#whatever party you are in if you can vote then vote

[qqueenofhades]

Okay, since I was tagged in this, I'll weigh in.

First, the original source is just a screenshot of a tweet. Because we need to get better about our information literacy practices, I went and got the original text of the resolution, which you can find here or on Rep. Ogles's website (ogles.house.gov, but I don't recommend it, as it's Trump ass-kissing central). This is because Ogles is a notorious and egregious Trump toady for whom this is basically par for the course. He is an obnoxious Trump sycophant. Publicity stunts to prove his MAGA loyalty is what he does.

Next: yes, this proposes amending the constitution to let Trump serve three terms (which would invariably become more). Yes, this is what happened with Putin in Russia. However, once again, we need to be more mindful about the tone of the information we are sharing and what we are suggesting is possible as a result. I have written before about how the Russian and American political systems are not very similar, and saying "well, Russia has elections and a president and a constitution that was amended to let that president serve for life so that could/would happen in America" is misleading. I don't have the space to go into the whole comparative analysis here, but I'll just point out that America (for now) still in fact does have genuinely competitive elections and a real opposition party, and this is not remotely something that could be pulled off in the present timeframe. Putin pulled this stunt after a decade-plus of ruthlessly consolidating his power on the back of Yeltsin's brief and disastrous privatization in the 90s and 500 years of absolute dictatorship (whether by the Russian Empire or the USSR) before that. By the time he did so, he had also successfully organized the Duma and the State Council (the houses of the Russian parliament) to be full of loyal stooges who would obediently rubber-stamp whatever he said, which continues today. There has never been a real or functional democracy in Russia, full stop.

Of course, you may say, Trump and co. are trying to destroy democracy in America, so we may end up like that! Which! We might, it's very possible, especially if we fall asleep at the wheel! Again, however, the fact that Ogles filed this as a publicity stunt two weeks ago (it's from January 23) does not mean we are in imminent danger of it happening. It also recognizes the fact that they would need a constitutional amendment to make it happen, and as I have said before, the process for full ratification of a new constitutional amendment is deliberately very high. Two-thirds of both the House and Senate and three-fourths (38) of the 50 states need to ratify it (after those same number of states call a constitutional convention) for it to take effect. They do not pass by one simple majority vote in the House and/or Senate, and even in the current congress, there's no guarantee it would be a majority. The GOP has a majority of something like 2 in the House (pending special elections to fill vacancies) and 4 in the Senate. This is razor-thin. Also, I looked at the original text of Ogles's resolution. There's nothing even saying that it was even referred to the relevant committee (the line that should be filled in there is a blank). Because again, landmark legislation does not happen by one idiot MAGA congressman eagerly tonguing Trump's senile orange ass as an inauguration gift of feudal fealty. (Like, if the Orange Fuhrer actually makes it to the end of his second term, he'll be 82, and he's already demonstrably deranged. Are they going to Weekend at Bernie's him for this putative third term, or...?)

Also: The last successful constitutional amendment was the 27th Amendment, ratified in 1992, and it referred to the salary of House members. Guess when it was first proposed? 1789. Yeah, it took literally 200 years to become the law of the land. Hmm.

Lastly, if you're still worried and want to make absolutely sure this doesn't happen, then: vote for Democrats in the 2026 midterms. Even if they literally do nothing and just sit there, they will ensure that this is never brought up for a vote, let alone any of Trump's other legislative bad ideas (national trans ban, national abortion ban, putting migrants in jail for life, what have you). Again: I am not saying that you should not be worried about this, that you should just brush it off, that you should ignore this repeated-yet-again clear statement of fascist intent, or anything else. But if you're panicking about this, then you're distracted from looking at anything else they're doing, and which might have a much more clear and present risk (such as Musk's smash-and-grab of classified information and Treasury data).

Trust me, if this or anything like it gets to the actual point where I think it's a real and present danger, then I will be sounding the all-hands-on-deck alarm like no tomorrow. But in the meantime, even if we're all scared, we gotta do better than posting a screenshot of an unsourced tweet with a "spread this and panic now" message. If you are scared, then take the time (such as I laid out above) to look into how the constitutional amendment process works, what would be necessary to ever ratify it (and which doesn't even take into account the mass opposition that would be mustered), what actually happened in Russia, or anything else. Information is power, so let's do it right.

Courage, etc.

Source

Transcript:

“BREAKING: A constitutional amendment has been filed allowing President Trump to seek a 3rd term in office.

