Now that I've let my inner tricoteuse out to play...
("No, no, Nanette, shush now. Oh, wait, look, you dropped a stitch. Shhhh, shhhh. It's okay. Back to your rocking chair. For now. Let's not scare the normies. It's okay. We'll talk...later.")
...it's time to talk about boring things from the 2026 election.
Policies. Ideas. Problems.
Let's start with this, from the reliably lefty Heather Cox Richardson:
"In their determination to stop Trump and MAGA, Americans came together across the artificial lines that Republicans have exploited for more than a generation to stand against what the nation’s founders would have called tyranny. The rural areas that have made up the backbone of MAGA support joined more Democratic urban areas to elect Democrats. (emphasis mine) The racial, gender, and cultural divisions Republicans have exploited to stay in power have collapsed in the face of a rising oligarchy."
But.
Did they?
Really?
Here's the most recent tally from the 2026 Oregon governor's race, between incumbent Democrat Tina Kotek and perennial Republican challenger Christine Drazen:
There's two - two - deep blue counties; Multnomah (i.e. Portland) and Benton (which seems odd at first, given how rural Benton County is in general - until you realize that it's where Oregon State University is located, meaning it's Corvallis-the-blue-college-town and a bunch of fucking seed grass fields).
Two more are pretty blue, Washington and Hood River, being some version of Portland-bedroom-communities and Portland-adjacent sorts of voters. Soccer moms and former hipsters in Beaverton, windsurfers and craft brewers in Hood River.
Two others are fairly blue; Lane (University of Oregon in Eugene) and Lincoln (coastal cities such as Newport and Lincoln City plus a fair number of New Deal nostalgic retirees...)
Three are as pale blue as possible; Clatsop (the city of Astoria, primarily), Clackamas (bedroom communities of Portland plus probably regional hubs like Oregon City, Canby, and Molalla) and Deschutes (the city of Bend).
Everywhere else is red. Red, red, red. Anywhere from pale pink through magenta to MAGA arterial blood red.
These places? Rural. Country as fuck. Cowshit and the cowpokes who kick it. Second Amendment absolutists. Christian dominionists. Modern country music fans, and if that doesn't scare you, nothing will.
So, two things from this.
First, no; the rural areas didn't join the urban areas to elect a Democrat governor of Oregon. The urban areas did, the rural areas said "fuck you, libtard", and - as always in Oregon politics - the urban areas are where most of the people are, so the fuck-you vote went nowhere and the Democrat got elected.
Second, that if you look at individual votes instead of just map painting, something over 700,000 of the roughly 1.5 million Oregonians whose votes have been counted, continued to support "...(t)he racial, gender, and cultural divisions Republicans have exploited".
That's just about four-and-a-half out of ten people living in Oregon who really liked what Christine Drazen offered.
And what was that?
Well, here's "The Drazen Plan" straight from the source.
Let's take just one piece of this, Drazen's "plan" for homelessness...which, if you've read this blog at all, you know I've written a fair bit about, usually discussing the difficulty of dealing with the complex causes, effects, expense, and potential possible outcomes of the whole "people living in a tent in my park" thing.
Here's Drazan's "plan" for homelessness:
- Fully audit homeless services and addiction spending to ensure accountability and deliver results.
Okay. This is the usual Republican "waste, fraud, and abuse" boilerplate to convince the rubes that the problem is really just too many libtards spending tax dollars on transgender reassignment for hoboes instead of "results".
While I won't pretend that the current Democratic administrations are doing a terrific job - one reason that Kotek, the incumbent, did as poorly as she did this past week is the perception that the Democratic city, county, and state governments are NOT dealing with these problems well - the notion that it's because the Dems are wastefully blueing homeless funds on booze and hookers in ways Republicans wouldn't? Is nonsense and has been repeatedly, publicly shown as such. This is pure, old-fashioned Republican rube-running.
- Prioritize addiction recovery, long-term sobriety and mental health treatment by focusing state resources on programs that help people achieve lasting stability.
In itself? Fine. Is there anyone who thinks that the Kotek Plan - that is to say, what's being tried now by the city, county, and state governments - isn't already trying this? If so, I want their email, because I've got some stuff to sell them... - Reconnect people experiencing homelessness with their families and communities whenever possible, helping restore the support systems that can lead to long-term stability.
