Elections

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Why I am cautiously optimistic about the election

While Biden was not even in my top 5 choices last time, I still voted for him over Trump and will again. And I’m pretty sure he is going to win, for the following reasons:

Trump’s support isn’t as good as it seems. The man lost the popular vote the first time he ran, never even reached a 50% approval rating his entire time as President (unlike every other person who has been President), and lost his second election by an even larger amount. A majority of Americans don’t want him.

And a large percentage of Republicans don’t want him this time, either. As a semi-incumbent, he should be getting the numbers that Biden is getting in the primaries, but instead, quite often, he’s lucky to get more than 50% of the registered Republicans voting for him. Many old-school Republicans (the kind who aren’t part of the Trump cult) can’t stand him, see the harm he will cause, and while they may not vote for Biden, they aren’t going to vote for Trump, either. They’ll probably just stay home.

The Republican party doesn’t have a lot of money. People just aren’t contributing to them in the same way they are for the Democrats. There are stories all over the states where the local parties are going broke. Which leads to the next point:

Trump has taken over the party. The head of the party is now Eric Trump’s wife. You remember Eric, who took money meant for a children’s cancer charity? Well, you can bet that any money the party raises isn’t going to go to the campaign. It’s going to go to Trump (and probably his legal fees, assuming he pays them).

Moreso, these people have no real experience in running a campaign, and they just fired all those who do.

Trump’s legal worries may influence the undecided. The Trump cultists will never change, and as Trump once said, he can shoot someone on 5th Avenue and still have their support. It’s difficult to imagine how anyone can be undecided in this election, but apparently there are a lot of clueless folks out there who can’t tell the difference between as a well-meaning old guy and a lying, cheating, raping idiot who wants to be a dictator, but perhaps the more Trump spends time in court, the more these undecideds may think that maybe they don’t want a criminal as President.

Democrats have done better than expected in recent elections. We’ve managed to win quite a few special elections and in those that we didn’t win (in very red areas) we did much better than expected and much better than the polls predicted. Some of that is because we’re angry and pissed, and that gets people to the polls.

And we’re tremendously angry about abortion rights. In red states where this was on the ballot, pundits were shocked to see that even conservative voters voted to keep abortion legal. Many states are putting the issue on the ballots in November, which hopefully will bring more Democrats out to vote to protect this right (and then they’ll vote for the Democrats running as well.)

And, let’s face it, there are still some reasonable Republicans and moderates out there who may come out to vote because while they don’t agree with Democratic policies, they don’t want someone in there who has vowed to be a “dictator on day one.” Some patriots will put the country’s needs over the party’s.

All we have to do is hold the states we won last time. All over the country, purple states are becoming bluer all the time. It’s not that hard. We can lose Georgia, Arizona and Nevada and still win.

There are more of us than there are of them. Democrats have won the popular vote in every single election except one since Bill Clinton, and the only reason Republicans got into office was because of the electoral college. We can overcome that by showing up in huge numbers in the swing states where our votes are tremendously important.

If we lose, it will be because we stayed at home and didn’t vote, or wasted our vote on a third party candidate. And then we can scream and shout all we want as our country moves toward a Putin-friendly dictatorship, but it won’t do any good because it will be our fault.

And now, a caveat: The GOP knows all this, so they plan to use their secret weapon: cheating. They’ll do everything they can to make it harder for anyone to vote; they’ll use the judges they’ve appointed to throw out ballots whenever possible; they’ll lie in campaign ads and use connections in Russia and China whose goal it is to dismantle American power; and otherwise claim to have won if they lose despite all evidence to the contrary (just like they did last time).

cartoon by Patrick Chappatte

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Why Democrats want to run against Trump

I don’t agree with Nikki Haley about much, but when she said that the Democrats would rather run against Trump than her, she was right.

Look, Donald Trump lost the popular vote in his first election. He was the first President since they started doing these polls who never even hit a 50% approval rating. He then lost his next election by an even larger margin. The American people never wanted him.

And current polls show that while he is very popular among Republicans, that isn’t enough. He certainly hasn’t added any new supporters to his side; many Republicans are refusing to support him. Oh, they won’t vote for Biden, but they’ll probably stay home on election day.

Just look at the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary. Trump is kind of their incumbent, and he could barely get past 50% of the Republicans who participated. A huge chunk of them wanted someone else.

The latest poll has Biden at 50% with Trump at 44% and as more Trump convictions happen, it’s not likely that 44% will go up. All the crazies who will support him no matter what are already in that number.

More importantly, look at this: Biden is ahead of Trump among women 58% to 36%. That’s huge. With Republicans doing their best to make abortion illegal and throw doctors in jail, those numbers may increase in Biden’s favor even more.

Seriously, these extremists on the right are just committing political suicide. It may work in their home state (and given how many red states have instead put abortion rights into their laws since the Dobbs decision, that’s not a guarantee), but it’s no way to win nationally.

Among independents, Biden is ahead 52% to 40%.

All Biden has to do is keep the states that voted for him last time, and in all those blue states, he’s doing even better than 50%. It’s doubtful any of them will suddenly switch to Trump.

The same poll shows that if the GOP instead nominates Haley, then the race is much closer. However, when only Republicans are surveyed for the primary elections, she’s way behind Trump. No one expects her to win the nomination.

So let’s all hope they keep digging themselves into the ditch.

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Why you should only vote for Democrats

I know some local Republicans who are running for office, and they’re running for things like Clerk of Courts and Register of Wills and boring jobs that really have no political agenda or political power. So in some ways, you can say “What’s the big deal if I vote for this person?”

But you need to ask yourself how you could vote for someone who supports a party that stands for the following:

  • Discrimination against gays and lesbians
  • Eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency
  • Open carrying of firearms and reduction of any gun control laws
  • Lowering the minimum wage
  • Opposition to equal pay for women
  • Tax breaks for billionaires
  • Reproductive decisions made by government and employers
  • Deporting of refugee children
  • Denying of climate change and science
  • Creationism taught in school
  • Health care only for those who can afford it
  • Elimination of unions
  • Banning of books that they disagree with politically
  • Support for treasonous Presidents and denial of democracy

If I vote for a Republican Dog Catcher, am I thus supporting someone who believes in discrimination? That thinks my wife is a lesser person who can’t make her own decisions? Who supported overturning an election?

More importantly, why should I help that party at all? Every lower office run by a Republican helps the party raise money for the bigger offices, and legitimizes their positions.

So if and until the Republicans go back to the days when there were reasonable conservatives, don’t give them more power.

And it’s important to vote in every election. The GOP has spent its time filling our school boards with radicals who want to censor what your kids can learn, defund public schools to help private schools, and give us an educational crisis we haven’t seen in years, where dedicated teachers are leaving all over the country because of these extremists. Don’t just pay attention to election day every four years! Every election counts!

Be sure to vote, and only vote for Democrats. It’s the only way we’re going to stop them.

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How the GOP will claim the election was stolen

The GOP has apparently solicited a ton of polls from Republican-leaning pollsters which show they’re doing great at the midterms. As such, some journalists are questioning their value. But I think the real reason they are taking all these polls is so if they lose, it will make their claim that “the election was stolen!” more believable to their gullible cultist followers.

What makes it worse is that there are overall less polls being done this year than before (which makes individual ones less reliable) and that polling is much more difficult as people just don’t answer their phones to pollsters like they used to.

Meanwhile, the early voting has been huge, especially for a mid-term election, and has come mostly from Democrats. Since in many places, those votes are counted after the polls close, the GOP will also use that as another argument that the election was stolen (just like they did in 2020, when it looked like they were doing much better before all of PA’s votes were counted).

Strange how elections are only stolen when the winner is a Democrat, huh? And how the exact same ballots can steal one race while not stealing another.

In any event, the polls may be completely accurate, but who knows? Recent elections have proven to be more beneficial to Democrats (take, for instance, the Kansas referendum keeping abortion legal that did hugely better than any poll indicated). I’m just pointing out that if the same thing happens again, and Democrats win in places where they were predicted not to based on the polls, it will just provide more ammunition for the conspiracy minded Republicans.

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Democracy is bleeding out

by guest blogger Adam-Troy Castro

Trump plans to challenge the 2022 elections.

So this is what we have now. Cries of “fake” and “conspiracy”, and violent invasions of government buildings, are now the default, the things we can expect to happen.

Folks,

I keep hearing people say that this election coming up is our last chance to hold on to our democracy.

I have to tell you, I think the democracy is gone; the body just hasn’t stopped twitching yet.

Democracy depends, at bare minimum, on the understanding by all participants that the results matter, that we grimace when somebody we despise wins and then accept the results. This is something that, among others, John McCain understood. When he spoke to his followers on election night — the same night Sarah Palin wanted to go on campaigning — they booed the name of Barack Obama, and he stopped them. He said, “No,” and John McCain was not always a towering beacon of character, but in this, he did the bare minimum, and today that looks like greatness, because we have fallen so far.

To have democracy, we need the uniform agreement on the part of everybody that elections matter.

Today the Republican default is that when you lose you start yelling, you start marching with your guns, you threaten violence and you turn the volume up to eleven and you hope that the other side backs down. It doesn’t matter if you’re one percent behind and it doesn’t matter if you’re five percent behind. You lay the groundwork for your own victory being the only possible legitimate result and then you stop at nothing.

You openly do this before the election and you count on nobody stopping you.

This is the new normal and it is here for the duration.

You know, once before, one side refused to accept the results of the election. (Twice before, if you include the Business plot against FDR.) It happens to have been the same side. (Yeah, I know Abraham Lincoln was a “Republican” and the side he opposed, essentially Democrats — but back when Abraham Lincoln was elected those words meant different things, and we had yet to experience over a century of half of shifting alliances and demographic shifts. Lincoln was, among other things, a liberal socialist.)

It was the same side, and this continent ran red with blood.

I am telling you that the situation is WORSE now, but the factions are not as neatly defined by regions.

Half the country does not believe in Democracy, rejects the very word in an inane belief that the very word favors the Democrats. You cannot have Democracy if half the country rejects the principle, if a quarter consider their guy infallible and inviolate.

Worse is coming. Far worse.

Democracy is still twitching. But it is bleeding out, and I do not see a return to sanity any time soon.

This is from a Facebook post and is reprinted with permission. Adam-Troy Castro has written 26 books to date including among others four Spider-Man novels, 3 novels about his profoundly damaged far-future murder investigator Andrea Cort, and 6 middle-grade novels about the dimension-spanning adventures of that very strange but very heroic young boy Gustav Gloom. Adam’s works have won the Philip K. Dick Award and the Seiun (Japan), and have been nominated for eight Nebulas, three Stokers, two Hugos, and, internationally, the Ignotus (Spain), the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire (France), and the Kurd-Laßwitz Preis (Germany). You can also read a recent story of his in my latest anthology, Three Time Travelers Walk Into…

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How the GOP can steal democracy under the Constitution

The 20th century was the time of Democracy as more and more countries threw off kings, dictators and tyrants to embrace elections and democracy.

The 21st century, so far, appears to be a retreat based on the fascist and dictatorship leanings of Russia, Italy, Turkey, and other countries (and now the US)… and the sad thing is, just like Hitler in Germany, this is being accomplished through democracy — with the end result being the death of democracy.

The GOP has made it clear that if they don’t like the results of democracy, they have every intention of ignoring and overturning the results, either through violence or other means. I’m not kidding when I say that there are Republican politicians out there who want their states to certify the Republican as winning the election even when they lose.

How can they do this?

Well, when it comes to the President at least, the Constitution says that the states are responsible for appointing the electors to choose the President. That’s one of the provisions of the Electoral College which has given us two Presidents in recent history who lost the popular vote. The Constitution does not say how these electors are chosen. Technically, the party in power in that state could choose the biggest donors to be electors if they wanted to.

And that’s what some Republicans plan to do. It’s why this upcoming election is so important and why you should vote for Democrats. It may be your last chance to vote, after all.

But wait, you scream. The Supreme Court won’t allow that. “Seriously?” I reply. “Have you seen this Court?” Have you noticed that a majority of the members of that court were appointed by those same Presidents who lost the popular vote? If you think for a minute that these people are big supporters of democracy, you may want to, you know, read some of their decisions concerning, for instance, the Voting Rights Act.

We are on a threshold here in America, where our brave experiment is nearing an end. But an overwhelming turnout of Americans — who do not support these fascists — can make a difference.

And if we don’t turn out and they win instead then I guess we get what we deserve.

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Polls and Predictions and how to destroy them

Right now, most polls are saying that Democrats will hold the Senate but lose the House. All the polls and predictions are based on past turn-out and what the predictors expect given historical trends. (The party in power almost always loses in the mid-terms.)

So if lots and lots of Democrats vote in the midterms — which is not what usually happens — it will be a massive change from what they predict.

And especially if lots of women vote, because that would be grand. The woman vote could really make the difference and that would force all politicians to pay attention, afraid that they might lose their next election if they don’t listen.

We’ve already seen some of the power of people actually coming out to vote. The anti-abortion measure in Kansas lost by a huge margin; special elections in a few places showed a much greater Democratic response than predicted; and it is certainly possible that this could happen again in November.

But only if we don’t act like we always act.

There’s more of us than them, but when we sit things out like we normally do in midterms, we lose. Republicans know that, which is why they spend so much time doing everything they can to make it harder to vote. They can’t win based on the issues so they have to rely on cheating.

We have to overwhelm them. To get their attention, we have to hit them over the head with a million-pound shithammer (as Hunter Thompson used to say).

So if you’re not registered to vote, do it now! And then show up. Let’s prove the predictors wrong.

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The conservative threat in 2022

What exactly do conservatives want to conserve? Clearly, they want to conserve what they consider to be the “good old days” where straight white rich men controlled everything and the rest of us were basically pawns for them to use in their goal to get richer and more powerful.

Let’s look at what they seriously are proposing this election season:

I mean, come on, they’re still supporting this asshole
  • Make abortion illegal everywhere and curtail women’s rights;
  • Make gay marriage illegal again;
  • Restrict access to contraception;
  • Shut down medicare and medicaid;
  • Repeal the recently passed law that limits what Big Pharma can charge for medicine;
  • Repeal Obamacare;
  • Force Christian religious training in schools while banning books they find dangerous;
  • Reduce taxes on the very wealthy;
  • Prevent higher education from being free or cheaper;
  • Fight against raising the minimum wage;
  • Refuse refugees begging for help at our border;
  • Allow governors to throw out election results they don’t like…

I could go on, but you know the pattern. Every one of these things is opposed by a majority of Americans, but they don’t care. They’re used to the minority of rich, white men running everything, and they see nothing wrong with it.

It is predicted that the GOP will win the House in November, which means you can expect that we’ll never see anything of value accomplished. Instead, there will be investigation after investigation of made-up conspiracy theories, along with numerous attempts to impeach Biden for stupid reasons.

Our only hope is that people (and especially women people) are mad enough to vote in numbers never seen before for a mid-term election. The signs are encouraging so far, but the other side knows it, too, and you can expect them to turn out in big numbers. Remember that Trump cultists are often underrepresented in public opinion polls, because they don’t want to come out and admit that they support treason and racism.

 

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Why Democrats lost (and why they didn’t): 2021 election results

“This is a terrible day!” liberal commentators are saying. “A Republican won the governor’s race in Virginia! Democrats are doomed! Doooooomed!”

Let’s first put things into perspective. Most states did not have major elections last Tuesday, but in Virginia and New Jersey, governor’s races were up.

Virginia has a term limit law preventing a governor from running for re-election so there’s never an incumbent. And in 10 of the last 11 elections (that is, for the last 44 years), the party not in power in Washington has won the governorship. In other words, if there’s a Republican President, the governorship goes to the Democrat.

So this year was no different. History predicted this.

In New Jersey, governors rarely win re-election. Until now. Democrat Philip Murphy will stay in office.

The media is downplaying it. “He only won by 2.7%! It’s a narrow victory!” they scream.

Meanwhile in Virginia, these same pundits are saying “The Republican won by 2.2%! It’s a major landslide!”

So instead of the headlines being “Democrats break losing streak as predicted by history,” instead we get “The Democratic party has lost hugely! They’ll never recover! It’s all over!”

Look. Anyone who studies politics knows this: The party in power in the White House loses in the off elections, as people vote against whoever is in there. During Trump’s four years, the Democrats won the House and the Senate, and in next year’s midterms, there is a good possibility the Republicans will take back the House. That’s normal. There’s only been a few exceptions to that rule.

But there are other reasons Terry McAuliffe lost in Virginia when he probably should have won. There are all the main reasons (Democrats don’t vote in the same numbers as Republicans even though we outnumber them; voter suppression; gerrymandering discourages participation, etc.) but let’s discuss problems Democrats always have.

First: We tend to nominate smart, competent people who would make good leaders but are wonky insiders who don’t have a lot of personality. (Michael Dukakis, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry…) Terry McAuliffe is one. He was not hugely popular in his first term, so why Democrats thought he’d be a good choice to run again is a mystery. Republicans know personality is more important, so they nominate completely incompetent people who have charisma (at least to their voters).

Dancing like this didn’t help, Terry

Second reason: The Republican party has become a cult — the cult of Trump. In a cult, you don’t question your leaders, and you don’t fight among yourselves. It’s even easier when almost everyone in the cult is the same (white, Christian, male, straight).

We Democrats represent the rest of the country, and we don’t all get along. That is part of the problem. Even though we have the White House, Senate, and House, we can’t even get a bill passed that many Republicans support, because we’re fighting among ourselves. Meanwhile, the GOP votes in lockstep to prevent us from accomplishing anything, even bills that they supported when they were in charge.

That means we have nothing we can brag about at election time. Thanks to Senators Manchin and Sinema, no candidate could point to any accomplishments of President Biden in order to ride in on his coattails. We shoot ourselves in our own foot often.

Third: We’re not good at fear. Republicans know fear drives people to the polls and that’s why they make up fake boogeymen to scare their cultists to the polls. “They’re going to force our kids to get vaccinated, fear them! They want to make children learn about racial injustice! They’ll force your daughters to have abortion while giving them free marijuana while they spit on the Bible and declare a War on Christmas!”

“The American people are smarter than that,” Democrats say, ignoring the American people saying, “No, we’re not!”

Come on, there’s a huge chunk of the Republican party that believes JFK Jr. was going to reappear from the dead and run as Trump’s Vice President. They believe every QAnon claim despite the fact that not one has ever come true. They’re crazy. You can’t fix that.

So we need to be inspiring to get our people to the polls. Obama was a nerdy wonk of the type we like, but he also had the charisma we needed at the time. And Terry McAuliffe? He’s no Obama.

So the election didn’t go the way we wanted, but at the same time, it wasn’t the shellacking the media wants to portray it as. (Here in my purple county in Pennsylvania, we Democrats did quite well actually, holding back the GOP cultists trying to take over the school boards and local governments).

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Texas Democrats and their Lack of Options

Republicans in Texas (like in many other states) are doing everything they can to make the most basic right in a democracy harder, because Republicans know that the only way they can win is by cheating.

The Democrats in Texas have left the state to prevent the Republicans from having a quorum to enact these laws.

Some people are saying this is unfair and that the Democrats should “do the job they were elected to do.”

Well, they are. They’re protecting the rights of voters, just like they’re supposed to do.

The GOP has fixed the game so that the only way they can do their job is by protesting. You know, the thing the Founding Fathers did a lot of. The thing that is protected by our very first Amendment. That thing.

“But the laws have a process that should be followed! They’re supposed to vote!” This argument has been used for generations to justify discrimination and bad laws. “Well, I’m sorry you don’t like the fact that blacks can’t vote, but the laws preventing them from voting were passed according to our rules.” Well, sure. But if the rules allow the majority to trample on the rights of the minority, what other option does the minority have?

The Texas Democrats are stuck using this as a means because the rules have been written by those in power to prevent any other means (in the same way the Filibuster is preventing the majority from accomplishing their goals in the US Senate).

Texas is, believe it or not, a purple state. Beto O’Rourke came this close to defeating Ted Cruz. Trump won it by only 1.3%. Republicans have gerrymandered the state in such a way that they control far more than 1.3% of the state house. They’ve used legal means to disenfranchise many voters, and now they’re trying it again.

Here’s a map. Notice how all the cities (which are heavily Democratic) have been divided in such a way that it is practically impossible for Democrats to win. Instead of having one big district in a city, it’s split so that the Democratic part of the city is overshadowed by the Republican rural areas adjacent to it. So. If we had a fair playing field, maybe one could argue that refusing to play is unfair. But the game is rigged, and the only way to fight it is to refuse to play.