"No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than three times, nor be elected to any additional term after being elected to two consecutive terms, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice."

It was filed by Congressman Andy Ogles (R-TN).

Don’t let this slip by unnoticed. This is not just “one extra term”, it’s a warning shot. It’s a red flag. It’s an omen.

They are slowly turning up the heat in the pan. Do not be the frog who sits denying it’s getting hotter.

One extra term will become two, two will become three, and three will eventually give way to lifelong reign of each president.

Fight. Fight for God’s sake.

Contact your local representative of congress. Convince them we do not want this.

We are going to end up in a dictatorship.

@ikiyou

Please help spread this. I don’t usually get political and I don’t usually ask for assistance but this is important and you have more reach.

[collapsedsquid]

Maybe the Socialism Party wants to select candidates at its annual convention after a rich and edifying political debate. Too bad, that’s illegal. The state doesn’t care for these smoke-filled room candidate selection processes, it got rid of them back in the Progressive Era. Candidates will be selected inside a state-sponsored ballot box by individual voters. Maybe the Socialism Party wants to select candidates on a statewide basis–deciding strategically which districts to run candidates in, strategically targeting resources to those races, and ensuring ideological unity across the slate. Too bad, that’s illegal. The state thinks local voters should have a voice in who runs locally. Candidates will be selected by party members in whatever district they want to run in. If the six party members in some random rural county want to run one of themselves for mayor, the rest of the party will just have to live with it. Maybe the Socialism Party wants to make sure that only dues-paying party members can vote in elections; they don’t want random people who joined because they heard about the Socialism Party on Twitter determining endorsements, and they especially don’t want some grifter stealing the party’s ballot line by persuading all his friends to join and vote in the primary. Too bad, that’s illegal. The Socialism Party is welcome to collect dues and require political education courses to its heart’s content, but the state says it can’t set up arbitrary barriers so that only insiders get to vote in primaries. The state says that the only thing you need to do to vote in the Socialism Party primary is check the appropriate box on a voter registration form. And so on and so forth, for trivial matters and major ones. Do members of the Socialism Party want to pick candidates through RCV? Too bad, that’s illegal  (except for the few places where it is mandatory). Do members of the Socialism Party want to strip SP elected officials of party membership if they support a war or genocide? Too bad, the state says those elected officials will still be eligible to run and vote in SP primaries. At this point we in the Socialism Party are really in a bad way. We created a party specifically so that we could escape corruption by the liberals and impose party discipline and so forth, but instead we’ve created a system where any state rep candidate who can get a couple dozen people to check a box on a form in any district in the state can run as an official candidate of the Socialism Party and we can’t do a thing about it.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Wajahat Ali at The Left Hook:

Elon Musk showed the world that buying the U.S. presidency only costs about $300 million. This is like shopping at The Dollar Store for the world’s richest man. I grudgingly tip my hat to Musk, an immigrant, who is an aficionado of Nazi salutes much like his Hitler-supporting grandparents who moved to South Africa because they were inspired by the Apartheid regime. Musk’s $290 million was a small risk with a massive return on investment. Money alone didn’t move the needle. He also bought Twitter at a loss so he could take over a major social media site and use it to promote misinformation, conspiracy theories, and platform white supremacists and hate-mongers like Tommy Robinson and Nick Fuentes.

He went all-in with Donald Trump after saying he wouldn’t donate to any candidate because he realized Trump is an unethical criminal who would treat the Oval Office like an ATM. It’s all quid pro quo. Donald has returned the favor by allowing Musk to roam free around Mar-a-Lago, join phone calls with world leaders, dine with tech billionaires who bent the knee, and he even publicly thanked him for helping with those “vote counting computers” in Pennsylvania. So far, whatever Musk wants, he gets. Musk decided to torpedo the bipartisan government spending deal via Twitter and Republicans almost shut down the government to appease him. Musk went all-in with H1B visas and referred to MAGA who criticized him as “contemptible fools” and “retards,” and Trump did a 180 on the issue and sided with him.

So, why be content with just the appetizers? Why not raid the fridge and grab everything, including the cake, the cookies, and all the crumbs? Musk has a voracious appetite and the United States of America as his “all you can eat” buffet. As Donald Trump yells at the clouds and threatens to make Canada the 51st state for balking at “the dumbest trade war in history,” Musk is busy gaining access to all of our financial data. On Friday, David Lebryk, a top civil servant at the Treasury Department, was pushed out of his job after he refused to give DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency headed by Musk, access to the system. Please note Musk is a private citizen and not a federal employee. We still don’t know the scope of DOGE’s role, its limits, its budget, its staff, or whether it will function as a department of the government or exist as an independent organization. What we do know is DOGE is behaving like a Trojan Horse and has allowed Elon Musk to gain access to the Treasury’s federal payment system, which includes every US taxpayer’s personal information. Through DOGE, Musk has promised to eliminate wasteful spending, which according to him includes ending DEI programs, “defanging” regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission and FTC which have investigated his businesses, privatizing the US postal service, “deleting” the IRS, and ending remote work. However, he wants to improve defense spending, so he will continue receiving government subsidies for his SpaceX which will produce rockets that explode in the sky and give Americans the most expensive fireworks.

Another target on his chopping block is eliminating humanitarian spending. He’s accomplishing that goal by attacking USAID, which provides life-saving support to marginalized communities around the world. But to Musk, who loves the pro-Nazi AfD party, USAID is an “evil” and “criminal organization” that deserves to die. As of Sunday, USAID’s X account and website are no longer available. People around the world, such as children in Sudan, Gaza, and Ukraine, will die as a result of this cruel, unnecessary action, but, hey, none of that matters to the “pro-life” MAGA movement. On Saturday night, two top security officials from the agency were put on leave because they refused officials from DOGE access to private systems. Thanks to Musk’s interference, the head of the FAA was also forced to resign, which led to the United States being without an FAA chief during a preventable and tragic airline collision in DC that claimed nearly 70 lives. Musk didn’t appreciate Starlink being fined in 2022 for violations of safety protocols.

In two weeks’ time, the Co-”Presidency” of Elon Musk and Donald Trump has destroyed everything that made America great, as the broligarchy has taken over and plundered everything in sight.

See Also:

Let's Address This (Qasim Rashid): MAGAs 7 Deadly Sins—So Far—And How to Fight Back

America, America (Steven Beschloss): Bullies, Criminals and the Fight for America

[nianeyna]

not going to reblog the post that prompted this because long and blah blah who cares but not voting in elections is the ultimate betrayal of the tireless activists throughout long ages of history who gave their fucking LIVES to allow you to freely vote in democratic elections and if you HAVE the hard-won right to vote and you don't exercise it through your own free choice and not because you have been blocked from doing it for some reason you should feel ashamed. you should feel bad. and if you HAVE been blocked from doing it you should RAISE HELL.

vote. I don't even care what you vote for tbh. I mean I guess I do on a personal level but that's NOT the point of this post. CAST YOUR FUCKING VOTE ON EVERY BALLOT YOU ARE ELIGIBLE TO VOTE IN. DO IT. EVEN IF I HATE YOU PERSONALLY FUCKING VOTE!!

[belliesandburps]

Interactive - Favorite Burp Scenario

I need something to take my mind off the fact that we are home to the dumbest, most bigoted fucking assholes on this planet, and I feel like a lot of you probably feel the same way right now. So, how about another interactive game? Send me character requests via my askbox here and I will respond with my favorite burp scenario to imagine for them. (Note, ideally, keep it to characters I know or that you think I may know)

[dykedvonte]

I dislike takes that Danse would be just as conservative in modernized aus when it's clearly shown his staunch views of things come from his time in the Brotherhood and his deep-rooted desire to belong to something with a greater purpose.

Not to mention lines that show much more open-mindedness that get overlooked for his harsher sentiments when you first meet him. Like the oppurtunity to be a part of something is why Danse fell so far into Brotherhood dogma and it doesn't negate the offense things he does but I feel like it's just lazy to be like "hmmm he'd def be racist" just so it aligns to his BoS beliefs.

[flying-cat]

What is writing random bullshit on your ballot doing to save Palestinians. You are literally doing nothing except handing another vote to Trump who cannot be reasoned with. He is a selfish, senile fuck. You're fucking over all the women and minorities in your own country to do LITERALLY NOTHING for Palestine because what you're doing for them isn't worth the dry dogshit stuck to someone's shoe. You want to help Palestine? Keep donating, buying eSIMs and spreading awareness. Refusing to vote, voting third party knowing it won't work as a worthless form of protest, or incorrectly voting won't do anything except hurt the vulnerable people in your own country.

[gender-euphowrya]

so anyway france news nobody cares about

SO remember in summer when our president suddenly decided ''ehhh fuck our current government line-up let's start over let's have a vote" for no reason and leftist parties united to have better odds of beating the right and they won so the president was supposed to pick a prime minister from the left

and then he didn't and he picked Some Rightie that nobody had heard about in decades Anyway yeah that new government might get voted out again With potentially our president having to resign too

[13lizardsinatrenchcoat]

.

[bugsbenefit]

first estimated results from the election today are coming in and i'm gonna be so fr right now it's so fucking overrrrr. this is so grim jesus fucking christ

[beeseverywhen]

"All political parties face a trade-off under a first-past-the-post electoral system. Governing depends on attracting a broad coalition of voters, inevitably involving compromises that leave a party’s base disgruntled.

So it is perhaps unsurprising that as we move closer to a general election, the discontent from the anti-Labour left who claim there is little to distinguish Keir Starmer from Rishi Sunak in the battle for the premiership is only getting noisier."

"The argument is threefold: there’s no meaningful difference between the Conservatives and Labour; Starmer supposedly can’t be trusted because he has dropped pledges he made in the 2020 leadership election to shift his party towards the centre; finally, the “Tories are toast” and Labour can’t lose, so disgruntled left voters can safely vote for other parties, such as the Greens.

With Labour so far ahead in the polls, the urge to debunk these sentiments may seem like an expression of paranoia. But all three aspects of this narrative are comprehensively wrong, including the reassurance that it is safe for anyone who would prefer a Labour government to vote for another party in Labour-Tory contests."

"But what this underplays is the number of Labour-Tory marginals where a relatively small vote for other left candidates could cost Labour a win. James Kanagasooriam, of the polling company Focaldata, has written about the “sandcastle” nature of Labour’s likely majority; his forecast is that there will be many more marginal seats in the 2024 parliament compared with 2019. If more than predicted numbers of those who voted Green in the locals decide they can afford to do so in the general election because Labour is so far ahead in national polls, that will boost the Conservatives.

Next up is the idea that Starmer’s dropping of some of his leadership pledges makes him dangerously untrustworthy. But this is the product of a system in which the tiny unrepresentative slice of the electorate that is a party membership pick their leader before voters choose their prime minister. Anyone hoping to be PM would have to shift position between a leadership selection and a general election: a Labour leader’s most important job is to connect with potential voters, not to coddle members with the comfort blanket of a policy platform such as the “free broadband for all” 2019 pledge that was roundly rejected.

Liz Truss provides a cautionary tale of what happens when a party leader seeks to impose a membership-endorsed platform on the country without a general election. For Starmer to have stuck to his 2020 leadership election pledges, instead of spending the past four years understanding voters, would have been fundamentally anti-democratic.

The most egregious aspect of the anti-Labour left argument is there isn’t much to choose between Starmer and Sunak. Yes, Labour’s “Ming vase” election strategy has seen it take a much more cautious fiscal approach than many of us would like: it has effectively adopted the Tory macroeconomic worldview and with it a set of spending constraints that no one sensible thinks either party could stick to in the wake of the election.

That is frustrating for anyone hoping this election campaign may illuminate some of the tough trade-offs facing Britain; but it would have been incredibly risky for one side to go it alone on this. The alternative is Labour walking into the trap and handing the Conservatives a “Labour tax bombshell” election campaign.

From a commitment to scrap the Rwanda plan to making clear that in an ideal world Labour would discard the two-child benefit cap, there are plenty of reasons that it is preposterous to think that a Starmer government would make the same trade-offs as successive Conservative governments that have financed billions of pounds worth of tax cuts for more affluent families by cutting tax credits and benefits for low-income parents. The six pledges Starmer launched two weeks ago may be incremental, but Labour needs voters to believe they are deliverable, and they are indicative of a very different set of priorities than those that animate Sunak."

"Starmer is not without weaknesses, as shown by the days he took to clarify an interview last October in which he gave the impression he thought Israel had the right to withhold power and food from Gaza. But there is no doubt whatsoever he would make a vastly more compassionate and competent prime minister than Sunak. To encourage people to put that outcome at risk by casting a protest vote against a Labour government that does not yet exist is perhaps the ultimate form of luxury belief campaigning."

[cyanide-sippy-cup]

All I've seen on the left this election has been a loop of

"I'm not voting Harris cause she's pro-genocide"

"But then you're letting Trump into power! It'll be on you when trans kids die!"

and

"I'm voting Harris cause I don't want Hitler Jr in charge again"

"So Palestine doesn't matter to you? Someone finally showed their true colors!"

I feel like we're saying the same things here. Some coordination would be nice, people.

[cringywhitedragon]

Remember for us in the US, tomorrow is election day

Please if you can then try to vote if you can if you haven’t done so early.

It doesn’t matter if you’re voting red, blue, third party, etc. It’s still an important thing to do. So please if you can, go vote ☺️

[princesssarcastia]

i have a problem with the theory that by not voting for democrats and letting democrats lose badly enough this november, we can force them to take a good hard look at themselves and swing to the left. well, actually, there are a couple problems, but here's tonight's object lesson:

the problem is the RNC Autopsy.

Republicans got pretty well spanked in the 2012 presidential election, and VERY well spanked in the 2008 presidential election. people decided not to vote for republicans, and let them lose so badly that the republican party took a good hard look at themselves.

The result was a report released in 2013, wiki page linked above. And they did exactly what some people on the left hope democrats will do in the coming years, should they lose in november 2024! They said hey, apparently being racist and hating poor people and only talking to whites isn't getting us anywhere! Why don't we try a different, kinder, more inclusive approach if we want to win elections?

Nice, right? Good proof of concept?

Unfortunately, history didn't stop in 2013.

Unfortunately, we all know how this story ends. It ends with a fascist reality TV star becoming president and encouraging the republican party that actually, its problem is that it wasn't racist and poor-hating enough. Actually, Trump told the republican party, your problem is that you've gone too long without saying the quiet part out loud. No more euphemisms, no more obfuscation, and definitely no movement to the left. Be full-throated in your hatred of immigrants.

And, like it or not, that did win Trump the election. Which convinced the republican party that he was right. They completely abandoned the ideas proposed in the RNC autopsy, and I don't know that they'll ever find their way back to that point.

So, when people say they don't want to support democrats, and they hope that by letting democrats lose the elections they'll move the democratic party to the left...i wouldn't be so sure.

In fact, if that happens, what I predict we'll see is a democratic party prepared to swing to the right. Sure, it'll still have a progressive wing. The Squad will live on. But they'll be increasingly ostracized by a party that will be even more obsessed with courting the forgotten white man, by toning down its inclusivity, by backing off of more expansive social safety nets and wealth taxes.

Like it or not—I certainly find it depressing to consider—Joe Biden is the most left-leaning president we've had in a long, long time. Certainly since Jimmy Carter, and perhaps since even before him. If he loses in November, if his party loses in November, I guarantee their washington insider strategists will find a way to blame it on progressiveness and walk us back at least a decade, if not more.

I'm not happy about any of this. But this is, I believe, the reality we're facing.

[pancoleon]

Absolutely one of my least favourite genre of responses to political posts. You see it for the US too, the assumption that anyone expressing displeasure at being made to choose between dog shit and cat shit must be trying to undermine an election in favour of "the bad guys".

You're not doing yourself or anyone else any favours by ignoring the blatant shitness of the other parties. In the UK, the most likely party to get the Tories out (and these party the post this response is to is criticising) is the Labour Party under Keir Starmer.

Under Starmer the party has been characterised by hostility to anybody not deemed to be in the in-group and with a very centralised iron grip on the party. He has broken just about every promise he made to get elected into leadership. In fact, half the promises the party has made since have also been broken. They spend most of their time sticking to the narratives handed to them by the Tories and saying they won't reverse any changes the Tories make.

These non-reversals include laws that aim to ban protests, restrict strikes, and reduce civil liberties. They include letting 100 new fossil fuel extraction licenses in the North Sea continue. They include keeping the 2 child benefit cap, which has contributed to 27% of children in the UK living in poverty.

Labour's current proposed trans policies are also worse than what they were in 2017/19, and the current Shadow Health Secretary advocates for the privatisation of the NHS and has accepted thousands of pounds in bribes lobbying from private healthcare interests.

Maybe the reason you're seeing posts like this isn't people wanting to undermine the general election/secretly support Tories. Maybe it's because Labour promise to fuck people over a reverse a positive policy every other week.

[rum-inspector]

Is it finally okay to admit that before this election, I though Harris was GOP bc every time her name came up, it was another cruel policy she was supporting.

Don't blame the voters if you brand your party as "progressive" but are too cowardly to push progressive candidates and instead run on "but we're only 99% hitler" campaigns :)