A step in the right direction... but there are many more steps to go

Well, it was quite a night.

I'm trying to parse it all, and there's a whole lot to parse. The big news, duh, is that President Obama won, and yes, I'm happy about that. Despite a lot of smoke and mirrors from pundits and campaign managers during this unending election cycle, the President has done a lot of good for this country, and has been a net positive in many ways. I think a lot more can improve in the next four years, and I'll be curious to see just how he rolls up his sleeves and gets to it.

Having said that, I'm not all rainbows and unicorns with him, which I'll get to in a sec.

I'm thrilled Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock lost. I have to think that their, ah, extremely poorly thought-out comments about rape had something to do with that. I saw a lot of tweets along the lines of "Hey Republicans, if you want to win next time you'd better not talk about rape!", which I think is wrongheaded. I think politicians should be talking about it, but they should be getting it right. It's one thing to score a political zinger, but another to actually change the hearts and minds of those same politicians. I want real change, not change in rhetoric.

I'll note that it looks like in January there will be 18 women Senators, an all-time high. That's a bit short of the 50 or 52 needed to reflect the true composition of our population, but it's better than it ever has been. This seems to me to be pretty good evidence that women listen, and they vote. As do men who are concerned over women's issues. That's a fine thing, and a really good sign.

Tammy Baldwin is one of those women. She's the first openly gay Senator in our nation's history. And four states - Maine, Washington, Minnesota, and Maryland - approved marriage equality acts. I'm OK with that. I'm more than OK with that. For why, see here and here and here and here and here.

But the news isn't all good. I poked around a bit, and saw that a lot of the antiscience Congresscritters were re-elected. Climate change deniers Ralph Hall (head of the House Science Committee) and John Sensenbrenner, and many others will still retain their seats (but not Akin, yay!). [UPDATE: Turns out Hall is term-limited as chairman and will give up the gavel. That link also discusses the changes in the Committee]. Relatively moderate Republican Roscoe Bartlett lost, and he acknowledged the reality of climate change. He'll have to be replaced by the Republican majority, and sadly, there's a long list of global warming deniers to choose from. Don't forget Paul Broun ran unopposed, and he's a full-blooded antiscience Big-Bang-denying antievolution creationist.

On a better note, I'll add that Bill Foster, a moderate Illinois

Republican Democrat, won a seat. He's a high-energy physicist! Man oh man, I'd love to see him get on the Science Committee. Boulder's own Jared Polis retained his seat in Congress, too, and he's pro-science as well.

Now, having said all that...

I am still unhappy about President Obama gutting NASA's space exploration funding, and I am unhappy he still hasn't talked much about climate change... and those are just science topics. And it's important to note that it's still a Republican house, a Democratic Senate, and a Democratic White House, just as it's been for two years now. These same two years where almost no legislation has been passed, and a whole lot of science has been ridiculed or simply ignored.

The takeaway here? Overall, I'm pleased. Some things got better, and not much got worse. A lot is still the same, so we have to be ready for more of what we've already been through. And while this is a time of celebration for many of us, we must acknowledge that the forces against reality and science are still out there and still have a lot of power. We must not flag, not give up, and never tire.

Ever onward!