#kamala harris must win

[vintageseawitch]

fascist billionaires are complete morons. evil, morally bankrupt, & terrible as well of course, but most of all morons.

they want their American tax breaks SO BAD that they're willing to destroy America for it. between trump's absurd tariff "plan" which will cost American consumers more, the "deportation" of over 10 million people which will cost American money to do which will turn into "sending people to concentrator camps" instead so they get that precious free labor they dearly wanted without having to do that silly thing called "treat your workers like human beings" & many businesses & jobs will be lost so the cost of groceries that are awful now will be IMPOSSIBLE so people will starve & start going homeless because workers protections will disappear & they have no plans to make it so the cost of living is affordable on one income per government forced family so people will start not being able to pay for rent or their mortgage so that's MORE prisoners for free labor, abortion & contraception will be banned so women will suffer & die but don't worry they're just expendable incubators but after that state sanctioned forced baby is born TOO FUCKING BAD YOU'RE NOT GETTING ANY HELP, they intend to make climate change worse, & so on.

all of this & more is going to tank the economy of the USA. this is not just counting our position as a world superpower; make no mistake, a second trump presidency is promising a world of fear & uncertainty where no one will be free. the American dollar will become worthless so what good will American billionaire money be? millions are going to suffer & die. they don't care about that i know but they won't be getting sky high profits for very long.

eat the rich.

[galactic-rhea]

.

Sometimes I remember my family is, overall, very very stupid

[askinnyblackman]

every time I learn a new thing about what israel has done/is doing I remember how they say they can’t do it without the money the US sends them and how GEORGE W BUSH and RONALD REAGAN told them “hey cut that shit out or no more money” and how our lesser evil is to the right of george fucking bush????? hello???????????

[queenerdloser]

like on one hand biden did heinous stuff during his presidency and i have no personal liking for the guy, but on the other hand part of me does feel sympathetic bc it must suck to have to end your presidency in such a lacklustre way after having literally everyone demand you leave the race. on the third hand, there are presidents who would never have the grace and self-awareness to exit the race no matter how badly they were going to do or how many calls for it there were. on the fourth hand, biden's calls have directly contributed to the murder of thousands of people. on the fifth hand, he made some pretty significant progress domestically and improved the lives of thousands of americans.

idk man i have mixed feelings specifically on him pulling out. but hopeful that the candidate who gets the nom will be strong enough to pull those who were on the fence specifically about biden. and praying to anyone who will listen that this will get more people out to vote bc i'm seriously not joking about how much we do not want a second trump presidency.

[stalltherain]

I was very worried about Biden dropping out. I expected the typical "Democrats in disarry" headlines for weeks. I did NOT expect Kamala Harris to lock down the party nomination at lightning speed. Nothing in American politics ever moves that fast. Nobody gets the Democrats to agree with each other this swiftly.

And it didn't just happen by magic or luck. Harris must have worked her ass off so that there was never a power void that attention seekers could grasp for. (Except for Manchin's attempt, and she made that look like the joke that he is.)

I'm very impressed. I didn't know Harris could do this. I think we have a great chance of winning in Nov.

[captainjonnitkessler]

Hear me out: the best strategy for Democrats right now is to fake an assassination.

Picture it: the President has been assassinated, the nation is reeling. Kamala Harris steps up and talks the biggest game she possibly can about unity and how we as Americans must come together and how we'll never let these domestic terrorists threaten our democracy. She spends the next four months in the public eye, presenting a strong and united front in the midst of this terrible tragedy.

Come November she's had four months of experience in the job, retaining the incumbent advantage and quelling fears about her competency, she's been front and center in the news for four straight months, giving her name recognition advantage, democrats who weren't enthused by Biden turn out in droves to prove that we won't let the "terrorists" win, democrats who were enthused by Biden can't complain about the DNC not running the person who won the primaries, and the "civility is the most important thing in politics" swing voters are horrified by the assassination and are inclined to vote Democrat to punish this breach of political etiquette. Meanwhile, Biden retires to a farm upstate and is no longer tortured by press conferences.

@ the FBI agent who's list I just landed on: hmu, the Democrats need me

[politijohn]

On Kamala Harris’s defeat

Democrats’ strategy of courting conservative suburban voters failed….as it has done over and over again.

