I got pretty drunk last night during my Facebooking and live Tweeting, but one of the last posts I wrote explains Florida:

"My most brutally honest assessment from tonight. It's brutally honest because I'm drunk and I've removed the filter. Yes, I'm going Full Magneto here:

I think it's time to completely write off Florida for a while. It has gone from purple to red and is probably a lost cause for a long while. Too many racists, old people, right-wing suburbanites, Evangelicals, pissed off abuelas y abuelos, and sociopathic rich dickholes. Maybe we just can't outnumber that amount of fucking lost cause depravity.

Florida is probably just fucked because of a weird concoction of demographics and economics. 25% Arizona, 25% Alabama, 25% New York, 25% crazy shit= Florida.

Or maybe I'm drunk and wrong. We'll find out soon enough..."

I barely remember writing that, incidentally. But yeah, it's all true.

Florida is basically Texas East Coast.

until Hillary Clinton and the rest of the neoliberal caravan showed up. If Gillum had said, no thanks, I believe he might have pulled out a victory. But he did embrace the neoliberals. Particularly Clinton had a devastating effect upon his poll numbers right after she showed up. I really doubt that Jimmy Dore or Kyle Kulinski had any effect upon voters so I believe that Farron Cousins is dead wrong about that and is just lashing out.

Gillum's campaign made a lot of mistakes that added up in the end. If Gillum had simply trusted his own instincts instead of listening to the Democratic Party, he would have been better off.

Personally I found the voting on some of the Constitutional amendments puzzling. Florida used to (or maybe still does) have a law that any proposed amendment could only address one issue and that was not the case with a number of amendments on the ballot. I fail to understand how off shore drilling has anything to do with vaping, but they were both on the same amendment. I studied the amendments and was still confused as hell. Despite challenges to that effect, only one proposed amendment was struck from the ballot.

Aspy rightly cited one of the biggest problems with voting in Florida and that is rich retirees come to Florida for both the weather and lack of income tax and then they do not want to pay for anything. They got theirs and the rest of the state be damned. We saw that in the votes on several of the amendments which either severely limits the state's ability to raise taxes or caps the tax rates on property. Without an income tax which is the most equitable form of taxing, Florida must rely upon property taxes and user taxes. With the current system of property taxes having multiple exemptions available to certain homeowners, and now the new caps on none homesteaded property, there is going to be some hard times in the future for all Floridians when the state is unable to provide the necessary services and maintenance of current infrastructure.

Also, like many states, we do have our share of hyper conservatives who will vote for anyone and anything with an R beside their name. And then there are the Cubans who are very conservative. But soon the old guard abuelas will be gone and hopefully that voting block will no longer remain a solid block.

On the plus side, voters did restore full voting rights to felons who have served their sentences. This was something Charlie Crist had done when he was governor. However Rick Scott rescinded those rights when he became governor. Also, Floridians voted to outlaw greyhound racing, thus joining the majority of states which have already done so.