Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.

The tea: Don’t run off to the coasts

nick tea

In this year’s elections for the House of Representatives, Democrats bested Republicans and won 32 seats with 10 left undecided at press time, securing the majority. They lost one Senate seat with two left undecided at press time, though, keeping the Senate in Republican control.

However, the vote nationwide tells a different story than the actual results do. Political representation is lopsided in the United States.

Nationwide, the Democrats’ combined vote total for House elections outdoes the Republicans with 53,656,347 votes to 48,578,106 at press time. For Senate elections, the Democrats’ combined vote total also outdoes the Republicans with 48,314,460 to 34,375,129 at press time, but the Republicans still came out on top.

To get smaller states to become a part of the country, the Senate had to be created so there would be one part of the government with equal representation for every state. Today, states like California make this idea seem ludicrous because millions of people live there, but they have the same representation in the Senate as states that do not break a million people.

Because this is the idea the country was founded on, it is unlikely that the entire Senate will be abolished, especially when the party the Senate favors remains in control of it. Therefore, the only option for recourse is to move or remain in the states where Republicans have the advantage.

I know plenty of people who want to flee the ol’ podunk state of Tennessee for the coasts. Some may have legitimate reasons, like escaping a dangerous home life, but for the most part, it is because this state is “boring,†or they want to go live around people who think like them. The problem is no matter how many people live in the coastal states, it does not drastically change how they are represented in government.

At the end of the day, the people who founded this country knew what the Senate and the House would mean but stuck with it anyway. The only option is to stay put in a place where your vote actually matters instead of joining the coastal echo chamber. If you do not have to defend your views on a regular basis, then they are absolutely not worth having.

Democrats made big strides in 2018 across the board, even in Republican states. In Tennessee, Phil Bredesen did about 15 percent better statewide than Hillary Clinton did in the state in 2016. Florida’s Senate race came down to under a quarter of a percentage point, which will trigger the first recount in the state’s history. Arizona’s Senate was decided by less than two percentage points. Beto O’Rourke came within 3 percent of Ted Cruz in Texas’ Senate race. In the Georgia governor race, Stacey Abrams came within 2 percent of her Republican challenger Brian Kemp. There is ground to be made up, but Democrats cannot win in these states if no one is there to vote for them.

California’s Senate race did not have a chance of flipping Republican because of California’s jungle primary system, which sends the top two vote-earning candidates into the general election regardless of party, and sent Democratic incumbent Dianne Feinstein to face her Democratic challenger Kevin de León in the general election. In New York, Kirsten Gillibrand defeated her Republican challenger with more than 30 percent of the vote. There is no need for any more Democratic voters in these states.

If you are a progressive-minded person, do not fall into the trap of going to places where you are going to become complacent anyway. As we all know by now, the coasts of this country cannot outrun for the middle of it.

And that’s the tea on that.


Similar Posts