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OVERLAND PARK, KS—So, on the last night of a long campaign, one that started at approximately 1:15 p.m. on January 20, 2017, a couple hours after a smaller-than-usual inaugural crowd had American Carnage explained to them, but before Sean Spicer mounted the podium to mouth the first grotesque lie in an administration* full of them, I ended up at a storefront on top of a hill looking down on a long carpet of chain hotels and franchise restaurants. The storefront was the headquarters of Sharice Davids, who is running for Congress as a Democrat in the Third Congressional District of Kansas. It was jammed with a happy, noisy, vastly diverse crowd; Davids, who is even money to defeat an incumbent Republican named Kevin Yoder, is a gay Native American woman with a law degree from Cornell and a background as an MMA fighter.

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There were gay women there, and Native Americans and, one supposes, a lawyer or two. (I decided not to try and find out who else might be an MMA fighter.) Davids won a six-way Democratic primary in which she faced down one of Bernie Sanders's chosen candidates, a progressive lawyer named Brent Welder. (Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez jumped in behind Welder, too, in the first major blunder of her new political career.) But Davids was backed early on by Emily's List, which was represented on this particular evening by Annise Parker, the former mayor of Houston. Parker was one of the first openly gay candidates to be elected mayor of a major American city.

"Kids look at Sharice, and they can say, 'If she can do it, I can,'" Parker said. "Native kids can say that. LGBTQ kids can say that. Everyone who ever felt different and left out can look at her as an example and a role model." And everybody cheered. Davids got up next and this is what she said, in its entirety, because this is the most basic element of citizenship, and the one too often obscured by spin, and money, and the empty glitter of luxurious punditry. It is what this whole extended exercise is supposed to be about.

I was thinking about how we wanted somebody to listen to our voices, a new kind of leadership, and I was thinking about what I have and what I don't have, at least at the beginning of this. One of the things I took a little note of was that I had a lot of people helping at the very beginning, a very strong support system. But the thing I had that I think made the biggest difference, the biggest impact, was that I had faith in our community to do something really profound this year. This is what that looks like. I didn't know it at the time, but this is what that looks like -- all the people coming out for so many months, and putting your blood and sweat and tears and resources, your hearts, into all of this. This is what it looks like. But it's not over 'til the polls close.

(This got a big laugh.)

That's what this looks like, and I give you a hand because the faith that I had, not only in the Third district, but in all of Kansas, to elect someone like Laura Kelly, to elect someone like Brian McClendon...It's really, really important to be seen, and that's also something that was at the core of this campaign. It's that too many of us have gone through our entire lives not feeling seen and not feeling heard. That is the thing that is going to be the hugest difference between what we had before, and the direction that we've seen this country going, and what we have the opportunity to do in this midterm election. We have the opportunity this time to elect people who have been telling you that they want to listen to you, because you should be heard, that they want to see you, because you have to be seen. That is the core of this campaign. That is the reason that we've been able to achieve so much. It's not just me. It's all of the people who have been showing up, day in and day out, week in and week out. We were watching that ET [Eric Thomas] thing , you know, 'Do you want success? Do you want success as much as you want to breathe.



I want democracy as much as I want to breathe.

Something dawned this morning. Damned if we know yet what it was.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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