Flipping the Tenth: The first congressional seat to flip.

Election day dawned raining steadily and I drove to my assignment handing out sample democratic ballots at the River Bend Middle School polling place 35 miles west in Loudon County.  I stood under a temporary shelter shoulder-to-shoulder with my republican counterpart for three hours, handing out blue sample ballots while Mark handed out green sample ballots as voters approached the precinct.

My encounter with Mark was amicable, after all we're both Americans although we were diametrically opposite politically (he voted against republican Congresswoman Barbara Comstock in the primary in Virginia's Tenth Congressional District because she was not aligned closely enough with Trump, although she voted in accord to his directives 98% of the time) and we would ask voters as they passed by if they wanted a sample ballot, blue for democrats or green for republicans, and offer forth our respective samples and the voters would take one or the other or both or decline altogether in a very interesting dynamic.  Usually voters would make a beeline for one ballot or the other, giving the undesirable ballot a small but noticeable berth, while a few voters would reach out for both, although they were the same except for color and the oval darkened next to either the democratic or the republican candidates.  Mostly older persons, especially men, would take the green ballot and younger persons, especially women, would take the blue ballot, all unfailingly polite although a few had stern looks at me, or Mark.

At least three times a family with trailing children would come up and the man would take the green ballot while the woman would come over and take my blue ballot, and then the family would enter the voting place together.  Then my relief came and I drove home to watch the returns, happy to end my canvassing and polling in an effort to contribute to flipping the Tenth, in order to present a check to the ongoing abuse of presidential power that the republicans in both houses have refused to do.  And the first returns were good, as the Tenth was the very first congressional seat to flip from red to blue, within 45 minutes of the polls closing.

As the night progressed and the democrats proceeded to take the house by double digits some disappointment set in, such as when the racist gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis (he referred to his African-American opponent as a "monkey") was voted in by Floridians, but also the union-busting Scott Walker lost his governorship in Wisconsin.  Ultimately, the president lost the house massively and thereby received a needed reality check to his king-like countenance and imperial demeanor and actions such as setting in place policies to tear children from their mother's arms at the border and caging them.