Ok, great. So you voted. Now what, right? You go back to work for a while and wait for the mid-term election parties tonight? Are mid-term election parties a thing? I don’t think so. And besides, how is this thing really going to play out, anyway? Let’s look at it, there’s a few ways, on the national level, that this can go down.

Right now Republicans hold the presidency and both houses of Congress, and democrats are making a run at taking back at least one chamber. The contests are both pretty heated, and it could go one of three ways:

Neither Chamber of Congress Flips

This would be bad. When Donald Trump began to gain momentum in the republican primary a constituency of moderate republicans formed the “Never Trump” caucus of so-called reasonable republicans. This constituency shrank, but galvanized, during the general election, and even continued to putter along after we elected Donald Trump president.

However, the ideological red line that Trump seemed to cross on a daily basis turned out not to be a red line at all once his polling numbers among republicans never really suffered in the face of unapologetic lies, racist nationalism, and white supremacy. It turned out that the “Never Trump” movement was really just political hedging and the republican party of today has more or less embraced his white nationalist platform.

For us, as an electorate, not to reject that platform will serve as an embrace of that platform. For us to not flip at least one chamber of Congress will cement our country as one that celebrates an authoritarian, ultra-conservative government in pursuit of a white ethno-state. We’re talking, like, Eastern Bloc shit, you know?

Deflated, the political left (which is how we’re describing human rights now) will be further disillusioned, and extremists will probably conclude that the electoral process is broken, this nation is broken, and that a violent socialist rebellion is the only choice left. They will take to the hills with rifles where they will be killed pretty quickly in DHS drone strikes, and a small, impotent resistance will be hunted and killed by DHS,  ICE, and the (now) pro-government militias that have been busy for the last few years not paying for grazing leases, storming federal buildings, and serving as your local law enforcement.

This guerrilla street fighting will trigger more Patriot Act-style legislation to curtail civil rights and increase surveillance in the interest of homeland security, we’ll probably abolish presidential term limits, and then yeah, there you go, we’ve got Trump until we all die.

You’ve seen the Handmaid’s Tale. You get it. Let’s not do this.

The House Flips

Sure, it’s possible that the Senate will flip and the House won’t, but that’s kind of a long shot it seems like.

So if democrats retake the House, ho man, Trump would love that. Because here’s the two things that will happen:

1. President Trump’s legislative agenda will be done with for at least two years. This is a guy whose party controls the presidency and both chambers of Congress, and still complains that everyone is out to get him. If the House flips he will see actual obstruction, and that is basically emotional validation for a guy whose entire platform is to complain that everyone is wrong and only he can save us. He’s already got a legislative win in the tax cut bill, so all that’s left to do is sit back, spew white nationalist vitriol, and sign unconstitutional Executive Orders. This is basically retirement. He’s no longer even expected to get anything done.
2. There will be an effort to impeach him. There’s good reason to believe that Mueller is hot on his trail, and a fired up left-of-center House probably won’t need much prodding to bring articles of impeachment with a simple majority. God, Trump would love that. The House flips and the first thing they do is vote to impeach? That’s essentially handing him a second presidential term as it whips his constituency into a whole-milk froth like we’ve never seen. Especially because with democrats only holding the House and Trump’s base furious, it’s hard to imagine a republican Senate mustering the 67 votes needed to convict. He’s probably pretty safe, still. The only real exception here would be if the Mueller investigation turns up something really, really gnarly, at which time the erstwhile Never Trumpers say “I Told You So” and we wind up with the next guy. This would look a lot like Both Chambers Turning, below.

But before that happens, what happens nationally? What does a flipped House mean? Trump’s white nationalist base is out in the open now. The 30% or so of the population who think he’s about as neat as sliced (white) bread are ride-or-dies. Another 25-30% or so of the population votes the democrat ticket because it’s the lesser of two evils, and will continue to vote for more progressive candidates like Bernie Sanders, Beto O’Rourke, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in primaries and downballot contests.

