#vote blue all the way down the ticket

[sordidamok]

White supremacist voted out of office in Oklahoma. If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere.

[incognito-princess]

You can be excited to vote for a candidate that you don't agree with on 100% of the issues (newsflash the only candidate you will agree with 100% is yourself, so either get up and run for office or support those who do!)

You can be excited to vote for a candidate without hero worshipping them.

You can be excited to participate in the political process and work to build a chain of government officials from dog-catcher to president who will be working on the PLATFORM of issues that you want to see. Don't focus on the personalities! That's how we got here in the first place!

I see posts going "Okay, I'll vote for Kamala, I GUESS IF I HAVE TO" and "omg if that's the best we can do I suppose I'll support it" and I'm like...

What do you people fucking WANT?

Let's run down how she's rated politically by some organizations that we vibe with, kay?

ACLU = 93% on civil liberties

AFL-CIO = 100% on trade unions

Human Rights Campaign = 100% on queer rights

League of Conservation Voters = 91% on environmentalism

NARAL = 100% on reproductive rights

NRA Fund = 7% on gun rights (we LIKE a low score on this one)

NEA = 100% on education

Planned Parenthoos = 100% on reproductive rights

In addition, GovTrack (which is a nonpartisan tracker) places her in the MOST politically left-leaning categories of Senators. So we've got a very liberal, woman of color who's spent her career trying to mitigate draconian tough-on-crime laws to benefit the accused and keep black people out of prison and decrease recidivism and that's somehow...just barely tolerable.

So I ask again...what is that you're dissatisfied with? Is it Palestine? as recently as March she was calling for a ceasefire and demanding aid to Gaza. Keep in mind she's pretty constrained as to what's possible to do in this situation.

Is it just that she was a prosecutor? That is an important job that needs to be done and we WANT people doing it who aren't rah-rah tough-on-crime Gestapo types, which she is not. We need prosecutors who are addressing the root causes of crime and looking for ways to help people escape the cycle, which she has done to the point that she was often called SOFT on crime.

So what is your objection here? Is it that her politics aren't 100% aligned with a bunch of Tumblr socialists? I got news for you...we Tumblr socialists DO NOT REPRESENT THE ELECTORATE. If such a candidate existed, they would not win.

Democrats struggle sometimes because our tent is large. Republicans just want you if you're a straight white man and preferably rich. There's room for a lot more types in the lefty side, but sadly that means a lot of room also for dissention among the ranks. This is how they get us. Let's not let them, huh? Just a suggestion.

[sordidamok]

People protested and something changed.

[sordidamok]

Better go to Cancun, Rafael. Democrats have sights set on everywhere.

[sordidamok]

Trump has no idea what he's doing. He has no morals, no beliefs and no conscience. He thinks a total abortion ban is what his base wants, but his handlers keep telling him that's going to kill his chances in November. He's desperate to stay out of prison.

Vote blue to get rid of this fool.

[sordidamok]

Reposting gold potato with the usual "vote blue" tags because I don't know but it's a gold potato.

[sordidamok]

This headline is misleading. The article acknowledges the need for affordable housing and assistance for people experiencing mental illness.

Democrats favor funding for community-based care which is voluntary, and which meets people where they are. Republicans are for a return to the old, draconian approach to mental illness - locking people up and throwing away the key.

Compasionate treatment costs less and is more effective.

[ranthaven]

I hope everyone has heard about this already, but if not, here is the link to the NYT Editorial Board piece on why we cannot vote for Drumpf. It’s not a whole lot, and it’s arguably very late, but it’s well written and worth reading.

I know that the NYT CEO has donated to Drumpf, so make what you will of this. If anyone has the ability to capture this in the event it gets removed, please don’t hesitate to save it.

And finally, for anyone still perseverating about Joe Biden, here is the big kahuna telling you how to decide. JoeB is old as isn’t great at extemporaneous speaking. Drumpf is a congenital liar, a rapist, a con man, a traitor, a thief, and a bully. THIS CHOICE ISN’T HARD!!!!

Vote for Joe, vote blue all the way down to dog catcher, vote for honesty and integrity and democracy. Please vote not to kill everyone.

[sordidamok]

Newsweek, not the Onion. This is reality.

[ranthaven]

That last line should hit some people really hard. We need to understand that progress mostly comes in small, sometimes really hard-to-see steps. But every step forward counts, no matter how small it may be. Take every advance you can get and fortify it. It will be hard. It will be frustrating. It will drive you right around the bend a lot. But. We. Can’t. Go. Back.

The Democratic Party is our best chance, and mostly our only one, in this country. Work with them, use them, let them know when they’re going off-course, hold their feet to the fire. I’ll say it again for those of you in the back.

We. Can’t. Go. Back.

Vote your vote and choose wisely. The other side doesn’t care what you want.

This is the thing with the "I won't vote for Harris" supposed leftists.

None of them will tell you how allowing Trump to be elected helps.

Because they don't have an answer.

Because they don't really care about anything other than how they personally feel.

Actual leftism involves making pragmatic moves. The public will for revolution doesn't exist, and we live in a two party system. If you want to fight that system, great. There are things like ranked choice voting and the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact we need to be fighting for. But those are fights that have to happen year round, at the state level, and not just in an election year.

And in the meanwhile, you vote defensively and strategically, in an attempt to save as many people as possible.

Saying you aren't voting for Harris isn't taking a stand against genocide. It's putting your head in the sand and admitting you care more about your own comfort than making a difference in the world.

Why aren't you getting involved in your local politics? Why aren't you running leftist candidates at a local level, so you can move them up in the system and eventually move the political discussion left. You want to know why politics have moved right? It's because the right wing has been doing that for decades.

Your refusal to participate won't save a single life.

It only means you're abandoning everyone else.

[sordidamok]

It'd be easy to make a joke about Southern stereotypes. I started to and then didn't because there are a lot of people in Alabama who can't just pick up and leave.

[sordidamok]

The UDC statement here says that they are "grieved that certain hate groups have taken the Confederate flag and other symbols as their own" - as if the Confederate flag had ever not been a symbol of white supremacy.

Youngkin can't run for governor in 2025. He's possibly eyeing another office and wants to stay on the good side of Virginia racists.

[sordidamok]

Guess which one is lying.

[ranthaven]

With all those AK-47s, AR-15s, and all the other semiautomatic rifles out there, why do they keep missing? High-powered scopes, laser sights, bump stocks, high capacity magazines. You’d think they were all incompetent. But I’m 100% positive they’ll be able to take on the actual military come the revolution. Three percent. 🙄

Gun owners should be required to take training classes, have appropriate safety equipment for their firearms, and carry insurance on every gun they own. Price in the Kyle Rittenhouse factor and watch multiple gun ownership decline drastically.

[creature-wizard]

It's finally dawning on me that a lot of hard leftists actually do think the US presidency is already a dictatorship.

Like they think that the reason the Biden administration didn't cancel college debt on the grand scale they pictured, is that he just didn't want to. They have no comprehension just how much Republicans were working against him to stop literally anything he could do to make things in this country less dogshit. (BTW, this is why we need to vote blue all the way down the ticket.)

And then they think they can elect some third party rando with no actual allies in the senate or congress or anywhere, and people will just have to do what they say, and won't try to sabotage them even harder because they're even further left. (The aforementioned efforts to sabotage Biden? It would be even worse for an actual leftist president.)

Like no, sorry, the US presidency is not actually a dictatorship.