Election Day Facts

I hope I have treated my conservative roommates and friends with the same respectful deference as I am sure they would have shown me if Tuesday's outcomes were reversed.  Nevertheless, I feel the need to express my gratitude, for as I woke up Wednesday morning, I was reassured of certain American facts:

• My friends with pre-existing conditions will continue to have access to health care.
• The uninsured and underinsured (myself included) will not be left all alone in a medical crisis.
• Rape apologists do not get elected in this country.
• Millionaires and billionaires cannot just buy elections, Citizens United be damned.
• Voter-restriction laws backfire.
• Bosses cannot intimidate employees into voting a certain way, for we are free Americans.
• Anti-Union referendums get voted down across America--including the South.
• Auto-workers will keep their jobs.
• Minorities believe their voice can be heard--and they are growing.
• Those who would make the rich richer through further tax-breaks while expanding the world's largest military, all at the expense of literally everyone else, will not be setting policy.
• A Utah Democrat in a gerrymandered district can still defeat a Tea Party radical.
• A brazenly opportunistic and flagrant liar will no longer serve as the most prominent face of my faith--nor will he be leading my country.
•  And perhaps most comforting of all: after living near all my 20s in the ultra-conservative bubble of the Idaho-Utah corridor, I was reminded that there are far more Americans who think like me than I realized.  

Please don't get me wrong, none of us are naive--this country still faces many grave and perilous problems in the coming weeks, months, and years, none of which magically disappeared Wednesday morning.  We are as divided and polarized as before.  But for all the manifold things wrong with America, it was nice, for once, to wake up reminded of all the things that are still right.