This is a long-time Republican canard. It varies between two versions.
One is a legitimate "try-and-get-individuals-to-help-this-or-that-homeless-person" which, while not ridiculous on its face, ignores the reality that a huge majority of the truly unhoused homeless people (the RV hoboes, the tent campers, the guy-in-a-blanket-wandering-downtown-Portland) have burned through all of their "support systems" - family, friends, churches, hospitals, clinics - couch-surfing, subletting, in- and out-patient treatment, food banks, shelters - before finally exhausting all of them.
The other is a cynical "buy-the-hobo-a-bus-ticket-out-of-town" kick the hobo down the road ploy. Enough said about that. - Support law enforcement and restore public safety by fully funding state police and allowing local jurisdictions to clean up public spaces to help make Oregon's communities livable.
"Throw the smelly hoboes in jail"? Oh, sure. We've never tried criminalzing homelessness before...oh, no, wait, we have, but I'm sure that'll work this time. - Increase penalties for drug traffickers who are exploiting addiction.
"Let's do the War on Drugs only harder"? Oh, sure. We've never tried...oh, fuckit, just see above. - Reform rules and grant requirements to shift state investments to recovery-focused programs and homeless services.
"Reduce burdensome regulations" Hmmm...now where have I heard that before?
- End taxpayer funding for programs that enable addiction and instead invest in approaches that promote recovery, accountability and lasting change.
This is Drazen's people coming down on the opposite side of the "housing first" people.
This is a genuine and legitimate division in the "homeless solution" community and Drazen is picking a side.
On the one hand, there's some evidence that the commonsense idea of getting people into some sort of legit living space complete with heat, light, running water, etc, should be the first step to helping them out of trouble, and then try and fix the mental/emotional health or addiction issues.
On the other, the experience of the "housing first" approach has been that it often winds up putting people who can benefit from this - which is to say people who have physical health problems or are just flat broke - in places (specifically apartments or small communities) with people who are seriously fucked up; junkies, psychos, and the crooks that prey on them and from there to the non-fucked-up people nearby.
I honestly don't know if there's a black-and-white division here. I see the issues with both approaches.
"Housing first" does risk the inevitable problems of putting me - who has lost his house because of Parkinson's expenses and poverty - next to this guy, "Gary O'Connor"; illiterate, probably some sort of fetal-alcohol-syndrome/ADHD victim, addict, burglar, who's gonna scare me shitless and steal my (and everyone else's) stuff.
But how can I, or anyone, move past illness or injury or addiction or poverty, if my most immediate concern is not dying of cold or heat or hypothermia in the driving rain?
Frankly, the real elephant in the room that this whole housing-vs-treatment-first issue is that the only real way to resolve it is to 1) get people housed, then 2) throw an insane amount of time and money at them because to make that work requires practically a full-time hobo nanny for every Gary O'Connor. Fixing his broke ass so he doesn't steal from me and scare me shitless (or piss me off) enough to where I put a bullet in him.
There's no money for that now and Drazen has no "plan" to raise that money, so her coming down on "treatment first" rather than "housing first" is just the usual Republican arm-waving bullshit. - Declare a state of emergency on Oregon's addiction and mental health crises to bring greater urgency and coordination to the state's response.
And...then what? Nuke the hoboes from space? WTF? G'wan, get outta here.
It's all like this.
So what the Republican candidate for Oregon governor offered - purely aside from any connection with Trump and MAGAtry - was the usual GOP boilerplate. Magical "solutions" to social and political problems that boiled down to 1) lower taxes, 2) less "regulation", and 3) magic.
Seriously. That was it. The same old GOP song except without ICE dragging abuela out of the bodega or bombing Iran.
And 2/5ths of the Oregon public, the vast majority of them rural or rural-ish (there's a reason that us Portland communists call Clackamas County the "ungovernable tribal region" of Oregon...), are all in on that.
How the hell do you turn this into Richardson's insistence that this election meant "...a rejection of the Republican ideology that has driven American politics since the 1980s: the idea that some people are better than others and have the right to rule."
From where I'm sitting it still looks like some 40-plus percent of my "fellow Oregonians" are just fine with that idea.
That looks to me like a really huge fucking problem.
Next up: Okay, smartass, what do you DO about that problem?
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