Like many, I've watched the mid-terms with an uneasy yet hopeful feeling. Conservatives dominate Knoxville quite handily, and once you go out of the city limits they get even more numerous and extreme. Combine that with the pervading culture of Christian conservatism, those who wholly vote GOP thinking it the best way to bring back prayer and bible reading in schools and get rid of abortions and gays, and it's easy for any progressive to be disheartened. Tennessee keeps getting redder, and more fanatically right-wing, with every election, though again I did my part and cast my votes. Yet I held out hope that somehow, in enough places beyond out state borders, saner heads would prevail and we would still hang on to the Senate.
Alas, the latest round of polls, several early exit-polls, and finally my gut, seem to be leading to a disappointing night of election watching. It's still early (just past 8:30 EST as I type this), and maybe the polls and my gut will still end up being delightfully wrong. But I am, and have been for some time I guess, trying to come to terms with a GOP Senate to go along with our wonderfully productive GOP House.
But when I really consider it all, I'm not as concerned or worried as I thought I would be. There are several silver linings, but I'm thinking of one that I've yet to hear anyone mention (though surely someone has, and I've just missed it). I'll explain further below the orange thingy...
Sure, it will suck royally to endure 2 years of solid gridlock, but it's not a new thing at all; we've had gridlock since Obama's first inauguration, we're merely going to have a little more of it now. It will be painful giving up all the committee chairs and seeing the Turtle set the agenda for debate, and even devastating to see serious issues delayed further or outright ignored, all in the name of trying to see who can be the best grid-locker. But with the GOP in charge on both sides of the Capitol building, the expectations, especially from the wing-nuts who "mandated" this whole GOP control, will be that the GOP should finally be able to get things done. In reality, their tenuous unity will break and their many schisms will blow up in their faces, and they will be even less productive than the role-model congress of 2014.
As long as our four liberal SC justices stay healthy and active for two more years, the SC at least shouldn't get any worse than it already is. All of the other appointments will grind to a halt, but it won't be the first time. The GOP will only be able to blame Obama for everything they still can't accomplish, a list which will no doubt include more votes to end Obamacare, and serious efforts to impeach the Usurper-in-Chief. But none of that will succeed, and the only result will be further confusion and frustration among the GOP loyals, and even more animosity between the establishment and the tea-baggers.
Everything above is enough to still give me hope for the long run, even if it is accompanied by two years that should not be kind to any progressive causes. But there is one silver lining that I've not heard anyone mention yet. And it just might be the best, the one with the strongest kick of karma:
The more senate seats the GOP takes tonight, the more they have to defend when this set of seats comes around again in 2020. During a presidential election. When we will either be re-electing Hillary (or your favorite alternate) or electing VP Castro to a first term as POTUS (again, insert your favorite alternate).
Dems are already favored to have a very successful 2016 election, and no one is predicting this GOP "surge" will be anything but short lived. If we can get through the 2018 midterms, the following presidential year elections should be another Democrat wave. And the better the GOP does tonight, the better the Dems should do in 6 years.
I'm already convinced the a Republican will not occupy the White House for some time, at least not with anything remotely resembling the current fractious, demographically diminishing state of the GOP. Perhaps, if we can stomach two years of GOP gloating and crowing and deepened gridlock, (two years that will likely not be that much worse than if the Dems preserve the Senate), the years that follow just might turn out to be an incredible silver lining.