Despite Trump’s platform, Latino voters have swung drastically right, continuing the trend we saw in 2020. It’s like the turkey voting for Thanksgiving.

There’s a dangerous theme among Gen Z men becoming radically right-wing. The Trump Campaign capitalized on this.

I’m not surprised the outdated Democratic Party failed…again. They play a game meant for two decades ago. Fantastic ground game doesn’t matter. Conservative pundits run the airways. Social media is a conservative hellscape. People like Joe Rogan hold significant sway and there is no progressive, or even liberal, counterbalance.

This country has moved right and it’s incredibly concerning. While we had some wins this election, we saw decent progressives ousted in their primaries and status quo politics fail in the general.

The problem is bigger than Kamala. The entire Democratic Party establishment must be dismantled. This has been the case since at least 2015. Liberalism at large is failing and the Democratic Party is incentivized to keep doing business as usual to appease donors (hint: this doesn’t mean you!). We need a true populist left movement if we are ever going to get out of this conservative hole.

[cleolinda]

Kamala Harris’ concession speech, in which she stresses the importance of conceding peacefully in this specific moment, while continuing to fight as a way of living. All the posts today about how to carry on? It’s those as a speech, delivered with a smile of greater strength than I sure have. Starts at 24:30 for some ungodly reason.

And America, we will never give up the fight for our democracy, for the rule of law, for equal justice, and for the sacred idea that every one of us, no matter who we are or where we start out, has certain fundamental rights and freedoms that must be respected and upheld. And we will continue to wage this fight in the voting booth, in the courts and in the public square. And we will also wage it in quieter ways, in how we live our lives, by treating one another with kindness and respect, by looking in the face of a stranger and seeing a neighbor, by always using our strength to lift people up, to fight for the dignity that all people deserve.

[…]

Sometimes the fight takes a while. That doesn’t mean we won’t win. That doesn’t mean we won’t win. The important thing is don’t ever give up, don’t ever give up, don’t ever stop trying to make the world a better place. You have power. You have power and don’t you ever listen when anyone tells you something is impossible because it has never been done before. You have the capacity to do extraordinary good in the world.

[…]

Do not despair. This is not a time to throw up our hands. This is a time to roll up our sleeves. This is a time to organize, to mobilize and to stay engaged for the sake of freedom and justice and the future that we all know we can build together.

[…]

The adage is only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. I know many people feel like we are entering a dark time, but for the benefit of us all, I hope that is not the case. But here’s the thing, America, if it is, let us fill the sky with the light of a brilliant, brilliant billion of stars. The light, the light of optimism, of faith, of truth and service.

This speech didn’t heal me or fix anything, but it made me feel like I could get out of bed.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Lina Khan’s future is the future of the Democratic Party — and America

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

On the one hand, the anti-monopoly movement has a future no matter who wins the 2024 election – that's true even if Kamala Harris wins but heeds the calls from billionaire donors to fire Lina Khan and her fellow trustbusters.

In part, that's because US antitrust laws have broad "private rights of action" that allow individuals and companies to sue one another for monopolistic conduct, even if top government officials are turning a blind eye. It's true that from the Reagan era to the Biden era, these private suits were few and far between, and the cases that were brought often died in a federal courtroom. But the past four years has seen a resurgence of antitrust rage that runs from left to right, and from individuals to the C-suites of big companies, driving a wave of private cases that are prevailing in the courts, upending the pro-monopoly precedents that billionaires procured by offering free "continuing education" antitrust training to 40% of the Federal judiciary:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down

It's amazing to see the DoJ racking up huge wins against Google's monopolistic conduct, sure, but first blood went to Epic, who won a historic victory over Google in federal court six months before the DoJ's win, which led to the court ordering Google to open up its app store:

https://www.theverge.com/policy/2024/10/7/24243316/epic-google-permanent-injunction-ruling-third-party-stores

Google's 30% App Tax is a giant drag on all kinds of sectors, as is its veto over which software Android users get to see, so Epic's win is going to dramatically alter the situation for all kinds of activities, from beleaguered indie game devs:

https://antiidlereborn.com/news/

To the entire news sector:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-must-open-app-stores

Private antitrust cases have attracted some very surprising plaintiffs, like Michael Jordan, whose long policy of apoliticism crumbled once he bought a NASCAR team and lived through the monopoly abuses of sports leagues as an owner, not a player:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/michael-jordan-anti-monopolist

