KJ

It's so hard to believe that Joe Biden is now president, that Kamala Harris is now actually for real the vice president, that after four years of horror and two weeks of holding our breath and waiting for the other shoe to drop, in the end the transfer of power went smoothly and according to plan.

Not to discount the amount of work that I'm sure went into making it appear seamless. I have to imagine that's the case on every Inauguration Day, but especially this time. But it seems that the MAGA-heads and Q believers have lost steam, if the lack of organized demonstrations is any indication. There could be any number of reasons for that: the growing number of arrests, the fact that their beloved leader, the former president (and how wonderful it feels to type that), is no longer able to egg them on via social media, the fact that other elected officials have dropped the stolen election storyline. Even Ron Watkins, who many people agree is probably the current QAnon, is hanging it up. I doubt all this is over -- white supremacy remains a powerful force in this country, and I doubt they will all give up so easily in the long run -- but the wind is out of their sails for the moment, and I only hope that we will take this opportunity to decrease their power and influence even further.

As for President Biden and Vice President Harris, I will say this: welcome, congratulations, and thank you. I look forward to being disappointed in you as my elected executives the normal amount, rather than trepidatiously checking the news every day to see what fresh hell has been released. You have an enormous task in front of you, and I intend to hold you accountable to doing it right.

The General Services Administration has finally acknowledged the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and released the funds for Joe Biden's transition team to begin their work.

I won't quite say that this delay is unprecedented -- George W. Bush's transition wasn't authorized by the GSA until mid-December 2000 -- but in 2000 the outcome of the election was legitimately in doubt, with everything coming down to a single state and three-figure vote margin. To put it lightly, this is not the situation in 2020. I'm glad to see it, but it's criminal that it took so long. (Maybe literally? Probably not, alas.)

I really wonder what's going on behind the scenes at the White House. Is the soon-to-be-ex-president finally accepting reality? Or did the rest of the administration decide to move on, potential tantrums be damned? What I wouldn't give to be a fly on that wall.

Anyway, good news, for the president-elect and for the rest of us.

I remember 2000 too well to feel completely secure in the outcome of the presidential election, but as of now, the news is good and getting better. Let's hope it all holds.

Hang in there, everyone.

One of my most important rituals, ingrained in me for as long as I can remember, is the sacred responsibility of voting in every election. And except for my four years of college (I stayed registered to vote in California, so I was never there in November) and the gubernatorial recall election of 2003 (I was on a trip to Japan), I have always voted in person on Election Day. There are a number of reasons for this, but I'd cite two as the most important -- I appreciate having the extra time to do research on the propositions (my hatred of the proposition system is a topic I have discussed at length, so I won't go into that right now), and I feel drawn to the public aspect of going to my polling place, casting my vote, and getting a little sticker. It's hard to explain my attachment to the "I voted" sticker -- perhaps it goes back to November 1992, my first general election, when I did vote absentee and Sonoma County included a sticker along with my ballot (it was an old-style butterfly ballot, not yet infamous for its hanging chads, and they also gave me a little metal stick I could use to punch out my choices), and I was so delighted by it that not receiving one feels like a let down. It's a simple thing, that sticker, but it makes me feel like a part of something larger, and so does voting in public, with my community.

Not to reject the importance of providing more options to voters: early voting, permanent absentee status, offering everyone the opportunity to vote by mail. One big antidote to voter suppression is making voting as simple as possible, and moving to vote by mail does that in a big way. So I appreciate the states that do it, and I appreciate that California sent a ballot to every registered voter in the state this year because of the pandemic, and I wouldn't be at all surprise if we make this change permanent. So while it pains me a little to have done this, I filled out my ballot last night and put it in the mail today. And if I have to adjust to this as a permanent change, I will do it, even if it makes me a little sad.

And hey, just like in 1992, they included a sticker! Next Tuesday, I will wear it with pride, even if I never end up leaving the house. Such is civic participation during a global pandemic.

I spent a fair amount of the evening checking in on Twitter for news about today's election. While not everything went the Democrats' way, getting control of both houses of Virginia's legislature is a pretty huge win. A Democratic trifecta in Virginia has implications for gun control, voting rights, and control of redistricting in the state. On a national level, I've also heard talk that Virginia is now in a position to ratify the Equal Right Amendment, making them the 38th state to do so... and that would put the ERA over the finish line to be an official part of the US Constitution. It's not a guarantee, because when Congress passed the ERA in 1972, they put a seven year limit on ratification. Whether Congress has the right to remove that time limit is a big old open question, so who knows how it would actually play out. A story to watch, anyway.

