By Joe Lane
In social media, Donald Trump has been as ubiquitous as ever — if not more so.
What is truly astonishing to me, however, is not the overly extensive coverage of Trump but rather the minimal coverage of the other elections and measures that were voted upon across the country.
I should not be surprised because presidential elections have always been flashier than local, congressional, or gubernatorial elections. At times, it seems people fail to understand that these smaller elections have far more bearing on their daily lives than the presidential election. Because of the system of checks and balances in this country, even a president of one party with a Congress and Supreme Court of the same party cannot act unilaterally. So the odds that a president alone can bring drastic change to the United States is limited; not impossible, but limited.
The point of this is to say, a lot happened last week worth cheering about. A lot happened worth booing about. On the whole, a lot happened around the country Nov. 8 that had little to do with the presidential election and a whole lot to do with the daily lives of U.S. citizens.
For example, in my home state of Minnesota, Ilhan Omar became the first Somali-American lawmaker in US history (incidentally, she is also a Muslim and former refugee). Numerous states legalized recreational marijuana or broadened its legal use. According to Vox, Arizona, Colorado, Maine, and Washington voted in favor of a minimum-wage increase to at least $12 an hour. California, Nevada, and Washington state all increased gun regulations. The death penalty, despite a variety of votes, remained nearly unchanged, and proponents counted the night as a major victory. Finally, the proposed “Carbon Tax” failed in Washington state.
All of these votes have tremendous effect on the individuals living in these states.
The legalization of recreational marijuana and the increase of minimum wage, for example, in some states is certain to affect the income for those states’ governments as well as the quality of living for millions of people.
The failure of the Carbon Tax is an unfortunate move that proves the world is just not quite ready to wean itself off oil and other fossil fuels. But the fact that it was on a ballot at all — in any state — is a huge step in the right direction.
Perhaps the only major thing to come from this year’s election (except for the presidency) that received a reasonable amount of coverage was the Republican control of Congress.
As mentioned above, the president cannot act unilaterally. But with the backing of Congress, a president you do not support is a pretty scary concept. Yet, as you sift through the social media posts and YouTube diatribes, it’s hard to deny that only a small fraction of them actually mention the Republican support of Congress.
Trump may not have been your presidential preference, but there has to be some attention drawn to the fact that there are much more important things (both positive and negative) that could happen in an election, and a lot of those things did happen in this past election.