A much weirder and more unlikely antitrust plaintiff than Michael Jordan is Google, the perennial antitrust defendant. Google has brought a complaint against Microsoft in the EU, based on Microsoft's extremely ugly monopolistic cloud business:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-files-complaint-eu-over-microsoft-cloud-practices-2024-09-25/

Google's choice of venue here highlights another reason to think that the antitrust surge will continue irrespective of US politics: antitrust is global. Antitrust fervor has seized governments from the UK to the EU to South Korea to Japan. All of those countries have extremely similar antitrust laws, because they all had their statute books overhauled by US technocrats as part of the Marshall Plan, so they have the same statutory tools as the American trustbusters who dismantled Standard Oil and AT&T, and who are making ready to shatter Google into several competing businesses:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/8/24265832/google-search-antitrust-remedies-framework-android-chrome-play

Antitrust fever has spread to Canada, Australia, and even China, where the Cyberspace Directive bans Chinese tech giants from breaking interoperability to freeze out Chinese startups. Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops, and the cost of 40 years of pro-monopoly can't be ignored. Monopolies make the whole world more brittle, even as the cost of that brittleness mounts. It's hard to pretend monopolies are fine when a single hurricane can wipe out the entire country's supply of IV fluid – again:

https://prospect.org/health/2024-10-11-cant-believe-im-writing-about-iv-fluid-again/

What's more, the conduct of global monopolists is the same in every country where they have taken hold, which means that trustbusters in the EU can use the UK Digital Markets Unit's report on the mobile app market as a roadmap for their enforcement actions against Apple:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/63f61bc0d3bf7f62e8c34a02/Mobile_Ecosystems_Final_Report_amended_2.pdf

And then the South Korean and Japanese trustbusters can translate the court documents from the EU's enforcement action and use them to score victories over Apple in their own courts:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/10/an-injury-to-one/#is-an-injury-to-all

So on the one hand, the trustbusting wave will continue erode the foundations of global monopolies, no matter what happens after this election. But on the other hand, if Harris wins and then fires Biden's top trustbusters to appease her billionaire donors, things are going to get ugly.

A new, excellent long-form Bloomberg article by Josh Eidelson and Max Chafkin gives a sense of the battle raging just below the surface of the Democratic Power, built around a superb interview with Khan herself:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-10-09/lina-khan-on-a-second-ftc-term-ai-price-gouging-data-privacy

The article begins with a litany of tech billionaires who've gone an all-out, public assault on Khan's leadership – billionaires who stand to personally lose hundreds of millions of dollars from her agency's principled, vital antitrust work, but who cloak their objection to Khan in rhetoric about defending the American economy. In public, some of these billionaires are icily polite, but many of them degenerate into frothing, toddler-grade name-calling, like IAB's Barry Diller, who called her a "dope" and Musk lickspittle Jason Calacanis, who called her an all-caps COMMUNIST and a LUNATIC.

The overall vibe from these wreckers? "How dare the FTC do things?!"

And you know, they have a point. For decades, the FTC was – in the quoted words of Tim Wu – "a very hardworking agency that did nothing." This was the period when the FTC targeted low-level scammers while turning a blind eye to the monsters that were devouring the US economy. In part, that was because the FTC had been starved of budget, trapping them in a cycle of racking up easy, largely pointless "wins" against penny-ante grifters to justify their existence, but never to the extent that Congress would apportion them the funds to tackle the really serious cases (if this sounds familiar, it's also the what happened during the long period when the IRS chased middle class taxpayers over minor filing errors, while ignoring the billionaires and giant corporations that engaged in 7- and 8-figure tax scams).

But the FTC wasn't merely underfunded: it was timid. The FTC has extremely broad enforcement and rulemaking powers, which most sat dormant during the neoliberal era:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

The Biden administration didn't merely increase the FTC's funding: in choosing Khan to helm the organization, they brought onboard a skilled technician, who was both well-versed in the extensive but unused powers of the agency and determined to use them:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

But Khan's didn't just rely on technical chops and resources to begin the de-olicharchification of the US economy: she built a three-legged stool, whose third leg is narrative. Khan's signature is her in-person and remote "listening tours," where workers who've been harmed by corporate power get to tell their stories. Bloomberg recounts the story of Deborah Brantley, who was sexually harassed and threatened by her bosses at Kavasutra North Palm Beach. Brantley's bosses touched her inappropriately and "joked" about drugging her and raping her so she "won’t be such a bitch and then maybe people would like you more."