Also, Kentucky appears to have elected a Democratic governor, although it's super close and likely to go to a recount. But it's harder to see that one as a harbinger for big Democratic gains next year, since every other statewide office went to the GOP by a comfortable margin. The Republican incumbent governor was *wildly* unpopular, in part because he said things about teachers that even his GOP colleagues thought went too far. Still, Mitch McConnell is almost as unpopular, so can we dare to hope? If nothing else I expect the Democrats will make a credible run for his seat next year. Another story to watch.

San Francisco had a municipal election today -- for some unfathomable reason, our citywide officials are all elected in off years, so we get to have an election every single November. Lucky us. Anyway, the most important race is an open seat for District Attorney; because we use ranked choice voting and there are four candidates, all with some shot of winning, we won't know the outcome for awhile. There were also some propositions because of course there are some propositions. The one that's gotten the most buzz was Proposition C, an attempt by Juul to take out a ban on selling vaping products that was passed by our Board of Supervisors last year. It's failing, badly, as expected. One proposition that might pass is a hefty tax on Uber and Lyft -- as of this writing, it's running ahead, at exactly the 66.6% that it needs to pass. My issues with the ride hailing companies are legion, too much to go into right now (but if you want to hear the rant another day, let me know); for now let's just say I'll be very happy if this goes into effect.

What does not make me happy is low voter turnout. I made it to the polls less than an hour before they closed, and according to the voting machine, I was the 27th person to vote in my precinct. A lot of Californians vote by mail -- you're allowed to be a permanent absentee voter here -- but still, that seems pretty shameful. In my wealthy/upper middle class neighborhood, in a state with some of the strongest voting rights laws in the country, the most likely cause of low turnout is apathy, and there's no excuse for that. Let's hope it doesn't persist into 2020.

SF City Hall wasn't blue because of the rally to protect the Mueller investigation -- it was almost certainly in celebration of this week's Democratic successes -- but it sure made a nice backdrop.

( Photo behind the cut )

It was probably the smallest Civic Center rally I've ever attended, but for short notice on a weeknight, not too bad.

For pictures of more around the country, Indivisible has this Twitter thread.

Keep shouting. Keep marching. Keep strong. Tuesday was a good day (and the news mostly keeps getting better), but this is all far from over.

My preference is to vote in the morning, before work. There are two main reasons I have this habit. 1) It gets voting out of the way, so I don't have to worry about getting held up late at work or in traffic. 2) Then I get to wear my "I voted" sticker all day. It is no secret that the "I voted" sticker is one of my favorite parts of elections. I had to vote absentee in my first general election (1992 -- I was a sophomore in college and didn't want to change my voter registration to Pennsylvania), and I was so happy that my packet included a sticker. But the packets in San Francisco don't, and I'd be sad not to get one.

Anyway, so tomorrow I'll get up on the early side, go vote, get some breakfast, and go to work. I have enough going on that I can easily work a full day, so that's what I plan to do. Better to have work to focus on as long as it's too early to get any results. I'll probably get home around 6 or 7pm, just in time to park myself in front of the TV and start absorbing my multi-screen experience: TV, Twitter, maybe the 538 liveblog, probably Slack. And then... we wait.

Somehow all of my posts in November so far have been about the election. Given how deeply embedded it is in my mind, and pretty much everyone else's I know, I suppose its not surprising. Still, I hope I can start putting other things at the front of my attention stack soon.

I spent this afternoon phone banking for Red To Blue SF, a group working with the Nancy Pelosi campaign to support Democrats running in districts with a chance to flip. I called folks in Florida and California, and it went okay, although I felt far less effective than I did when I made similar calls for Hillary Clinton two years ago. I didn't reach many people, mostly hangups and "sorry they aren't home"s, and the few enthusiastic supports I did reach had already voted (and were clearly tired of being called and canvassed). It was also sometimes difficult to hear, and my friends and I all had significant technical difficulties with the autodialer program.

Still, one person did thank me for my commitment to democracy, and then we went out for a tasty meal afterwards. I just wish I felt like I made more of a difference.