Meanwhile, moderate republicans (looking at you, college educated women and Zuckerbergs) will finally have had enough of being a Nazi sympathizer and find refuge in the mainstream democratic party, which now holds a comfortable plurality. This will shift the party to the right, where it will maintain its position on things like abortion rights, gun control, and climate science, but will be soft on regulating Wall Street and the tech industry. You can say goodbye to campaign finance reform, that’s for sure.

Both Chambers Turn

This is another nuclear outcome. If both chambers flip, that will indicate that more Americans are not white nationalist Nazi-sympathizers than previously thought. It will mean that the hedging of the “Never Trumpers” will be back, and an impeachment conviction is on the table. This is bad for everyone.

We need to vote Trump out of office, obviously. But to impeach him would be the final validation that he was the victim of a deep state conspiracy and martyr him to the 30% of the population who are drinking the Cool Aid, or milk, or whatever. This time the armed militias taking to the hills will be right wingers. Right wing extremists are already the most violent terror organizations targeting Americans, and this would be a declaration of war. Impeachment of Donald Trump will catalyze an armed insurgency that we have not seen in our lifetimes (except for where the US has destabilized democratically elected governments elsewhere in the world), essentially giving the US the ol’ US treatment. You remember Guatemala, right? Same deal.

Now, all of these options look pretty bad. It’s like best case scenario we kind of just shrug our shoulders and give in to our technocratic overlords at Google, Facebook, and Amazon and just put as much as we possibly can on our credit cards until we die. And call me jaded – until we see meaningful change at a smaller scale, that’s pretty much what national politics is going to look like.

However, all is not lost.

There are incredibly compelling initiatives and local candidates on your ballot right now. We cannot pretend to change the course of a ship the size of the US Federal Government if we can’t even steer the speedboat that is your city council. If we can’t pass bonds and initiatives to fund schools, healthcare, and open space.

If we can’t take it on ourselves to research candidates and issues, and vote based on that information, then honestly, we deserve the outcomes of the national elections that boast billion dollar advertising budgets.

It is impossible to look to national level politics clearly and not feel physically ill. But on the local level we have the power to effect meaningful change. National attack ads and voter obstruction is designed to disenfranchise you from local issues as well as national ones. Fuck that. Vote the whole ballot, do your own research, and once we get our local politics sorted out, we can look to the larger problems facing this country. Don’t worry, they’ll still be here tomorrow.

You will be incredulous when I say that it has been a great week for decency in America. Three days ago an aging white man walked into a synagogue with a collection of firearms and shot 17 people, killing 11. Three days before that, an aging white man shot two black men in a grocery store. Several days before that a different aging Caucasian man mailed bombs to a dozen critics of our current president. And of course this is all against the backdrop of yet another aging white man’s metronome of anti-semitic fear mongering about Latin American refugees and asylum seekers, who must have it pretty bad in Honduras considering they’re still on their way here.

That sounds a lot like the most indecent week in recent memory, doesn’t it? But while the drum of right wing violence beats on, the national dialogue is bending over backwards to appeal to reason, prayers, and decency, and to condemn violence in general on all sides. In the face of skyrocketing extremist Christian terrorism in the United States, a national news media has been cowed by those same right-wing extremists into providing “fair and balanced” calls for decency as vitriolic rhetoric continues to inspire violence.

As the right continues to defame the nature of news (truth, facts, etc.), centrist pundits and the mainstream left continue to bury their heads in the sand in the interest of decency and order, as though Dr. King never warned “that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity,” or that “the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice.”

The simple truth of the matter is that we in the United States have a domestic terrorism problem, and have since our foundation. It is a problem that ebbs and flows in the fringes of the mainstream, and today enjoys legitimacy on a national level unseen since the Jim Crow era. The legitimacy granted to right wing extremists by the rhetoric of our federal government has increased racial and right wing violence in America, and squeamishness on the part of the Obama Administration allowed it to flourish.

