped. There are 13 toss-ups yet, but the Republicans have the majority. From 2010, they outnumbered Dems 242-193. Dems only have 191 right now, but are expected to have 198 based on current results from those toss-ups. That's a whopping gain of 5. (Or it can be looked at as a 10 point swing when counting the seats Republicans lost...which are not necessarily the same seats. Redistricting — some seats went away, such as IA-5, while new seats have been added, such as AZ-9.)
  

Iowa

Good news!

• My soon-to-be Congressmanperson, Bruce Braley, was reelected. And it wasn't very close like it was in 2010 (same opponent then, too).
  
• My soon-to-be former Congressmanperson, Dave Loebsack, handily defeated his opponent, too...an opponent who reeked of Tea.
  
• Justice Wiggins was retained!
  Extra thoughts: As I said earlier, I think 2010 was a wake-up call. Another factor that I had not fully considered is that it has been two more years...two more years for people to realize that gay marriage is no big deal and that the apocalypse is not coming as a result. Also, the other judges were retained by about 40 points more than Wiggins. So it would seem many of the "No" voters indeed knew who they were targeting.
  
• Democrats look to make a reasonable gain in the Iowa House, including in my district. It may not be enough to take over the House, but the Republicans won't have as large of a majority.
  

Bad news :(

• As previously mentioned, Steve King getting reelected.
  
• In the "merged" district that had a Republican incumbent vs. a Democratic incumbent, the Republican prevailed. So now Iowa is split 50/50 on representation, for both House and Senate, between Democrats and Republican, whereas the split used to be 57/43 (4 to 3) in favor of the Democrats.
  

Other (mostly good news here):

• Gay marriage wins support in Maryland and Maine. Washington (the state), which apparently has only mail-in voting, still has a lot of counting to do, but the results thus far look promising. Minnesota, which had an amendment to define marriage between a man and a woman, has lost. (My understanding is that this will not make gay marriage legal in Minnesota, but a win for the amendment could have added a hurdle.) The issue of gay marriage was 4/4 last night. Awesome!
  
• Marijuana for recreational use wins support in Colorado and Washington (the state). This is good because the so-called "War on Drugs" has been quite costly and ineffective. This could put pressure on the Obama administration to ease federal restrictions. Some other states failed to approve marijuana for either recreational or medicinal purposes, so we may not be quite there yet this election. This is an issue to watch the next 4 years.
  
• I have learned today that Florida had some awful measures on its ballot, including one that would give government funds to religious organizations (I hear it would repeal a ban on such funding...either way you look at it, it was a bad idea). The three bad ones I heard about have all been defeated.
  
• OK, this one is mixed. I learned yesterday that California had a measure to end the death penalty. Sadly, this was defeated. But they also had a measure to revise the three-strikes law. This, I hear, passed!
  

UPDATE: Also, Puerto Rico wants to be a State. I cannot see this desire happening with the current state of Congress, though. (Too many raciest Republicans.) END UPDATE

UPDATE 2: Also worth noting — more female representatives. It's progress...no where near 50%, though. Interestingly, the article I linked points out that all of New Hampshire's representatives (both Senators and their 2 Congresspersons (hmmmm...I feel like I need to make some corrections up above)) are women. Looks like they elected a female Governor, too! END UPDATE 2