I have sent a few postcards for the Stacey Abrams campaign, and given money to some Senate candidates, but I still wish I had done more. I think I'll get set up to do some texting tomorrow.

The glow from last week's election results hasn't entirely worn off. Most of the below links are about those things or related issues. A couple of links at the bottom of the list are about sexual assault allegations and their fallout.

• The Mary Sue shares a roundup of historic electoral wins by women, people of color, and LGBTQ candidates.


• I particularly recomend that you want the victory speech by Danica Roem, a trans woman elected to the Virginia state legislature.


• Earlier in November, mattmfm shared some racist fliers that various Republican candidates were using as official campaign materials to target Democratic candidates. Update: every single one of those Democrats won.


• Another favorite election story: the woman who ran against many-year incumbant because he shared a sexist meme about the Women's March on Facebook -- and beat him by 7 points.


• For a bigger-picture view, Nate Silver shares his thoughts on the implications of last week's election for 2018.


• Despite the best efforts of the GOP and White House, ACA signups are breaking records this year. Good job, everyone who's been boosting the signal on this!


• I really loved this profile of Hillary Clinton campaign staffers, one year later.


• Since I wrote about George Takai earlier, I wanted to share an update on his story. He's been denying the allegations, and it's his right to do so, but the way he's going about his denial does not endear me to him. Jim Hines has some good thoughts on that. I also find his attempt to blame the whole thing on Russian bots extremely distasteful.


• Meanwhile, the GOP continues to back away slowly from Roy Moore. Too slowly, though, and he still has his defenders. Of course.

And now, to cleanse your palate, I share what may be the greatest GIF ever made.

Between North Korea and Charlottesville and everything else happening, it's hard not to feel like everything is burning down. But until the world actually ends, it's better to proceed as if it will keep on turning, so have some linkspam.

• Many people have been bothered by the fact that the ACLU went to bat for the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville last weekend, when the town tried to revoke the permit they'd already granted. I give a monthly donation to the ACLU, and I was fully aware that they do things like this when I made that decision, so I'm not upset -- it's exactly what I expect from them, and they do enough good work otherwise that I chose to support them anyway. Still, I think it's time for them to re-evaluate whether or not it's possible for a white supremacist gathering to be considered a "peaceful assembly" -- and the ACLU branches based in California broke with the national organization on this point today. Is it time to switch my monthly donation to the ACLU of Northern CA instead? It's time to think about it, anyway.


• The city of Baltimore took down all of its Confederate monuments yesterday, quietly and in the middle of the night. Alec McGillis wrote a great article on their removal, including lots of history and context about race and racism in the city.


• A fed-up citizen in Arizona -- who is a registered Republican, although not a Trump supporter -- turned Phoenix's Confederate monument into a participation trophy. On the other side of the country, activists in Durham, North Carolina, staged an "I am Spartacus" moment by turning themselves in en masse for tearing down a Confederate statue there. Whatever else happens, it feels like the momentum on the issue of Confederate symbols in public spaces has really sped up. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see most or all of them gone by the end of the year.


• Wondering why there even is a Confederate monument in Arizona, which wasn't a separate US territory until partway through the Civil War, much less part of the Confederacy? Because these monuments were mainly built to support Jim Crow laws and frighten civil rights activists. They have nothing to do with memorializing Confederate soldiers and everything to do with enforcing white supremacy. I didn't know this history myself until relatively recently, and I'm glad it's becoming more common knowledge.


• Tired of endless articles on the state of the white working class? Mother Jones went to talk to working class people of color.


• More on voter suppression, this time Ohio purging its voter rolls, and the Justice Department backing them up. I really wish the Democrats would get louder about this issue.


• A couple on urban planning and housing, which is not something I talk about much but still a topic of great interest to me. (And also broadly relevant to the other issues at hand -- look up redlining sometime.) First, Gary Kamiya on the small city of Brisbane's reluctance to approve a large housing project and why other Bay Area cities ought not to be pointing fingers. Second, Alyssa Walker asks why the conversation around urban neighborhoods and gentrification is driven by white men.


• In other news, Harper's Magazine published excerpts from the jury selection transcripts for the trial of evil pharmaceutical bro and all-around asshole Martin Shkreli, and they are a thing of beauty. I have no idea how the lawyers waded through all that to get a jury of 12 mostly-impartial members, but I salute them. (Shkreli was found guilty on several counts of securities fraud unrelated to the price-gouging issue.)