In 2008, Department of Homeland Security analyst Daryl Johnson warned that the financial crisis and election of a black man to president could lead to an uptick in right wing extremism and violence. His report was intended to warn and inform law enforcement agencies nationwide, but was leaked and triggered widespread political backlash from the right. He went on (recently, but before this past week) in a WashPo OpEd:

“Unfortunately, the Department of Homeland Security caved to the political pressure: Work related to violent right-wing extremism was halted. Law enforcement training also stopped. My unit was disbanded. And, one-by-one, my team of analysts left for other employment. By 2010, there were no intelligence analysts at DHS working domestic terrorism threats.”

In the interest of not hurting feelings on the political right, the Department of Homeland Security abandoned investigations into real, credible, and accelerating dangers of terrorism on American soil. Dangers that we have seen materialize into right wing terrorist violence in the decade since that happened.

The difference between active Christian Identity militias and Al Qaeda is their legitimacy in the local mainstream, nothing else. And right now a Republican State Representative in Washington state is advocating for a Christian caliphate to secede from the nation. The President of the United States enjoys the rabid support of neo-nazis and white supremacists. A robust disinformation campaign surrounds hot-button issues of immigration, gun rights, and religious freedom, and it hinges on ancient tropes of anti-semitism, racism, and jingoistic nationalism.

This is dangerous. And appeals for reason and measured response from the middle only allow the center to drift right and further endorse right wing extremism. Indecent actions and beliefs cannot be met with decency.

Talk is not cheap, words have meaning, and language matters. It’s time we use language that accurately describes the current threats to American ideals: religious extremism is religious extremism, whether it is Christianity or Islam. Terrorism is terrorism whether the zealots brandish the Q’ran or the Bible. And state-sanctioning of that terrorism is the same whether it is Saudi, Pakistani, or American.

Well folks, this is it. We’ve been bellyaching and complaining about pretty much everything for two years straight now, and it’s time to put our money where our mouth is. We’re less than a month out from midterm elections, and if you vote absentee in Montana you’ve already received your ballot. If you haven’t had a look at the ballot yet, you can see a copy of it here. Let’s do this.

And you might have a few questions. Something like, “who the fuck are all these judges, anyway?” and, “aren’t both candidates for sheriff scumbags? Is there a chance we would actually be better off with bands of armed vigilante posses than with our current police departments?” and, “didn’t you just make an argument not that long ago that we don’t all actually need to vote?“. And these are all good questions. Let’s look for answers together.

So with no more pageantry, please consider this Gentleman’s Guide to the Midterm Ballot: Missoula Edition. It’s a long ballot this time, so stick with me – there’s important stuff in here all the way to the end. And if you don’t live in Missoula, then, well, maybe this post is like a time capsule only with space not time. Like National Geographic in the 1970s, or something. I don’t know. Keep reading or don’t.

For United States Senator

– Rick Breckenridge (L)

– Matt Rosendale (R)

– Jon Tester (D)

This is a big one. You’ve probably heard about this race, even if you don’t live in Montana. The incumbent senator is two-term Jon Tester, who is facing a full court press from Matt Rosendale, who’s pretty much your high school gym teacher with gobs of money.

All three candidates cut their teeth in the state legislature, and there is a stark divide between two camps. In the most recent debate, Senator Tester reiterated his background as a rancher and his public service in soil conservation and education.

Rosendale made his position clear that the government has no business anywhere, really, and that he would like to abolish the EPA, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Education. He went on, “Energy should be controlled by the companies that are out there producing the energy. The only place that we should have energy involved in government is the Department of Defense.” In fact, beyond the military, Rosendale’s position is that the government should only intervene in any way when it comes to women’s health, at which time the Individual should pretty much screw off. Ooh also as the Montana insurance commissioner he allowed insurance companies to sell policies that do not cover pre-existing conditions, which is pretty much like saying, “fuck you, kids with cancer.”

For his part, Breckenridge is right there with Rosendale on pretty much everything, although he’s surprisingly less hawkish on immigration. So if you hate clean water, public land for hunting and recreation access, education, and healthcare, but overt Racism-As-Policy is where you draw the line, then maybe Breckenridge is your guy. Also, he looks like this:

For United States Representative

– Greg Gianforte (R)

– Elanor Swanson (L)

– Kathleen Williams (D)

This is another one where you’ve probably got your mind pretty well made up. On the one hand, you’ve got the anti-public lands, anti-first amendment carpetbagger from Jersey. On the other, you’ve got Kathleen Williams, whose record shows her commitment to improving healthcare, education, and economic health for Montana’s residents. (Remember that education, not deregulation, is what drives economic growth.) Your call, I guess.