When Brantley finally quit and took a job bartending at a different business, Kavasutra sued her over her noncompete clause, alleging an "irreparable injury" sustained by having one of their former employees working at another business, seeking damages and fees.

The vast majority of the 30 million American workers who labor under noncompetes are like Brantley, low-waged service workers, especially at fast-food restaurants (so Wendy's franchisees can stop minimum wage cashiers from earning $0.25/hour more flipping burgers at a nearby McDonald's). The donor-class indenturers who defend noncompetes claim that noncompetes are necessary to protect "innovative" businesses from losing their "IP." But of course, the one state where no workers are subject to noncompetes is California, which bans them outright – the state that is also home to Silicon Valley, an IP-heave industry that the same billionaires laud for its innovations.

After that listening tour, Khan's FTC banned noncompetes nationwide:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/25/capri-v-tapestry/#aiming-at-dollars-not-men

Only to have a federal judge in Texas throw out their ban, a move that will see $300b/year transfered from workers to shareholders, and block the formation of 8,500 new US businesses every year:

https://www.npr.org/2024/08/21/g-s1-18376/federal-judge-tosses-ftc-noncompetes-ban

Notwithstanding court victories like Epic v Google and DoJ v Google, America's oligarchs have the courts on their side, thanks to decades of court-packing planned by the Federalist Society and executed by Senate Republicans and Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, and Trump. Khan understands this; she told Bloomberg that she's a "close student" of the tactics Reagan used to transform American society, admiring his effectiveness while hating his results. Like other transformative presidents, good and bad, Reagan had to fight the judiciary and entrenched institutions (as did FDR and Lincoln). Erasing Reagan's legacy is a long-term project, a battle of inches that will involve mustering broad political support for the cause of a freer, more equal America.

Neither Biden nor Khan are responsible for the groundswell of US – and global – movement to euthanize our rentier overlords. This is a moment whose time has come; a fact demonstrated by the tens of thousands of working Americans who filled the FTC's noncompete docket with outraged comments. People understand that corporate looters – not "the economy" or "the forces of history" – are the reason that the businesses where they worked and shopped were destroyed by private equity goons who amassed intergenerational, dynastic fortunes by strip-mining the real economy and leaving behind rubble.

Like the billionaires publicly demanding that Harris fire Khan, private equity bosses can't stop making tone-deaf, guillotine-conjuring pronouncements about their own virtue and the righteousness of their businesses. They don't just want to destroy the world - they want to be praised for it:/p>

"Private equity’s been a great thing for America" -Stephen Pagliuca, co-chairman of Bain Capital;

"We are taught to judge the success of a society by how it deals with the least able, most vulnerable members of that society. Shouldn’t we judge a society by how they treat the most successful? Do we vilify, tax, expropriate and condemn those who have succeeded, or do we celebrate economic success as the engine that propels our society toward greater collective well-being?" -Marc Rowan, CEO of Apollo

"Achieve life-changing money and power," -Sachin Khajuria, former partner at Apollo

Meanwhile, the "buy, strip and flip" model continues to chew its way through America. When PE buys up all the treatment centers for kids with behavioral problems, they hack away at staffing and oversight, turning them into nightmares where kids are routinely abused, raped and murdered:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/they-told-me-it-was-going-be-good-place-allega-tions-n987176

When PE buys up nursing homes, the same thing happens, with elderly residents left to sit in their own excrement and then die:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/24/nursing-homes-private-equity-fraud-00132001

Writing in The Guardian, Alex Blasdel lays out the case for private equity as a kind of virus that infects economies, parasitically draining them of not just the capacity to provide goods and services, but also of the ability to govern themselves, as politicians and regulators are captured by the unfathomable sums that PE flushes into the political process:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/10/slash-and-burn-is-private-equity-out-of-control

Now, the average worker who's just lost their job may not understand "divi recaps" or "2-and-20" or "carried interest tax loopholes," but they do understand that something is deeply rotten in the world today.

What happens to that understanding is a matter of politics. The Republicans – firmly affiliated with, and beloved of, the wreckers – have chosen an easy path to capitalizing on the rising rage. All they need to do is convince the public that the system is irredeemably corrupt and that the government can't possibly fix anything (hence Reagan's asinine "joke": "the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help'").

This is a very canny strategy. If you are the party of "governments are intrinsically corrupt and incompetent," then governing corruptly and incompetently proves your point. The GOP strategy is to create a nation of enraged nihilists who don't even imagine that the government could do something to hold their bosses to account – not for labor abuses, not for pollution, not for wage theft or bribery.

The fact that successive neoliberal governments – including Democratic administrations – acted time and again to bear out this hypothesis makes it easy for this kind of nihilism to take hold.

Far-right conspiracies about pharma bosses colluding with corrupt FDA officials to poison us with vaccines for profit owe their success to the lived experience of millions of Americans who lost loved ones to a conspiracy between pharma bosses and corrupt officials to poison us with opioids.

Unhinged beliefs that "they" caused the hurricanes tearing through Florida and Georgia and that Kamala Harris is capping compensation to people who lost their homes are only credible because of murderous Republican fumble during Katrina; and the larcenous collusion of Democrats to help banks steal Americans' homes during the foreclosure crisis, when Obama took Tim Geithner's advice to "foam the runway" with the mortgages of everyday Americans who'd been cheated by their banks:

https://www.salon.com/2014/05/14/this_man_made_millions_suffer_tim_geithners_sorry_legacy_on_housing/

If Harris gives in to billionaire donors and fires Khan and her fellow trustbusters, paving the way for more looting and scamming, the result will be more nihilism, which is to say, more electoral victories for the GOP. The "government can't do anything" party already exists. There are no votes to be gained by billing yourself as the "we also think governments can't do anything" party.

In other words, a world where Khan doesn't run the FTC is a world where antitrust continues to gain ground, but without taking Democrats with it. It's a world where nihilism wins.

There's factions of the Democratic Party who understand this. AOC warned party leaders that, "Anyone goes near Lina Khan and there will be an out and out brawl":

https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1844034727935988155

And Bernie Sanders called her "the best FTC Chair in modern history":

https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1843733298960576652

In other words: Lina Khan as a posse.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/11/democracys-antitrust-paradox/#there-will-be-an-out-and-out-brawl

[qqueenofhades]

Leaving aside possible reversals, disasters, doom & gloom, can we take a moment to savor the Trump meltdown over Harris/Walz and the momentum that makes a possible blue tsunami seem an entirely plausible outcome? I'd love to give you the space to ramble about it if you'd like, as my current fandom at least for the moment has shifted back to US politics (but not, for the first time in a while, to doom scrolling politics!).

Aha, I feel as I have probably already said most of my current thoughts, but here are a few things that really make me desire a heaping helping of butt-whooping blue wave in November:

The state that has had the most volunteer sign-ups since Harris took over the ticket? Fucking Florida, with over 18,000. The Villages, formerly a hotbed of Trump support (and y'know, probably still is), also had a major pro-Kamala event, and she is allegedly up 15 points in Miami-Dade (after Biden won the county by 7% and lost the state only by 3%). Now, we all know that Obama won Florida twice, but it has become such a symbol of retrograde Trumpian/DeSantisian politics that winning there would be literally seismic. I'm not going so far as saying that it's in PLAY play, but let's just hold onto that happy, happy idea.

Likewise the poll I mentioned the other day, where Trump is struggling to break 50% in Ohio, once a swing state and now also reliably red. The fact that this is Vance's home state and he's dragging the ticket down every single time he opens his mouth, thus offering the smallest sliver of hope that Ohio (which DID legalize abortion and weed by major margins last year) could also go blue? Incredible. Amazing. Showstopping.

Harris is also tied with Trump (46%-46%) in North Carolina and there is a lot of chatter about how the terrible GOP governor candidate could give a boost to Democratic turnout statewide.

The Mormons have apparently announced their intention to abandon (or at least support much less than they usually do) the Republican presidential ticket in 2024. Remember when Obama won Indiana in 2008? In my wildest dreams, I imagine Utah going blue in 2024. It won't but shh.

Basically, where we were braced for another agonizing nail-biting grind-it-out three-day election determined by a few thousand votes in key states (because etc etc the Electoral College sucks) we are now looking at the very real possibility that Harris wins at least one state, and possibly more, that Biden didn't, and which have been seen as out of reach for Democrats since Trump came on the scene. I don't think I need to counsel anyone against complacency, because we're all too damn scared for that, but yeah. Polls, even the good-looking ones that we like, don't vote. They are still skewed and subjective and do not represent the actual reality, whatever that may end up being. The Republicans and the media will be trying their absolute goddamnfuckingest to ratfuck us again in the 80-something days that remain, but:

WE CAN DO THIS, WE WILL DO THIS, WE MUST DO THIS.

WHAT IS THIS.... JOY SCROLLING? FOR AMERICAN POLITICS? IN THE YEAR 2024 WITH DONALD TRUMP ON THE TICKET FOR THE FUCKING THIRD TIME?

UNPOSSIBLE.

[chaosfish2775]

Everyone, voting is not the end of your contribution in this campaign. Anyone looking at the nonsense I’m posting was probably already going to vote. But there are people in your life who aren’t going to vote, and it’s your duty to your country to convince them otherwise. Get people registered to vote, get people informed on their options, and get people out to the polls on November 5th. Donald Trump has his base, and they’re more vicious than ever. You think those racist, fascist, MAGA idiots are going to sit at home twiddling their thumbs? No! They’re going to vote. So make sure that everyone in your life who doesn’t want to see this country go to absolute shit, again, is registered to vote, and will.

It’s not hopeless, it’s not over. Donald Trump won’t win if the sane, decent people of America actually go out and vote this year. His strategy in this election, as it has been in every election, is to energize his base. But the thing is, they’re already energized. And with Biden dropping out and Harris stepping in, the only real credible attack he had is gone. Now he’s not facing someone who’s 82 years old, now he’s facing someone who’s almost 2 decades younger than him. He attacks her laugh, because there’s nothing else. He lies, and says she’s further left than Bernie Sanders, because he’s grasping at straws. He’s pulling away from the debates, because he’s a life long felon, and she’s a prosecutor. Because she’s fought, and beaten, people who are exactly like him.

If we go out and vote, if we utilize our more important right as members of this country, Harris will win. So go out there, get people registered, get people to the polls when it matters. Spread the word, reach out to anyone you can, make sure your friends and family know how crucial this election is. Biden was right when he said this election will determine the next few decades, maybe even the rest of this century. For the US, for the world. Do you really want that future to be set up by Donald Trump?

We will not go back. We must roll up our sleeves. We will move forward. And on January 20th, 2025, Kamala Harris will be sworn in as the first woman President of the United States. Vote blue, vote Harris. 🇺🇸🥥🔵

[doodleloverz]

2024 Georgia Election Recount Guide for voters

(Posted and compiled morning of November 8th, 3 days post election day)

To Preface:

I'm starting with Georgia because over 63 thousand voters were challenged by Republicans due to a law change this year that made it easier, multiple bomb threats were made to offices expected for VP Kamala to win during voting, and the votes between VP Harris and Trump are very close. Note that I am not from Georgia, simply looking at election progress and your laws on how you can fight for fair democratic election results.

If you voted in the 2024 election in Georgia, here are the rules on what you can do to call for a recount. After extensive research nothing seems to explicitly state how a voter can request (that I can understand) however I think a good assumption would be to contact Georgia officials that DO have the power to call for a recount, stating why using the rules in the laws as stated.

The map shown below was screen capped early November 8th, source: The Associated Press

Recount laws in Georgia state presidential candidates must have a 0.5% difference or less to call for a recount, as of now with 2% of votes left to count in the state theres only a 0.8% difference. Meaning if the next 2% of votes gets VP Harris 0.3% closer Georgian voters can request a recall.

Georgia procedure for a recount, the exact rules as linked on Ballotpedia. They state what officials can do under 5 circumstances. Each have their own rules as to who can call a recount, namely the superintendent or secretary of state, who can be petitioned in some cases by any candidate or party.

Notes from OP below the cut:

I was frustrated seeing the Democratic party give up on us as if these obvious attempts at rigging didn't happen, simply because they won't 'stoop to the level' of Trump or the Republican party as they did in 2020. I don't know if this will truly help, but I saw no guides for how to do this anywhere at all besides the recourses you see here, so I simply made it more accessible for the average person. I may try to do more states but do note this took hours of research for me sadly, you can find your own states in the same sites. I used The Associated Press (google 2024 election results and it'll show) and Ballotpedia.org

Half our country may have voted away our rights and if we truly lose then well shit. But there's still plenty more fighting to be done regardless and there is still hope, Stay safe everyone.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Kamala Harris herself has now borrowed Walz’s lingo and is also calling her opponents “weird”, while Walz is all over our television screens, bolstering the vice-president’s candidacy and playing “attack dog” against the Trump/Vance Republican ticket. I’ll be honest: last month, I would have struggled to pick Walz out of a lineup. This month? I’m Walz-pilled. I have watched dozens of his interviews and clips. And I’m far from alone. He has an army of new fans across the liberal-left: from former Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign co-chair Nina Turner, to one-time Democratic congressman Beto O’Rourke, to gun-control activist David Hogg. “In less than 6 days, I went from not knowing who Tim Walz is,” joked writer Travis Helwig on X, “to deep down believing that if he doesn’t get the VP nod I will storm the capitol.” According to Bloomberg, the Harris campaign has narrowed down its “top tier” of potential running mates to three “white guy” candidates: Walz (hurrah!), plus the Arizona senator Mark Kelly and Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro. Both Kelly and Shapiro have their strengths – and both represent must-win states for the Dems. Allow me, however, to make the clear case for Walz. First, there’s his personality. The 60-year-old governor would bring energy, humor and some much-needed bite to the Democratic presidential ticket. There’s a reason why his videos have been going viral in recent days. Tim Kaine he ain’t. Pick the charismatic and eloquent Walz and you have America’s Fun Uncle ready to go. Then, there’s his résumé. A popular midwest governor from a rural town. A 24-year veteran of the army national guard. A high school teacher who coached the football team to its first state championship. It’s almost too perfect! Finally, there’s his governing record. You will struggle to find a Democratic governor who has achieved more than Walz in the space of a single legislative session. Not Shapiro. Not JB Pritzker of Illinois. Not even Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. [...] Think about it. Democrats can have Tim Walz on the ticket, who called the anti-war, pro-Palestinian ‘uncommitted’ movement “civically engaged” and praised them for “asking for a change in course” and “for more pressure to be put on” the White House, or they can have Josh Shapiro, who called for a crackdown on anti-war, pro-Palestinian college protesters and even compared them to the KKK. They can have Walz on the ticket, who has reportedly “emerged among labor unions as a popular pick” after signing “into law a series of measures viewed as pro-worker” including banning non-compete agreements and expanding protections for Amazon warehouse workers, or they can have Mark Kelly, who opposed the pro-labor Pro Act in the Senate (but has since touted support for it). They can have Walz, who guaranteed students in Minnesota not just free breakfasts but free lunches, or Shapiro, who has courted controversy in Pennsylvania with his support for school vouchers. They can have Walz, who calls his Republican opponents “weird” and extreme, or Kelly, who calls his Republican opponents “good people” who are “working really hard”. This isn’t rocket science. Walz is the obvious choice. Not only is he the ideal “white guy” running mate for Harris, against both Trump and Vance, but he is already doing the job on television and online, lambasting Vance in particular over IVF treatment and insisting he mind his “own damn business”.

Zeteo News founder Mehdi Hasan for The Guardian on why picking Tim Walz as Kamala Harris's running mate is the best option (07.29.2024).

Zeteo News founder Mehdi Hasan wrote in The Guardian why Tim Walz should be Kamala Harris’s running mate. Hasan’s opinion piece is worth reading.

[charlesoberonn]

Genuine Question. What makes you think Kamala Harris will win given the sheer number of people saying not to vote or vote third party here and elsewhere?

Tumblr isn't representative of society at large. And the people saying not to vote aren't representative of Tumblr.

Anyway, you must vote. You can and must also criticize Harris and the Democrats but you cannot allow a reactionary fascist Republican Party to take over.

[patriottruth]

This is an hourly reminder that on March 4th, 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States ordered donald j. trump to have 87 Democrats in both houses of Congress remove his insurrectionist disqualification from ever holding any federal office again. He failed to do so prior to November 5, 2024.

What that means is that between now and December 17th, 2024, donald j. trump has no choice but to go to Congress and have 70 Democrats in the House of Representatives and 17 Democrats in the Senate vote to remove his insurrectionist disqualification, as he was ordered to do by SCOTUS on March 4th, 2024, or he's not legally the President Elect and cannot be inaugurated, sworn in, or hold federal office again on January 20, 2025. The clock is ticking!

Here's an evening update on why this will work. donald trump's legal tactics are deny, attempt to wiggle out of it on technicalities, and delay, delay, delay. Well, from November 2023 to March 4, 2024, donald trump not only said that he was never an officer of the United States, but that he also never swore an oath to support the United States Constitution. And then he said that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment says nothing about running for office, only holding office, and since he's only running for office, nothing can keep him off the ballot. And that's where this has finally caught up to him.

SCOTUS illegally took the case to begin with. SCOTUS was required to kick the case back to Congress immediately to force a two-thirds of both houses vote to remove donald trump's insurrectionist disqualification. But they illegally denied Congress the ability to vote on it at the time, illegally legislated from the bench to keep donald trump on the ballot by illegally amending Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution, and dismissed the clear two-thirds vote requirement to replace it with "Congress must pass new legislation and amend Section 3 of the 14th Amendment in order to keep insurrectionists off of the ballot and out of office in the future. All six MAGA SCOTUS injustices can now be immediately and permanently disbarred from ever judging or practicing law anywhere in the United States now and in the future for that illegal legislating from the bench; because the U.S. Constitution clearly says that the Judiciary can never interfere with Congress legislating, or with the President enforcing the laws of the United States.

donald trump and his allies figured that was a win, that SCOTUS couldn't be challenged, that the Democrats could never get legislation passed to keep him off the ballot or from holding office again, and the matter was dropped. But that's where he was wrong; because Section 3 of the 14th Amendment still reads, and only legally reads, that the only way an insurrectionist can hold federal office again is by a two-thirds vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate; and that means that now that donald trump can't try and use the technicality of "I'm not even trying to hold office, I'm just running for office," and he's actively trying to hold office with no technicality wiggle room, donald trump's only path to the White House is to have 70 Democrats in the House of Representatives and 17 Democrats in the Senate vote to remove his insurrectionist disqualification by December 17th, 2017; and his favorite tactic of delay, delay, delay won't work because delaying means he can't be inaugurated, sworn in, and serve as the 47th President of the United States; and that means Kamala Harris would become 47th President of the United States by default.

If anyone is interested in fighting another trump presidency, contact every Democrat representative in the House of Representatives and the Senate and remind them that donald j. trump cannot be inaugurated, sworn in, and be the 47th President of the United States on January 20, 2025 unless 70 Democrats in the House of Representatives and 17 Democrats in the Senate vote to remove his insurrectionist disqualification before December 17, 2024. Many of them have online contact forms. You may have to enter an address near their local office in their district for the contact form to go through, but I know they're going to want to be reminded of this by as many people as possible in order to save humanity and American democracy from donald trump. Plus, Kamala Harris can be contacted via the White House Vice President contact form; and as a presidential candidate and the President of the Senate, she and President Biden can do a lot to enforce donald trump having to have his insurrectionist disqualification removed by a two-thirds vote of the House of Representatives and the Senate before December 17, 2024.

Rachel Maddow: Why was donald trump's campaign telling his supporters not to vote, they don't need any votes, and to skip the polls?

[vague-humanoid]

Apparently, “democracy” is when Black people must choose between maintaining our dwindling civil rights or shipping 250-pound bombs to explode Gazan schools full of Palestinians praying in peace. Otherwise, if we refuse this dead-end choice, we must want the other guy to win. This zero-sum exchange was on display during a Detroit, Michigan rally on August 7 when Harris smugly shouted down pro-Palestinian protesters, “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking!” 

Immediately, her mammy for empire impression emboldened her base. The crowd raved in cheers and chants, heralding her as a no-nonsense Black woman letting those snot nose protesters know who’s boss. This dismissive response has ruffled Palestinians and Palestinian supporters alike; some had hoped Harris may depart ways with President Biden’s steadfast support of Israel’s carnage in Gaza. The Harris campaign quickly shot down such hopes when they clarified their opposition to any arms embargo on Israel’s slaughter. Since then the U.S. has approved 20 billion dollars in weapons sales to the Zionist State. But it need not matter since Harris is the imperialist woman our Black grandmothers always dreamed of becoming, so we’re told.