NOVEMBER'S ELECTION

BARN OWL

Below is the post for week 49

NOVEMBER’S ELECTION

I woke a few weeks ago thinking that all my posts have been negative and discouraging. Today, I want give thanks for what we have accomplished and the hope this offers to the future. I do believe that if we come out of this episode in history with this angry, disorganized, seditious group facing tribunals, with control again of our armed forces, our courts, legislature and our civil service, that our nation will be the better for it.

It will require that the mediocre center Democrats who have slowed progress and benefitted financially from their positions be removed. It will require that the subsidy of our legislators by billionaires come to an end. Representatives of the people should no longer use government as their road to wealth and connections. This will require recognition that democracy and uncontrolled wealth cannot function together and that all those billions that we produced, really belong to us.

So this is a good time to celebrate a movement to the left by voters in our nation. It is a good start.

I see Barn Owl as an action of the “long game” of left wing politics that has been lost to us for generations. These articles are available to any one who wants to publish them in their own rural community. BUT if you can’t afford 6 inches and you live where you have a county paper or a shopper, pay for something short that you can afford and can appear weekly. Even a few lines well written and honest in the body of a small paper or in the want ads will draw some attention and remind the reader that something is going on that matters.

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NOVEMBER’S ELECTIONS

There was something to celebrate in November: people showed they were turning against Trump and his plan for America. Polls showed growing opposition, and this was proven at the ballot box. In many elections, Democrats did even better than they hoped.

In the big governor elections in Virginia and New Jersey, Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill won. Democrats in both states also won senate and assembly seats as well as winning races for Virginia’s Lieutenant governor and Attorney General.

California passed Proposition 50 – to temporarily redraw its congressional districts to increase the number of Democratic districts in response to Texas doing the same for Republicans.

Progressives are getting involved and winning also on the local level:

· Bucks County, Pennsylvania voters removed the sheriff who had agreed to work with ICE on raids. This is a swing county that went narrowly for Trump in 2024. The sheriff’s opponent won with over 55% of the vote.

· Pennsylvania also voted to keep three progressive supreme court justices.

· In Texas, the school board for the third largest district switched from a 6 - 1 conservative majority, which had been removing books and closing libraries, to a 4-3 progressive majority.

· Georgia elected two Democrats to the Public Service Commission with over 60% of the vote. They were the first Democrats to win statewide office since 2006. One was the first black woman ever elected to a statewide partisan office.

· In Mississippi, the Republican supermajority in the State Senate was broken when Democrats won two new senate seats that were created in redistricting.

· Colorado voters approved higher taxes on wealthy people to pay for school meals

· Maine voters rejected a law that made voting harder by requiring photo ID and making mail-in voting more complicated.

· The Wichita, Kansas school board flipped from 4-3 GOP to a 5-2 Democratic majority.

· In Connecticut, 29 conservative representatives lost their seats in municipal elections.

· Detroit elected its first woman mayor.

· Albany, New York elected its first black mayor.

· Many cities and towns - like Moscow Idaho, East Hampton Massachusetts, Kalispell Montana, Coralville Iowa, Georgetown South Carolina and Greek New York - elected Democrats even though Trump won there in 2024. Counties and school boards in Pennsylvania, Washington, New York, Ohio, Arizona and Colorado switched to Democratic control.

· In its largest voter turnout in 59 years, New York City elected Zohran Mamdani as mayor.

· Even in races Democrats did not win – they increased their share of the vote.

This is Democracy – still at work – throughout the country.

By Ben Boardman and Friends. Paid by gifts from supporters

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