Well, it's official. The midterm elections are over. Colorado and other swing states are no longer overrun with political ads. We know who has won, and who has lost. Mark Udall's Facebook states: "It has been the greatest honor of my life to be your U.S. Senator and to represent the greatest state in the nation. Thanks so much for your support. -Mark" The implications of having a Republican senator representing Colorado is not going to be immediate. After all, he's only one vote. However, he is now part of a majority senate, with Mitch McConnell at the helm. On a state level, Colorado still has Hickenlooper as governor. We struck down Amendment 67. Control of the state senate is unclear as of yet, which will determine what this term will look like for Hickenlooper. Things that will immediately affect Coloradans haven't really changed.
However, in the long run, and on a national scale, politics has changed. The fact that Gardner won, and by such a large margin, spells a red future for Colorado. We see this wave happen a lot during a President's second term. People are dissatisfied by the President and the President's party, and so they vote for the opposite party. It happened during Bush's second term: there was a Democratic majority in 2006. That majority lasted through 2010 for the House, and lasted until now for the Senate. The elections in 2006 determined the next ten years of politics for the legislative branch. 2006 was a mid-term election, just like this one was. By the time Obama leaves office, it will have affected twelve years of national politics. This election, following this trend, will affect probably the next twelve nears of national politics.
In 2016, people will probably not vote for the Democrat. For some reason, people don't seem to like Obama. It's probably not a race thing. It's not like he's been the most publicly disrespected president in the history of approximately ever. A friend of mine shared a link to an opinion piece written by a Canadian on how we treat our president. Never before has it been acceptable to speak about a president so disparagingly. Four days before Obama's inauguration, John Boehner publicly stated that he hoped Obama would fail. Obama hadn't even gotten into office yet, and already people had started hating him. But it's not a race thing. Obama has attempted to do everything he said he would. He fought for health care, education, and jobs. He even managed to pass some things, like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009. Our national unemployment rate is at 5.9%. He's been the first President to openly support marriage equality. People often forget two things about his presidency. First, that for the past four years, he's been blocked tirelessly by the Republican majority in the house, and even though he was able to get the ACA through, it was blocked at every turn by this Republican majority, trying to defund and gut it. Second, that the state our nation was in when Bush left was really bad. It could have gotten much worse. It didn't though. Things got better. Maybe not much better, but see point number one in regards to that. Bush is not America's eccentric grandpa with a love of painting. He was not a good president, and that's not coming from a Democratic position, not really. A lot of Republicans were tired of Bush by the end of the second term. People wanted him out with a passion. America was not in a good state. Even after all that, we couldn't be bothered to even really give Obama a chance. But again, it's not a race thing.
In 2018, Coloradans probably won't vote for Bennet. His 2010 race was incredibly close, and the fact that we already voted Gardner into a seat that appeared to be, until March, a shoe-in for the Democrat, dictates that he won't be re-elected. We'll then have two Republican representatives for Colorado, which matters on a national level because Colorado is a swing state.
After 2018, we'll have two years left on Gardner's term, 2-6 years left on the presidency, and six years on that second senate seat. This is, effectively, twelve years of politics decided by this one election. This mid-term election that supposedly doesn't matter.
Of course, I'm hoping this doesn't happen. I refuse to believe that the representation people want is one that actively and proudly tries to take rights away from well over half of the population: women, minorities, the LGBT community. This is not to mention the fact that they make it incredibly difficult to have a quality k-12 education, access to higher education, and a wage that allows someone to support themselves on a forty hour work week. This is not to mention the fact that they care more about their own pockets than the quality of our water, our air, and our environment in general. This is not the representation we need, or that we should want, and I encourage everyone who lives in Colorado, as well as on a national scale, to stop the tide of incredibly right-wing politicians from coming in. Stop the path that this election has put us on and vote the next year.
