Election Night 2019 Was a Triumph for Democracy, Health Care, and the Democratic Party

[babylonsister]

https://prospect.org/politics/election-night-2019-triumph-for-democracy-health-care-/


Election Night 2019 Was a Triumph for Democracy, Health Care, and the Democratic Party
Democrats picked up a governor’s race in Kentucky, the state legislature in Virginia, and several other races.
by Alexander Sammon
November 6, 2019

snip//

There were smaller victories as well. Democrats achieved a city council majority in Columbus, Indiana, hometown of Vice President Mike Pence, for the first time in 38 years. Brandon Whipple, a Democrat, defeated a Republican and became mayor of Wichita, Kansas, the home of Koch Industries. A public defender ousted a longtime Republican incumbent district attorney in Albemarle County, Virginia, home to Charlottesville. A bellwether district in the Texas legislature, which has been trending blue rapidly, appears headed to a runoff.

If Tuesday’s results were a triumph for the Democratic Party, they marked an even bigger victory for small-d democracy. In New York City, voters overwhelmingly passed ranked-choice voting, making it the largest region in the country by population to adopt the procedure. In Kentucky, Beshear campaigned on restoring voting rights to anyone in Kentucky who has completed a sentence after a nonviolent felony conviction. That could amount to some 140,000 people returned to the voting rolls with the stroke of a pen, an astonishing five percent of the state’s population.

And in Virginia, now that Democrats control the entirety of the state government, it’s likely that they’ll sign the Equal Rights Amendment, which will be brought up for a vote in early 2020. Should it pass, Virginia would represent the final, 38th state needed to ratify the amendment, passed by Congress in 1972, amending the US Constitution to include the provision that "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." (There’s debate as to whether the timeline for passage of the amendment has expired, which would likely result in a subsequent legal battle). It’s expected the state will also vote on same-day voter registration, automatic voter registration, softening voter-ID laws, and extending voting hours, among other things.

Tuesday night also proved a triumph for the expansion of public health insurance. In Kentucky, Matt Bevin’s loss wiped out the punitive Medicaid work requirements that he had promised to enact, which would have cost an estimated 100,000 poor people their coverage, many of them children. Beshear, on the other hand, ran on expanding consumer protections under the Affordable Care Act.

In Virginia, Democrats all over the state ran on Medicaid expansion, itself a provision of the ACA that Republicans had refused to implement for years. A number of the state’s Republicans, meanwhile, pledged to institute work requirements of their own. If, on November 16, Louisiana’s Democratic governor John Bel Edwards wins reelection, his victory could entrench his state’s own fragile expansion of Medicaid, as well. None of these victories will fix the deeply flawed health care system in the United States, or bring about single payer on their own, but they will expand coverage for scores of needy Americans, and could help give momentum to help bolster social programs or drive support for Medicare expansion this time next year.

Importantly, the election results marked a dramatic reversal of Democratic fortunes under President Obama. During that eight year period, the party was repeatedly decimated at the state and local levels, ceding control of governors’ mansions and state legislatures all over the country. Those losses made it all the more difficult to enact policy proposals, as states successfully leveraged those newfound Republican majorities to thwart the Democratic agenda. Regardless of how these results are interpreted—as a rebuke of Trump, as an endorsement of impeachment, or the byproduct of shifting demographic trends—Tuesday’s results will continue to add force to the Democratic platform as the presidential election nears.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Thanks for this excellent article, my dear babylonsister!

It is truly heartening to read of all the gains, large and small, that the Democrats were able to achieve.

And more importantly, it's great to read how many people will have better lives, at least for the near future, because the Democrats won so widely.

[nocoincidences]

2. Back in the 70's

my energy and the energy of every woman I knew was focused on passing the ERA.

I can't even sort out my feelings, facing the possibility that my adopted state of VA is going to finally bring that to fruition. I am elated, but so sad it took so long and I got so old. 50 years of changes that were positive, never enough, but better. Finally the law that should have been helping, is going to be enacted.

I just don't have the words to express myself.....