But then, of course, there’s Eleanor Swanson. Give her a look. If you think that polluters should be responsible for cleaning up their messes, that infrastructure investment is a principle responsibility of the government, and that women should speak for their own healthcare, but for whatever reason you can’t bring yourself to vote left-of-center, Eleanor Swanson might speak to you. She’s sort of like a leftist candidate who thinks that supercorporations will somehow clean up after themselves without the EPA, and that everyone should have a gun on them at all times. Neat.

For Clerk of the Supreme Court

– Bowen Greenwood (R)

– Rex Renk (D)

– Roger Roots (L)

What the hell does the Clerk of the Supreme Court do, anyway? That’s a good question. The C of the SC (as I started calling it) controls the docket and filings, manages the appellate process, and is the custodian of the Seal of the Supreme Court and of all official Court records and files for the public and the Court. Why is this an elected position? That’s a better question. I don’t really know. But here we are, voting for someone to schedule meetings and stamp stamps, and given that they control what gets onto the state Supreme Court docket, it’s one of those jobs that’s maybe a bit more important than it sounds like.

Bowen Greenwood – doesn’t seem like a bad guy. In addition to running for C of the SC, he advertises that he’s a martial artist, a marksman, a mortorcyclist, and a man of Jesus. He’s also a published author, and has released a suite of “clean thrillers,” or contemporary Christian fantasy. Sounds like a cartoon version of Ned Flanders, with a goatee. Cool. Of course he has zero legal background whatsoever, and his campaign page really puts forward his novel, Death of Secrets, and a career as a PR consultant. For comparison, here’s a bio of the guy who’s held the position for thirty years. Ouch.

Rex Renk – According to his campaign page, Rex has not written any YA fiction. But he has served as the Deputy Clerk of the Supreme Court (under the current C of the SC) for 23 years. He has experience in the office and leading initiatives to increase transparency and access to public documents, and also was the youngest of 14 kids, which, holy fuck.

Roger Roots – Roger does not have a campaign page, but he does have a Facebook page. Like another candidate on the ballot, he has written a book. Only his book is titled, “The Conviction Factory: the collapse of America’s criminal courts,” and he actually has a background in law. His platform is based in the belief of parity between the state and the individual, which, when it comes to access to court documents is probably pretty fair. He’s also got a record of holding corrupt law enforcement officials accountable, and again, if you can’t bring yourself to vote for the clearly qualified candidate because of the “D” next to his name, Roger may just fit the bill. Just do bear in mind he has promised that “every decision I make will be anti-government in order to equalize the imbalance of power in this [judicial] branch when it comes to the state over its citizens.”

For Supreme Court Justice #4 Full Term

– Yes

– No

Shall we retain or jettison Beth Baker? Justice Baker carries a laundry list of credentials from prestigious schools, and was recently granted an award for professionalism from the Montana Bar Association. She chairs the state Supreme Court’s Access to Justice Commission (which strives to increase access to legal resources for all Montanans). Wildly intelligent, qualified, and committed to ensuring that Montana’s disenfranchised have equal access to legal support? Um, your call, I guess.

For Supreme Court Justice #2 Unexpired Term

– Yes

– No

Shall we retain or jettison Ingrid Gustafson? She has a background as a public defender, a partner in private practice, and 14 years as a district court judge. She has been an advocate for sentencing reform to decrease Montana’s prison population, and initiated Yellowstone County’s Drug Court, which emphasizes rehabilitation over incarceration for non-violent drug offenses. All good stuff unless you own a private prison.

End of Part 1! (Get back to work, seriously)

Tune in next week for Part 2, wherein we dig up dirt on local magistrates, propose that a lawless hellscape is better than our current options for sheriff, and parse the really exciting ballot items: initiatives and referendums!