Today’s Action: Breathe a little easier, then let’s get back to work

Donald Trump’s days of unchecked authoritarian rule are over.

Yesterday, despite unprecedented Republican gerrymandering thought to make the House unwinnable for Democrats for a decade, a surge of progressive candidates and relentless grassroots activism have broken Trump’s stranglehold of Washington.

Neither the significance of this victory nor the impact of your efforts can be overstated. This is huge. America is no longer effectively a dictatorship, and it’s because of you. For the next two years, we will have a Congress that listens to us and has the power — and will — to hold the president accountable for his brazen corruption.

And the victories didn’t stop with the House, where a record 90 women will take office (80 of them Democrats). Despite some tough losses in the Senate and Florida’s governor’s race, Democrats made huge gains at the state level, flipping 333 legislative seats, seven legislative chambers, at least seven governorships, and took complete control of six states.

Three deeply red states — Utah, Nebraska, and Idaho — passed ballot measures expanding Medicaid (yes, embracing Obamacare). This is a clear indication that while the distractions and bombast of Trump’s Republican Party are getting the attention, the priorities, values, and ideas of the Democratic Party are taking hold in even the unlikeliest of places.

And while Florida may have delivered some of the most disappointing statewide results of the night, residents also approved a ballot measure restoring voting rights to those who have paid their debt to society. That’s a million Floridians denied the vote this year who in two, four, and six years will finally have a chance to take action against Republican politicians who have been suppressing the vote by denying them their rights. One million new Florida voters — for perspective, the margin in the governor’s race was about 55,000.

America is moving in the right direction again, and it’s a direct result of the work you’ve put in since taking to the streets for the Women’s March on January 21, 2017. Thanks to those efforts, the next two years will look MUCH different than the last two. They will be better, but they will also be more important and more work.

So take a deep breath, pat yourself on the back, and congratulate yourself on a job well done. But know that we are still at the beginning of a long road. If we commit to working the next two years like we did the last two, 2020 will really give us something to celebrate.

Thank you for all your hard work. You restored checks and b