The Frozen Reeds, 17th Day of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Deneb): Way to go, America. I'm proud of you.

Last night, the Democratic Party ran the table, winning virtually every significant election in this off-cycle year. Muslim democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani was elected Mayor of New York City, which must horrify the woman in line ahead of me yesterday at my voting precinct. Proposition 50, giving the Democratic Governor of California permission to proceed with redistricting the state to compensate for Texas' gerrymandering, passed. The Dems won the governor's races in New Jersey and Virginia, as well as the AG race in Virginia.

Here in Georgia, Democrats flipped two seats on the Public Service Commission, the first Dems to win a state election since 2006 (they won the two Senate seats since then, but those are national, not state, offices). I was more invested in the PSC race than you might think because my Georgia Power rates keep going up every year, and because several years ago I heard Tim Echols, one of the Republicans that got replaced, speak at the non-partisan Georgia Environmental Conference. Although the conference was non-partisan and ostensibly about the environment, Echols delivered a highly partisan and offensive campaign-style speech railing against the left and praising the GOP and barely mentioning environmental matters at all.

Andre Dickens won reelection as mayor in a landslide with something like 85% of the vote as I knew he would. At least the one progressive in the race, Eddie Meredith, got more of the vote (6.1% ) than any of the other candidates running against Dickens. 

Marci Overstreet won the race for Atlanta City Council president, but at least the race was close. Rohit Malhotra, the "radical" that I was warned against voting for by my neighborhood association (although I did anyway) and who who dared oppose Cop City and supposedly wanted to "defund the police," got 49% of the vote as opposed to Overstreet's 51. Overstreet's actually not that bad a candidate, it's just that Malhotra would have been better, but I feel better about Atlanta knowing that he at least finished so close. 

Speaking of close, Marietta, Georgia, once a deep-red conservative stronghold, came within 87 votes of replacing the  incumbent 78-year-old Republican mayor with Sam Foster, a 24-year-old African-American  IT systems engineer.

The press is covering all this as a repudiation of the Stable Genius' MAGA movement and as evidence of growing dissatisfaction with his erratic and chaotic presidency. They're not wrong and I'll bet old Donnie Darko had a bad night as he watched the election results roll in. Things got worse this morning when his buddies at the Supreme Court reviewed a case about the constitutionality of his tariff policies. Their decision hasn't dropped yet, but they sounded pretty skeptical of the claim that the president can impose tariffs as he sees fit (the Constitution's pretty explicit that Congress has that role). Even his appointee and erstwhile enabler Neil Gorsuch noted that recent Court decisions were “a one-way ratchet toward the gradual but continual accretion of power in the executive branch and away from the people’s elected representatives” in Congress. Wow, you go, Neil, getting all "power to the people" up there on the bench!

Yes, the times they are a-changin'. Democrats are winning elections again, democratic socialists are winning or at least coming in close in major cities, Marietta, Georgia came within less than 100 votes of replacing a 78-year-old White man with a 24-year-old Black man, and even the Supreme Court is starting to realize maybe they've gone a little too far in giving the keys to the car to the Stable Genius.

America, you go, girl. You've got this!