1. A Normal Election

I haven’t been able to shake the unsettling feeling of optimism over the last couple weeks and I finally understand where it’s coming from. It’s the midterms.

Many people—especially in the democracy space—were happy with the results of the midterms. They were happy that dangerous candidates lost secretary of state races. Or that pro-democracy candidates held onto governorships. Or that Democrats kept control of the Senate.

But I distrust outcomes—I’m very much a process guy.1 So when I looked at the election through the lens of outcomes, all I could see was that if a few thousand votes had swung differently, then lots of those nice outcomes would have been reversed.

Which is why I was less optimistic than some of my colleagues.

And yet . . . I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that something good had happened.

Here are some things which happened during the midterms: