#there is so much voter suppression in this country because they KNOW if we actually came out in full force we'd wipe them out

[sagechan]

this is something i've been thinking of for a couple days now, and i'm glad someone said it so well. "vote with your dollar" and "vote in an election" are not the same thing just because they both use the word "vote." both are forms of political action, but through opposite means. one requires withholding engagement, the other requires being engaged. get engaged, and vote. not voting doesn't accomplish anything except...not voting. when they count the votes for an election, they don't tally which ones were given gleefully, resentfully, angrily, or even tactically. they just tally the votes. and, see, the way it works is, whoever has the most wins. this isn't a company beholden to shares and stockholders that we can pressure into submission by withholding monetary incentive. this is an active infrastructure we affect in real time by using our one political too available to every single registered citizen in this country. fucking vote.

people think they shouldn't vote as a protest or whatever because they've been raised on boycotts. which do sometimes work.

boycotts deprive the target of money.

not voting does not deprive the government of money.

it does, however, deprive you of power.

it's not like a boycott.

[seeveekat]

I'm be real

Unfollow right fucking now if you're one of those "Don't vote! Biden and Trump are exactly the same person!" motherfuckers.

Because all that fucking tells me is that you're purposely ignoring what Biden has been passing in the last 4 years and just being fucking obtuse.

And im just going to say it:

I fucking hate you and your ilk.

You pray for a revolution (that you won't even be able to start because you fuckers don't even like interacting with anyone thats not online a friend group) and don't care about the people who will die so you can prove you're petty little privileged ass point of how much you hate Biden.

I'm tired of repeatedly explaining that voting goes beyond biden and presidential elections.

I'm tired of repeating that voting actually is important, especially on a local level, and we know its important because the Republicans openly do voter suppression so shit stays in their favor

I tired of telling y'all cringe ass doomer fucks that salivate and jerk off at the chance of a "revolution" that voting AND actual mutual aid do more help to change shit than fantizing about tipping over a cop car while all you do is post memes online about how voting sucks and does nothing

You think I fucking like Biden?

FUCK NO!

His response to Palestine is fucking horrible and disgusting. But its no fucking different than the presidents that came before him and I fucking know hes not the fucking same as a the Republicans because he actually fucking implemented shit!

Now my mother, who uprooted her life from her home country to come her 30 years ago, and I, someone fucking born here and an actual fucking citzen, have to figure how our broke asses are going to scrounge up money and exit this country to find a place that wont be too racist to us because we know if our black asses stay in America for a second Trump presidency, we're as good as fucking dead.

All because you fucks can't swallow your pride for once!

I hate you.

I hate you all.

[whilomm]

hey listen guys I know its hard to hear but you dont have to say Trump Cheated to point out the problems w this election

Yeah theres tons of votes being thrown out, but that doesnt mean the trump campaign was doing shady backroom deals or anything, it means that this country has places where its set up so that its way too easy to throw votes out for tiny reasons, and its been set up like that for a while. this isnt a new issue Caused By Trump Personally this is existing problem. yes, if you voted by mail or anything, make sure your vote went through and cure it if needed cause those could have massive effects downballot, but dont conspiracize about it, its just your average everyday voter suppression in this bitch of a country.

ideally they would give voters more time to cure ballots for legit issues (like signature mismatch, which yeah if u wanna prevent vote theft on mail ins It Is Important) and notify them better (especially in an age where No One Answers Their Phone) but they make the windows tiny because This Country Sucks. the conspiracy is that "wow, america sucks". very surprising, i know.

meanwhile the bomb threats. suspicious as hell, yes. needs to be investigated, yes. but also they could have come from some random ass maga cunt. I don't know how to tell yall this but some right wing fuckers do in fact love doing a terrorism independently on occasion, no conspiracy needed. now, if it comes out the threats can be directly connected to the campaign somehow? yeah, THEN its direct election interference, and we have to have a whole nother conversation, but realize it could just as easily be some random asshole doing it.

also "the dems lost 15 million votes" theyre still counting. they probably lost votes still, yeah, but you have to wait for them to finish counting to see how many. some of the states still counting like california lean heavy dem so like, the gaps gonna lower at least a bit probs. looking now its more like 10 mil gap. dunno how much thatll change, but neither do you yet. shut up with the numbers til you actually Have The Numbers. the full postmortem cant come til you actually have the body all here to dissect.

unfortunately yall i think half of american voters are just fucking stupid ass cunts who are easily swayed by shit like "egg prices" and "gas prices", and the dems massively failed every step of the way on that front (biden didnt do enough to combat price gouging when it happened, biden still decided to run knowing how fucking unpopular he was with everyone from rightwingers to checked the fuck out normies to leftists and despite barely being able to string a sentence together and then waiting until so fucking late in the race to finally drop out, the dems usual noncommital ass messaging and refusal to take strong stances on shit bit them in the ass once again...)

no, chances are from how its looking right now, trump won, no conspiracy needed. Some of its the rabid maga crowd yeah, but also some of its probs the normie ass checked out average levels of misogyny people who dont even realize their "feelings" about how trump just seems like a "stronger leader" are 100% "he is man therefore strong", some of its people who genuinely fucking vote based on shit like name recognition and had to google "did joe biden drop out". the average american is unfortunately oftentimes a fucking idiot who doesnt pay attention to goddamn anything beyond how their personal finances were these past 4 years, and dems didnt do enough to energize the voting base of people who actually do pay some attention to get them over that gap.

They couldnt get the checked out normies, they didnt even bother with the people who pay attention, and they massively goddamn fucked up.

Theres no one single thing to blame here, the whole thing is a massive messy shit stew. a million things that could have been done, including shit that should have been done over a decade ago by the dems when they really had power, but this country fucking sucks so.

[sakebytheriver]

I hate American leftists so much 🤦‍♀️

How can I get the giant government to listen to my itty bitty teeny tiny voice?

Oh i know! I'll refuse to do the only thing our government actually offers us to have our voice explicitly heard by the people in charge, this will surely create the change I am looking for and lead to a revolution and not just completely silence myself and take my entire existence as an American citizen out of the equation! I am so smart 😁

Look, I'm not here to tell you that all you should be doing in your activism is voting, that would be goddamn stupid, and I am NOT goaddamn stupid, but you know what else is goddamn stupid? Taking an arrow out of your quiver when you're in the middle of a battle and just snapping it over your knee and saying 'you know what I don't need this arrow I have so many others'

There were generations of people who fought to give you this right, there are people who DIED to give you this right, and there are people in the government making sure that you CAN'T vote every single day, because they know better than anyone how powerful a fully voting populace can be

You think the Republicans are just doing voter supression for fun? Is that what you think? You think they purge the voting databases of ethnic and black sounding names only because they're racist? You think they make these horrible gerrymandered districts and restrict the number of voting booths or limit the ways a person in their county can vote because they're just bored? No! They do voter suppression because they know for a fact that enough people voting for a certain thing can change the landscape of our entire country

Stacy Abbrams literally focused all of her political power on Georgia and phone banking and registering people to vote and because of that the state went blue for the first time in a longass time. They've even found that the amount of voter suppression done in Texas basically prevented the state from also going blue. Can you even imagine if the Republicans lost TEXAS??????

Electoral politics fucking suck, I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that they're the rainbow which will lead us to the pot of gold at the end of it, most of the democratic politicians we have to vote for are basically conservatives in any other country and half the time they betray the people who voted for them in the hopes of monetary gain (Krysten Sinema, Joe Manchin) but when the other side of the aisle is fascism that knows for a fact if every citizen in the country was registered to vote and got a ballot in their mail automatically every election season they would never win a seat ever again, it is on YOU to exercise your right to vote because if you fucking don't it's the difference between a Trump presidency and Biden one and considering how much destruction Trump was able to cause in only just four years of neofascism and the amount of actual change and progression (especially in workers rights) that the absolute neoliberal poster boy Biden has achieved I'm very happy in my choice to vote every single election, local too, because you all always forget about local politics and think the only time and the only way to vote is for the president or the senate/congress 🙄 but you know what? Local politics and the people you elect to those positions will have more effect on your day to day life than any president ever will and you should also 100% be voting in those elections

People DIED to get you the right to vote and you cast it aside as if they did NOTHING

You should feel shame for spitting on the graves of activists who never got the chance to make their voice so heard as you do in this day and age, you say you want revolution, but all you're doing is calling the old ladies who picked themselves up and marched their ways to the polls and made sure you don't have to live under neofascism for another four years stupid for exercising a right that human beings once again literally DIED to give you

Sorry, but you're the stupid one

And also I doubt you're actually out there doing any community activism other than complaining about people who vote

[lost-technology]

A thought on my mind: I apologise for not hustling butt on getting any new chapters of Survivor's Guilt out for those of you who are reading it in any kind of timely manner. I never had an update-schedule for it, anyway. It was always a pantsted, meandering "working with ideas as they come" fic - although, at this point, I have rough plans in mind for how it's going to go, up until the end. (I want to end it coinciding with the end of Trigun Stampede and upon release of Stargaze, make an entirely new sequel fic if I want to continue the storyline). I've had some hiccups between chapters. When I started it way back, I wrote out one chapter to get the basic idea out - and then I got The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and was basically just playing that for 2 1/2 months straight (well, not straight, I ate and slept, but you know). Considering that I was grieving a very dear loved one at the time, I really threw myself into that game as a distraction from life because nothing is as good a distraction for me as video games. And then I got back onto the fic and was really chugging along for a while - until I got a much-sought after and needed part-time job. My job took some time from me. It's okay - I've actually worked out storylines for the fic in my head while working! Nowadays, well, I'm an American and our very important Presidential (and general 4 year election for Senators and Representatives) is coming up. I think that even some of you who AREN'T American are paying attention to it because "when America sneezes, the world catches a cold." It's an incredibly important / world shaking one, too, as we have the potential to either have the first Madame President in our entire history or to re-elect an increasingly unhinged, publicly demented fascist who has loyalists in place to actually create a fascist government for him at his behest. I have, so far, kept politics off this blog (my rantspace for it is my main blog), but I am deeply afraid. The U.S. has a very wonky system for selecting a President whereby they don't have to win the majority vote of the actual people, but a series of representative slates of the states and that's how the jerkface that's running for a non-consecutive second term got in in the first place. He Who Shall Not Be Named was BAD years ago (arguably responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths due to his adminstration's purposeful mismanagement of the Covid pandemic). He's said and done things that SHOULD have gotten him shitcanned for EVER having a place in politics, but...somehow... he's around and has people (such as our Supreme Court) bending over backwards for him and I honestly wonder if he promised his firstborn son as a sacrifice to the Devil or something. Anyway, we're on the cusp of a decision that can go really right or go really wrong - and I have a lot of fears because... well... for all our supposed progress, we remain a deeply racist and sexist country and there are just some elements that have roughly half of us ready to chuck good ol' Democracy away for a potential dictatorship. And I happen to live in THE most coveted "swing state" - Where I live is said to basically decide the Presidency. (And there are people here who are already trying to pull voter-suppression shenanigans). And the advertisements and the signs and... I am losing my mind. (I've EATEN at the McDonald's that He Who Shall Not Be Named cosplayed at. I'm that close to the action).* - *in the past, not on the day, I'm not a supporter. So... too scared, too stressed to write. That's where I am right now. And who knows? The fic may wind up abandoned because I'll wind up being bare-bones survival, looking to flee my country or just jumping off a bridge or something on an impulse. Or you know, getting imprisoned for being in the wrong political party. Or shot for protesting. Anything can happen here.

[horce-divorce]

Just saw a post once again blaming voters for not showing up against Trump in 2020, explaining just how voter suppression works and reinforcing multiple times that it's DESIGNED to suppress voters, NO mention of the fucking electoral college, and then insists that if all eligible voters just showed up and voted for Kamala.... you know! Overwhelm the Broken System with Good Guy Energy and love will prevail over hate, right? :)

More of you voteblue chucklefucks need to hear this:

The system is not "broken."

The purpose of the system is what it does.

I am not telling you not to vote!!!! but you are patently, by definition, not fucking "gaming the system" by doing the exact 1 political action you're supposed to be allowed to do in a fucking democracy!!!!! ITS NOT FUCKING GAMING TO GET SOMETHING YOU ARE LEGALLY ENTITLED TO. DO YOU HEAR YOURSELVES.

Also, stamping your feet and keeping INSISTING that we all play nice about a 2 party system and we'll fix it later? Isn't how you win MORE votes in a time like this!

I do think it's funny how quickly they dropped the, "see! France can do it!" They must have eventually realized that France actually utilized a THIRD FUCKING PARTY!!!! TO GREAT EFFECT!!!! you're right! We COULD do that here!! If DEMS weren't FUCKING SPINELESS COWARDS and ACTUALLY GAVE A FUCK ABOUT THEIR CONSTITUENTS.

The only posts I fw about this are ones that acknowledge that voting is only one (1) tool in the toolbox, it is not the end all be all of political action or inaction. And it's hilarious how FEW of those posts there actually are.

I absolutely cannot take a post seriously that goes into detail about all the ways our system is specifically rigged to disincentivize people from voting, that then doesn't even talk about the electoral college, and then claims voting as per usual is """gaming the system""", LOL, LMAO

There are tons of accessibility reasons why truly eligible voters may not be able to get registered, or to show up on voting day. People ""not wanting"" to show up to vote are not your scapegoats. They are a symptom of a country that is in very very very dire straits, of social issues and commentary intentionally left on the back burner for too many decades. They are neglected populations who have shit to say and who aren't being heard. They are overworked, underpaid, and don't have access to the healthcare they need to function.

We aren't even allowed to complain about showing up to vote without one of you motherfuckers jumping down our throat and mischaracterizing it as far left accelerationist rhetoric! You don't even know what that MEANS!!!! ITS NORMAL TO COMPLAIN ABOUT HAVING TO VOTE IN A SYSTEM THAT ISNT EVEN DEMOCRATIC.

Neglecting our constituents for fucking decades and telling them now that we owe them not merely our votes, but some kind of deference and gratititude in return. For not having listened this whole time. Are you for real? Be so for real right now.

Expecting better from dem politicians would require them to take real responsibility for their constituents. Which they can't, because in the end, they aren't democratic, they are neoliberalis whose interests are still very much aligned with conservative ones (not necessarily trump's, but a lot of similar people who are just as invested in bringing about fascism and/ or the end times).

Again: it's not broken. You say yourselves it was designed this way.

The purpose of the system is what it does.

That doesn't mean we can't fix it. It doesn't mean "don't vote." It means you need to have a LOT more nuance in these fucking discussions before jumping down MY throat, as someone who simply expects better for and from all of humankind. Doing better IS possible, it's just not PROFITABLE. THAT is the thing we need to "game."

[bllsbailey]

This Is About to Get Ugly

Do you think the DNC went well? I'm not sure the Democrats did. Reading between the lines of what was said and done between all that "joy," I think the Democrats are panicking, and for good reason. They aren't selling themselves well. 

If you think this is good, I've got sour news for you. This is the kind of thing that spurs Democrats into action. They live by the mantra "by any means necessary," and if the Democrats are the cornered animal they're hinting they are, then they're about to resort to some really brutal tactics to hold onto power. 

The signs are all there. Bizarre time change-ups, internal discord, Democrats avoiding each other, sudden and out-of-place displays of patriotism, speech disruptions, and a presidential candidate that they had to force into the position of nominee by abandoning the Democracy they claim to defend. Even as CNN contributor Scott Jennings noted, noticeably absent from all the speeches and talks was an explanation as to why the country is in the state it is after Democrats have been in control for 12 of the past 16 years. 

Moreover, as the DNC went on, a lot of claims were made that were disproven in real-time. Social media denizens and news sites alike watched the proceedings like hawks, calling out Democrats when they pushed lie after lie. 

It had a very interesting effect, and while it will take days for polls to catch up, you could see just how much damage people telling the truth and exposing the facts were doing to the Democrat Party and Harris in particular by looking at websites like Polymarket. The website, which allows for betting on everything from sports to politics, prominently displays the 2024 presidential election. Harris led Trump in terms of favorability for a while, but now Trump is on top. 

Interestingly, that switch happened during the DNC. 

The Democrats see all this info and more and aren't going to take this lightly. As they feel the wall at their back, they're going to start lashing out, but don't think they're lashing out alone. They will have their allies in the corporate media and Silicon Valley pulling out all the stops to make sure that the party and Harris look as good as possible in order to fool people into believing she's not the communist she actually is. 

As I've covered before, Harris and her VP pick Tim Walz are big fans of censorship and coming down on free speech. Both are on record proclaiming that they will come down on what they call "misinformation" and "hate speech," and they will make themselves the arbiter of what defines those terms. 

(READ: The Anti-Free Speech Candidate)

You and I know how far they're willing to go because we witnessed it in real-time. The Hunter Biden laptop story, Tulsi Gabbard's Google results, and even various attempts to discredit and silence RedState have all come at the hands of the Democrat Party allies who are bent on seeing to it that the Democrats have every advantage. Google even tried to suppress information about the attempted assassination of Trump.

I can't stress this enough. This isn't an accident. This is very, very intentional and as we get closer to election day, this is only going to get worse. I have no idea what surprise the Democrat Party has waiting for us in October, but I can guarantee that in order to pull it off, it will require so much media cooperation and internet censorship that they'll be digging through it for years.  

Don't think for one second that you won't be affected by it. This will be a massive rollout of coordination between Democrats and their allies. You will be blacklisted, your posts hidden, and your information feeds choked. You will see all sorts of attacks on networks like X and Rumble, which allow free speech, be they lawfare or DDOS. 

We know all this because we've brought you proof before, including very recently. 

(READ: Surfaced Recording of Biden/Harris Team Reveals How They Targeted and Manipulated Voters and Information)

You're not without your weapons. RedState strives to be one of them, which is why we're attacked so often. On more than one occasion, we've been the thorn in the shoes of the powerful, and that's why we're constantly the subject of censorship attempts. This is, of course, why we have the VIP program. The point of these attacks is to limit our reach so severely that it tanks our traffic, and we slip quietly into oblivion. 

If you can, we'd love for you to join our VIP Program and become a member for very, very cheap. Today is the last day of our 60% off sale, making all the videos, articles, and podcasts our members receive very inexpensive. Just enter promo code "FIGHT" on sign-up, and you'll be part of their headache. 

Remember, the left is desperate to hold onto power, and they might lose it to the guy they've been telling you they hate and fear most. Don't think they won't pull out all the stops, and this includes coming after us both. Because the less information you gather and distribute, the better off the Democrat Party is. 

Let's fight together. You join us, and we'll keep being an oasis of truth amid the desert of lies they try to create online. 

[itmeblog]

Every new crumb of information I gather about JD Vance is somehow weirder and wilder than the last. I am not particularly looking at JD Vance. Trump could have run with a muppet for all I care but here's what I've learned so far.

He wrote a book about the Appalachians' idk much else about it other than the people from the region seem to have largely responded with a big ol' what the fuck?

This book is somehow connected to the couch fucker allegations (there is no couch fucking in this book).

He thinks people without children are sociopaths (that's... not... actually there's just too much to unpack here. Regardless the idea that people with certain disorders shouldn't have the same rights and weight in voting as people who do not has... implications...)

He thinks having children means you have more investment in the future of the country than if not and that kids should have votes somehow allocated to their parents so parental opinions weigh more?? (I'm not sure how this would work in foster care/adoption market, like we don't track kids well enough so I think technically you could horde votes fairly easily? Or would foster kids not have the same rights?? Would this require children to actually have rights? And they'd need to be taxed then wouldn't they? At what point does your child become viable? It'd have to be at conception, right? If not then their abortion laws fall to pieces. And can you lose votes with the death of children because wouldn't that make kids political targets?? I really don't think this one was considered because you can just claim you were pregnant?? Would there need to be a gov oversight committee here? Would that mean that everyone gets healthcare though, at least for pregnancy? It'd have to be a state dept.) Like obviously at the heart, this is targeting the birth gap (Blue families tend to be smaller and fewer between, it's likely a sign of him recognizing the rapid decline of the republican party which now wholly rests it's identity on the shoulders of a 70-something year old man) because if republicans played fair they would lose, hence the gerrymandering, the voter suppression, the removal of protections etc.

We know he's heavily backed by the 2025 project via his public Venmo records??

His mentor doesn't think women should vote and that America peaked in the 1920s... uhhhhhh, yeah... that's a lot to unpack there? In terms of Civil Rights, medical care, infrastructure, and so much more...

[originalleftist]

Why Voting Third Party Doesn't Work (US).

One thing that is very clear, and that we can be very thankful for, is that dedicated fascists are still very much a minority in the US. And the Republican Party that has embraced and defends them until they define the party is also a minority. Many of their positions (ie on guns, abortion, etc) are WILDLY unpopular. They struggle to hold Congress even with gerrymandering and voter suppression. Republicans have only won the popular vote in a Presidential election ONCE since the 80s.

This means that there are exactly two ways Republicans can win: by cheating on a massive scale, or by dividing the opposition. Its simple math: if 45% of the country support fascism, and 55% don't, but 11% of those who don't sit it out or form their own faction while the fascists vote as a block, then the fascists win (these aren't the actual numbers, which vary slightly every election, this is just an example to illustrate the point).

This is why voting third party, or not voting, helps Republicans. Because they are the minority, and so they benefit from the majority being divided. Occasionally there are exceptions, state or local-level races where an individual third party or independent candidate is viable, but nationally, this is how it works out.

This is why so many third party candidates and Biden primary challengers progressives are told to vote for instead of Democrats are getting support from fascist oligarchs. Cornell West? Got money from Harlan Crow. Dean Phillips? Got money from Harlan Crow. Oh sure, they say they're giving the money away or returning it- but only after it came to public attention. RFK Jr? Literally hand-picked by Steve Bannon. Jill Stein? Attended a dinner with Mike Flynn and Vladimir Putin, and is a darling of Russian regime media.

Do you think Harlan Crow, Vladimir Putin, and Steve fucking Bannon are backing these people because they want a more progressive alternative to Joe Biden? Because they want what's best for marginalized people in American and around the world? Because they want greater economic justice? Of course not. It's because they know if they split the non-fascist vote, they win.

This is all the more true because the fascist Right cheats, which means the non-fascist vote has to actually over-perform in every election cycle to win.

Also, its worth noting here that despite the common argument from third party supporters that they "refuse to vote for the lesser of two evils", a lot of their proposed alternatives are not actually better even if they were electable (see above). Suffice it to say that the mere fact of being a third party candidate does not automatically make someone a better alternative to one of the major party candidates. If Biden is the "lesser evil", then I would once again argue that he is the least of many, not the lesser of two.

[thegirlmirage]

It's a little frustrating because, Tumblr is often a place where nuance or cognitive dissonance can't exist but every American election cycle we have to teach everyone to vote again.

Yes it's true that voting is not the most effective form of change, if at all, and the voting process is heavily gerrymandered or manipulated to produce non democratic results and the person you end up having to vote for to stop American Hitlers winning is also part of the establishment and has many faults but also... it's the absolute bare minimum.

I live in the UK. I'm British. We've not had what I would consider a democratic result to our elections for most of my life. But it does make it HARDER for it to be manipulated if you do show up and vote.

I'm under no illusions that it fixes everything, or even anything. But if it wasn't a thorn in the side of fascists and conservatives then why do they work so hard to stop or discouraging you from voting?

You think that direct action is more effective? Good. Do that. But that doesn't mean don't vote. Voting is also something that, barring voter suppression, is something that a lot of people can do. My grandmother can't go out protesting or burning police stations down, but she could in theory walk one street to her local voting poll station and vote for the not fascist.

The other thing is, Americans, I don't know if you're aware just how much power you have over the rest of the world. And even the places you don't directly control, militarily, economically (if such a thing is possible) culturally, is that for good or bad reasons, other countries copy what America does. Just look at how much Bolsanaro mimicked Trump as an example. If you even slightly appear to be legitimizing fascism more than you already constantly do, it has huge ripples and that's not even including the direct damage people like Trump did to the world. The only reason he didn't nuke anyone is because people essentially just planted their feet in the ground. And he still got very close.

So yes, I want you do far more revolutionary and subversive acts against American imperialism (which honestly I'm not actually sure most the people saying there's no point voting because are even doing) but you can't replace voting with that. You've got to do both, or at the bare minimum, vote. They're counting on your apathy.

Do the bare minimum. Please. It really is a matter of life and death for so many people. And so many people to come.

[boreal-sea]

2016 too, like i was 17 that year and couldn't vote and i remember screaming on here about the importance of voting for clinton, for the supreme court as one of the main reasons, because the fact that trump got to appoint 3 justices is why that court is getting away with all this shit now. i remember getting into so many arguments with white leftists about how much harm trump would be for me, as a queer person of color, and not being able to get through to them.

i know it's starting to change among young people, but i'm pretty sure white people still vote majority for republicans. that's what's been so upsetting for me. the constant demeaning of people who try to explain the system by white people (who may not believe in voting dem) while their older family members likely vote republican. all this talk about how black people always show up, complaining about other poc not showing up, when..... if more white people all showed up and voted for democrats, we'd be in a very different position. and it's really frustrating to see a lot of these people instead on here whining about not voting and essentially relying on poc (and the suburban wine mom liberals they scoff at) to show up in large blocks and pull left. and if we aren't enough they dig their feet in even further and complain about this country doing shitty things as if they don't have an opportunity to stop republicans and continue to waste it

(i'm not saying dems are perfect or always do the right thing but our majority in the senate could've been expanded and we could've kept the house and done a lot more. the reason "biden can't do anything" for some of these issues is because we don't have the support of congress, which we might, if they get over themselves and vote)

Biden has done so much good, and people are just blind to it for some reason. It's really frustrating.

And yeah unfortunately, white people do tend to vote Republican, which, as a white person, I absolutely hate.

If it weren't for voter suppression, Democrats would win basically every election. Republicans have outright admitted this. They have admitted they have to gerrymander voting districts, they have to remove polling locations, they have to institute draconian ID laws etc.

So the most powerful thing a white person who actually cares about this can do during an election year is volunteer. Volunteer to get people to the polls. Volunteer to be a poll watcher or poll worker so it's not Republicans doing it, because they purposely do it to scare away minority voters.

But instead, they want to dream of a glorious revolution that will never happen, whine that they have to participate in society, and then they'll scream in horror if Trump is elected and act like there's nothing they could have done to prevent it, that they were completely powerless, and nothing they could have done would have mattered.

[qqueenofhades]

i'm genuinely curious... is it even possible to win in states like florida and texas at this point? even in georgia, after it flipped blue in 2020, the republicans rushed to make things even harder for marginalized voters (i'm pretty sure that's why this runoff is happening a month earlier? i could be wrong, but that's what i've read). with everything so divided between the democrats and literal fascism in the gop, i feel like every time we make any kind of progress they'll strip it back and make things even more difficult. i really don't mean this to sound cynical, and i'm so sorry if it does, i'm just curious. i wasn't old enough to vote in 2016 (i still had a few months before i turned 18) so i feel like my experience w elections in this country has generally been so much division that's only gotten worse

Yes, it is possible, and I'll tell you why:

Fascism is not inevitable.

This is not Pollyanna-ing, or "hopium," or whatever else the professional doomsayers like to jump in with (borne of the same school of thought that brands happy endings in fiction "unrealistic," because clearly the Real World is nothing but pain and suffering all the time) whenever someone expresses cautious optimism for the future, as if it's a coolness contest to see how to be the most pessimistic all the time. I'll tell you how I know: because if the Republican Party in its current incarnation thought that its ideas were genuinely popular or actually supported by the American public (and not just a grudging corollary of WAH WAH GAS PRICES!), they wouldn't spend absolutely ALL THEIR TIME doing their damndest to suppress voters. They wouldn't dwell endlessly on imaginary fraud, make endless voter suppression laws, run psyops convincing younger (and thus liberal-leaning) people that it's a waste of time to vote, etc etc. They are SHIT SCARED of any change that makes it easier for the general public to vote, because they know if they do, those people will vote, the Republicans will lose power, and due to the shifting demographics that see old Republican voters dying out and picking up only a minority of the next generation, they will not get it again. They are especially horrible right now because they are TERRIFIED, especially after seeing those Gen Z numbers for the Democrats. But because youth turnout overall was still bad, they likewise bought themselves a few years more to hang on. Still, the future is ours, not theirs, and they are fucking losing it.

Basically, the gamble the GOP made in this election was that they could howl about The Economy (which is doing shockingly well overall, despite high inflation etc), and voters would just ignore all their ludicrously dangerous nutcase beliefs on abortion, democracy, election denialism, etc, and vote for them anyway, even though they offered absolutely no plan to fix it apart from their usual method of blaming the Democrats for everything. Well, to say the least. That did not work. Election deniers running for positions where they could majorly influence state elections got across-the-board thumped, and abortion rights won everywhere, even in home of Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul (ugh) Kentucky. Voters do care about The Economy, but they also do care about basic things like bodily autonomy and representative democracy, and they aren't willing to throw those things away and go full MAGA even if WAH WAH GAS PRICES. That matters, and it will also matter in 2024, when we have to do this all over again.

Likewise, the Republican establishment/media is finally starting to visibly turn on Trump-- not because he's literally the worst person alive, but because they're realizing what an electoral liability he is, and all they care about is power. Once Trump is in the way of that, they will get mad at him, but Trump won't go away quietly and will do his best to burn them down on the way out. If the GOP is turning against Trump, there may also be less opposition if or, pray God, WHEN the DOJ finally fucking indicts him and drags his stupid orange ass to jail. That is likewise a good thing.

Anyway: yes, Democrats (and democracy in general) can win in Florida and Texas, if they put in the bottom-up effort rather than immediately trying to flip the flashy and high-profile offices. Both of those states have been institutionally designed to maintain the crazies' power, and it works very well. But if people keep putting in the work, it will not be forever, and the Republicans know the tipping point is not far in the future. There are more of us than there are of them. Fascism is not inevitable. It works by disheartening you and making you decide that there's no point in fighting, because it will just happen anyway. That is not true, and it needs to be challenged whenever it turns up as "received wisdom." Because. Yes.

Anyway, once more and as ever: Vote every election, especially if you are under age 45. Vote Blue. Make the Fascists Big Sad. Repeat.

Thank.

[ausetkmt]

The Black Voters Matter Tour Bus Highlights Major Midterm Issues

November’s midterm elections aren’t the only thing quickly rolling around the corner. As an effort to reach minority voters across the country, a huge Black Voters Matter tour bus is rolling through various cities to galvanize the community, with its most recent stop being Philadelphia this past Saturday.

According to local news radio station, KYW, the tour bus became the anchor of a community health fair and block party, and shut down portions of the city’s North Broad Street.

Pennsylvania state organizing manager of Black Voters Matter, Kallel Edwards is touring the country to get Black and brown voters to understand the power of the vote. Edwards believes that a great way to do so is to frame the conversation around health care issues.

“It’s hard to have conversations with folks about hope, voting, and why we should vote when they’re dealing with this much trauma and disparity inside neighborhoods,” said Edwards.

Edwards also mentioned that the Black community needs to pay attention to a few key topics including; abortion, gun control, health care and education, mostly because of their everyday impact within communities of color. But there is one issue that the organizing manager says stands out among the rest.

“Voter rights for me,” said Edwards. “They come up with laws every day to keep us out of voting polls and make it hard for us to vote, and that’s because we’re actually making a difference.”

Edwards believes that there is also a direct tie between access to community services, and voter turnout.

“Their elected officials actually know that their constituents can hold them accountable,” said Edwards.

Elyahmen Buford, Jr. who works on the national logistics team says that the goal is not to just get people to the polls, but to inspire them to get involved beyond just that.

“I watched kids come up to us and tell us that they were afraid to discuss the issues that were happening in their communities, because they felt like no one was listening and they felt like those who are listening are not going to help,” said Buford.

“We are here to literally reassure them that there are people out there, and here’s how you get connected to them.”

He also emphasized the importance of being informed when it comes to the process and the candidates.

“We are beyond just doing voting,” said Buford. “We focus on voter suppression, getting people out to the polls, mainly educating them on their local politics.”

Edwards know just what’s at stake:

“Everything,” he said. “With so many rights being snatched from so many different states, the whole country has eyes on Pennsylvania, [with it] being a swing state.”

Organizers are also encouraging voters to double check their registration information, their polling place location, and to create a plan to get there ahead of time. 

[dhaaruni]

Hello! This is probably a dumb question but I'm genuinely curious about your perspective on it. You see my mom believes that the reason liberals hold so much power in mainstream society (Hollywood/corporations/etc) but so little power in actuality is because most people don't actually agree with them/liberals are full of shit. (She's conservative obviously) But I see many more arguments that most liberals don't vote or it's about voter suppression/gerrymandering. So why do you think it is that liberal ideas flourish but the votes aren't there? Or is this entire framework wrong? I'm sorry if this doesn't make sense, I just don't know how else to word it lol.

So, I think that's a real issue: liberals hold way more cultural cache and clout in Hollywood and the media than Republicans do, but Republicans have enshrined electoral slash institutional power, especially on the state level. Even on the Congressional level, the majority of Democratic voters and elected officials aren't progressives, but AOC gets on all the magazine covers because sensationalism sells!

I'm not sure if I'm answering you correctly but as for the country at large, I think that people are socially liberal in very specific ways and with a lot of caveats. For instance, with abortion, voters want it legal in the first trimester and then curtailed after; with LGBT issues, they're cool with gay marriage and trans girls competing with cis girls in peewee soccer but don't want trans women competing with cis women at the NCAA level. See what I mean?

I think that something that really frustrates me about the voter suppression/gerrymandering arguments is that they make Democrats seem very petulant. Electoral politics is about persuasion, and sometimes, I genuinely feel like a lot of Democrats, especially the online ones and the "groups," would rather lose to a Republican than win by moderating and meeting the electorate where they're at. I said it here but with LGBT issues for instance, voters are totally up in arms at even the potential of Biden's Title IX provisions becoming law! I'm almost positive they'll be stymied in the courts, but it's truly insane that every single comment is super against what the Biden admin is proposing like I linked to the comment thread, you can see for yourself.

In my opinion, the cultural issues the Democratic Party is most out of touch with the electorate on are: crime (nobody wants to live in areas where random homeless guys grab you in broad daylight, which happens to me sometimes!), immigration ("Illegal immigration is cool if immigrants don't commit crimes" is extremely unpopular, especially on the border and in the Midwest!), and trans issues (minors taking hormones that we don't really know the potential repercussions of, especially without their parents' explicit consent, is super unpopular even aside from the sports issue!), and that's apart from economic issues which are more complicated because Americans hate the idea of the "undeserving" getting government aid lol.

Obviously, Republicans are going to attack Democrats on being "soft on crime" and for supporting "open borders" no matter what, but we really don't have to make it easy for them, does that make sense?

[reading-writing-revolution]

Heather Cox Richardson

October 3, 2021 (Sunday)

Yesterday, people rallied at more than 600 marches across the country to demonstrate their opposition to Texas’s new restrictions on abortion rights.

Today, the Washington Post broke the story that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) obtained more than 11.9 million financial records including emails, spreadsheets, contracts, and so on, that reveal a vast international network of financial schemes to hide money from taxation, investigators, creditors, and citizens. The trove is named the Pandora Papers, after the Greek myth of Pandora, who opened a container and released a host of evils upon the world.

The two stories are not unrelated.

Today’s Republican Party would like to end government oversight of wealthy individuals, but such oversight is actually popular. So, to win elections, officials have turned to ginning up their voting base.

That base is fired up by causes they have been taught to see as imperative to make America a free, virtuous country, as it was in their imagined past and as they want it to be again. Since 1972, when President Richard Nixon threw the issue of abortion on the table to attract Catholic Democrats to his standard after the 1970 Kent State shooting cut into his support, Republican politicians have called for an end to the constitutional right to reproductive rights.

Decades of gerrymandering and voter suppression mean that today’s Republicans are less worried about winning moderates to their standard than they are about firing up their base. So today’s Republicans are becoming more and more extreme. The recent Texas abortion bill, the so-called “heartbeat bill,” bans abortion six weeks into a pregnancy—before many women even know they’re pregnant—and it makes no exception for rape or incest.

To make it hard to challenge the new law, the Texas legislature left its enforcement up to individual citizens, leaving no state entity for opponents to sue. The law went into effect on September 1, after the Supreme Court declined to stop it.

But while extremists who back the current Republican Party applaud what is essentially the outlawing of abortion, most Americans don’t like it. According to a new Monmouth poll, only 11% of Americans think abortion should always be illegal. Sixty-two percent want the Roe v. Wade decision to stand; only 29% want it overturned. The Texas law is especially unpopular. Seventy percent of Americans oppose turning the enforcement of the act over to vigilantes, and 81%, including 67% of Republicans, oppose the bill’s provision awarding $10,000 to anyone who wins a suit against someone helping a woman obtain an abortion.

Crucially, Democrats (77%) and Independents (61%) say they have heard a lot about the new Texas law, while only 47% of Republicans say they have.

Republicans have fired up their base, but at the cost of alienating women and their allies who did not truly think that abortion rights were in danger. Those people were in the streets yesterday, illustrating their determination to reclaim a government that listens to what the majority wants.

And that’s where the second story comes in.

A government that answered to a majority rather than an extremist minority would crack down on the growing global elite uncovered by the journalists who pored over the Pandora Papers, an elite that has managed to hide its wealth in offshore accounts (meaning any accounts away from their country of citizenship) thanks to deregulation and lack of oversight.

The internet and a global economy have permitted the rise of a global elite that, as the Pandora Papers reveal, often overlaps with criminality. In January 2011, when he was the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III gave a landmark speech in which he explained how globalization and technology had created “iron triangles” of “organized criminals, corrupt government officials, and business leaders” who were “motivated by money, not ideology.”

The United States government has the power and the ability to take on this anti-democratic global elite. Since he took office, Biden and his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, have made it clear that they consider our foreign policy and our democracy to go hand in hand.

In a speech to the State Department on February 4, Biden said that he would put “America’s most cherished democratic values” back at the center of American diplomacy, “defending freedom, championing opportunity, upholding universal rights, respecting the rule of law, and treating every person with dignity.”

Domestic policy, Biden said, was central to foreign policy. “We will compete from a position of strength by building back better at home,” he said. “When we…rally the nations of the world to defend democracy globally, to push back…authoritarianism’s advance, we’ll be a much more credible partner because of these efforts to shore up our own foundations.”

Those marching yesterday for women’s lives and their constitutional right to abortion were not commenting on the secret web of global finance that lets autocrats hide the enormous wealth they have taken from their people. But they were indeed commenting on governance, in particular whether a majority of the people, or a minority kept in power by passionate extremists, should run our country.

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

13 Keys to the White House: 2024 prediction (as of August 15, 2021)

Midterm gains: false, the Republicans are going to sweep the House

No primary challenge: probably true, no Democrat with a future would dare to challenge Biden or Harris

Incumbent seeking re-election: probably true, Biden has indicated he's going to run again even though he'll be 82 at the time

No third party: too soon to tell, we won't know how the Libertarians/Greens fare until 2023 at the earliest

Strong short-term economy: too soon to tell, who knows if we'll be in recession in 2024?

Strong long/term economy: probably false, inflation is rising and Republicans are threatening to let us default on our national debt, so things are looking bad going forward

Major policy change: false, Biden hasn't done shit, and if he doesn't do shit NOW he won't be able to do shit after the Republican dominated midterms

No social unrest: too soon to tell, it will depend on how bad things get between now and 2024

No scandal: too soon to tell, all eyes are on Biden, but there's no telling what he'll do

No foreign/military failure: FALSE, Afghanistan is going down in flames, tens or hundreds of thousands of civilians are going to die when the Taliban takes over, it'll be the worst humanitarian crisis in the planet

Foreign/military success: probably false, withdrawing from Afghanistan was supposed to be a huge success, but the last 20 years have been pointless.

Charismatic incumbent: false, Biden wasn't charismatic in 2020, he's not gonna magically gain 20 or 30 percent more approval going into 2024

Uncharismatic challenger: true, none of the Republican challengers resonate with anyone outside their base, Trump or DeSantis or Cruz or Cotton or anyone else

Democrats need 8 true to hold power

Republicans need 6 false to retake power

1 is definitely true

2 are probably true

4 are too soon to tell

2 are probably false

4 are definitely false

Republicans are almost certainly going to win in 2024 unless Biden pulls a rabbit out of his ass and magically reverses course in the next 15 months; things are in flux now, but come November 2022 they will be set in stone.

Key 1 is a lost cause because of partisan gerrymandering; the Republicans will take the House by force, though they'll likely lose the nationwide popular vote

Key 2 is probably safe because it would require a challenger to get 33% of the vote, and I just don't see that happening against a sitting president

Key 3 is true as of right now, but could easily flip false for any number of reasons. Biden ran on the unspoken promise that he was a transitional president and would step down in 2024, but Kamala Harris isn't more popular than he is (in fact, she's less popular), so the Democrats have painted themselves into a corner; either it's an old old old man or Hillary Clinton 2.0

Key 4 is beyond Biden's control; over the last century, third party candidates have gained traction about every 10 years, once every 2 or 3 election cycles. They did well in 1968, 1980, 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2016, so 2024 is up in the air.

Key 5 could go either way, I don't know enough about economics to make any informed predictions

Key 6 is more nuanced; the creator of the 13 Keys defines it as "real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms." The economy grew under Obama's second term, and tanked under Trump's first, so the average of the last two terms is either zero net growth or very slight shrinkage. If Biden can grow the economy at all, even a little, this key could flip in his favor. If he continues to do nothing, he's as good as gone.

Key 7 is a nonstarter; W turned the US into a police state, Obama slightly improved healthcare, Trump changed taxes from the ground up (and dismantled liberal democracy through a rigged judiciary and disintegration of federal authority over the states), but Biden and the Democrats have pretty much wasted the last 8 months, accomplishing zero of their campaign promises. They passed a neutered stimulus package, and might pass a neutered infrastructure deal, both of which gave major concessions to the Republicans even though they supported neither. Biden is Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush rolled into one.

Key 8 could very well lead us into another 2020 situation; not only have zero communities defunded the police, many of them have actually INCREASED funding. Republicans continue to dismantle our democracy by passing voter suppression laws, and are going to gerrymander their House into an unbreakable conservative majority despite only making up about 40-45% of the population. I expect to see major protests against Republican legislatures across the country, which will be quelled by both state and federal forces because Democrats never support active protests, only passive peaceful ones (ones that fail, but look polite on TV)

Key 9 could be real or invented; no matter what Biden does, whether he's squeaky clean or rotten to the core, the Republicans are going to impeach him in 2023. Hell, they'll almost certainly run in 2022 on the platform of "we will impeach Biden if we win." He'll be acquitted of course, but Republicans will control the narrative and gain popular support going into 2024. They might wait to impeach him until the election starts, or impeach him and hold a long protracted trial throughout the primaries and well past the national conventions. If they win the House, they'll almost certainly win the Senate too, which means they have all the power, even if they can't remove him.

Key 10 is a lost cause; there's no coming back from this, Afghanistan is an absolute failure, full stop.

Key 11 is very closely tied to key 10, so I don't see it flipping true because Biden doesn't really have any other major foreign policy objectives within his grasp.

Key 12 is a doubly lost cause because both Biden and his chosen successor are terrible candidates. Biden was picked by the establishment as a milquetoast "civility" candidate in opposition to Trump's extremism, and Harris is so unpopular she dropped out of the presidential race due to lack of enthusiasm before a single vote was cast. Biden was the lesser of two evils, and Harris is a lying centrist cop pretending to be a progressive. As I said in Key 3, the Democrats painted themselves into a corner; Biden/Harris is Carter/Mondale all over again.

Key 13 is safe now and forever because no candidate will ever have national appeal again. The creator of the 13 Keys gave examples like Lincoln, the Roosevelts, and Kennedy, as well as controversial picks like Reagan and Obama in 2008 (though not in 2012). Love them or hate them, these candidates resonated with the entire country in their day, but America has become too polarized for a member of one party to gain support from the other.

This is a disaster waiting to happen. It's unfolding before our eyes in slow motion, and we're unable to stop it. I feel trapped all the time, trapped in the world, trapped in the system, no agency,m, no control, no hope. I don't know what to do, because the powers that be are FUCKING EVERYTHING UP ROYALLY! This party is a laughingstock, and the alternatives are either pure evil or insignificant; I'd be a Green if they stood a snowball's chance in hell, but they don't, not even in a single district, neither federal nor state.

The system has to collapse in my lifetime, it's not tenable as is.