The Atlantic

November 9, 2011

A Very Good Night for Democrats
Democrats had a very good election night on Tuesday.
Their cherished causes prevailed, they kept their statehouses, and they saw one of the Tea Party’s biggest champions unexpectedly lose a recall election in Arizona.
Though it’s easy to read too much into the sparse data points of an off-year election, liberals were jubilant as the returns came rolling in Tuesday night, and the trend, in nearly every contested race across the country, was too obvious to ignore:
* The Republican governor and legislature in Ohio saw their attempt to roll back collective bargaining for public employees soundly repudiated by the state’s voters.
* Mississippi’s “personhood’ initiative, which would have defined a fertilized human egg as a person and created a new front in the abortion wars, went down to defeat by a wide margin, despite leading in pre-election polls.
* Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear sailed to reelection — though widely anticipated, his win showed Democrats can still prevail in red states with good candidates and campaign strategy.

* Russell Pearce, Arizona’s state Senate president and the author of that state’s controversial anti-illegal immigration law, lost a recall election to a Republican challenger who portrayed Pearce as an extremist. Read more.

Democrats had a very good election night on Tuesday.

Their cherished causes prevailed, they kept their statehouses, and they saw one of the Tea Party’s biggest champions unexpectedly lose a recall election in Arizona.

Though it’s easy to read too much into the sparse data points of an off-year election, liberals were jubilant as the returns came rolling in Tuesday night, and the trend, in nearly every contested race across the country, was too obvious to ignore:

* The Republican governor and legislature in Ohio saw their attempt to roll back collective bargaining for public employees soundly repudiated by the state’s voters.

* Mississippi’s “personhood’ initiative, which would have defined a fertilized human egg as a person and created a new front in the abortion wars, went down to defeat by a wide margin, despite leading in pre-election polls.

* Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear sailed to reelection — though widely anticipated, his win showed Democrats can still prevail in red states with good candidates and campaign strategy.

* Russell Pearce, Arizona’s state Senate president and the author of that state’s controversial anti-illegal immigration law, lost a recall election to a Republican challenger who portrayed Pearce as an extremist. Read more.

9:38am
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