Elections

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Joe Biden and the cards we’re dealt

So it looks like Joe Biden will be our nominee.  Meh.

As I said in a post just a few days ago, I rarely get my first choice when it comes to nominating candidates. And often, that means that the person I thought would have the best chance of winning doesn’t get it, and then we lose in November.

The majority tends to go for the safe and predictable. Often the bland. Poll the majority on their favorite restaurant and you’ll get Olive Garden. Ask them their favorite music and it’s Celine Dion or whatever is on some reality TV show about singers. Favorite books are the trashy ones. Favorite movies never win Oscars.  Favorite art is dogs playing poker.

Why we suddenly expect different results with politics is beyond me.

Anyway, I thought that Bernie and Biden were two of our weakest candidates this time around. Warren, Harris, Booker or Castro would better stir up the base and get people on our side.

But of the two, Bernie and Biden, I prefer Biden. Not because I agree with him more on the issues. Definitely not — Bernie’s message is what I’ve been fighting for my entire adult life. But Bernie the messenger? That’s a different issue. (Warren had pretty much the same message but she does not have the baggage Bernie would bring.)

There are moderates around the country who hate Trump but could never bring themselves to vote for a “socialist.” Some of that is seen in the primary results.

We can’t pretend that isn’t true just because we don’t want it to be. We need to sweep the smaller races too in places where that’s possible, and if you talk to any political expert in a purple state, that’s what they’ll tell you: Bernie being the candidate would hurt their chances. Could Bernie win the Presidency?  Sure, but it’s not just about that. We have to look at the big picture.

It’s just politics, people. I’m not thrilled with what we’re ending up with, but you don’t give up. You don’t whine about losing. You don’t attack the party because a majority of its members have a different view than you. Oh sure, you can debate whether it’s a good idea and you can discuss the ramifications of the decision — this is politics, after all, we’re going to disagree — but these are the cards we’ve been dealt and we have to keep playing with what we’ve got.

Do I wish the vote had gone another way? Of course. Like I do most of the time. But bitching and complaining that you didn’t get your way solves nothing.

 

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I’m used to losing

The problem with democracy is that you don’t always get your way.

The first and only time my preferred candidate in the primaries ended up as President was with Obama. And I’ve been voting a long time.  Here’s my terrible track record of who I supported in the primaries and who won the nomimation:

1976: Jerry Brown (winner: Jimmy Carter)

1980: Oops. I voted for a 3rd party (John Anderson) and then vowed never to make that mistake again

1984: Gary Hart (winner: Walter Mondale)

1988: Michael Dukakis (was living in Boston at the time, did some work on the campaign)

1992: Paul Tsongas (another Boston guy) (winner: Bill Clinton)

1996: Bill Clinton was unopposed for re-election

2000: Tom Harkin (winner: Al Gore)

2004: John Kerry (another Boston guy)

2008: Barack Obama (and he won!)

2012: Obama was unopposed for re-election

2016: Bernie Sanders (winner: Hillary Clinton)

2020: Elizabeth Warren (What? Another Boston candidate?)(winner: we shall see)

So while I am very disappointed that Warren did not get the nomination and while I am also very disappointed with the choices we now have, I guess I’ve become used to it.  Maybe I’m just more cynical as I age, maybe I’m just jaded. Life goes on. (My top three choices were Warren, Harris, and Booker. So much for that.)

I certainly understand the anger and frustration many young Bernie supporters have about the situation. The fact that I once felt the same way back when I was younger I’m sure doesn’t comfort them, but it’s really a broken record: The people in power keep the power and keep out anyone who wants to change how things work, and the only way we can force that change is by voting the bastards out — something we apparently are incapable of doing. In the primaries so far, young people (who are Bernie’s main constituency) hardly even voted.

“OK Boomer” I can hear them saying now to me. “Thanks for your comments, grandpa, but we’re not giving up.” And I don’t want you to. What I want you to do is vote — that’s the only way we can get the change we need.

Who will I vote for when the Pennsylvania primary finally rolls around? Well, as usual, it will probably already be decided by then, but I’m considering my options between the two old white guys, both of whom have negatives I have to consider.

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Warren’s experience mirrors every professional woman’s life and career

Guest post from Gail Z. Martin

Here we go again, proving that we as a nation can’t handle a competent woman in charge.

The most telling paragraph from an article about Warren’s drop from the race: “She was hypersensitive to public criticism and tended to overcorrect in her efforts to ensure her competence. Her responses often earned her more criticism, not less.” OMFG, that’s the story of every professional woman’s life and career. Remember the old joke that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did—only backwards, and in high heels? The gallows humor about women needing to be twice as good to get half as far? Those are painfully funny because they’re true.

When Hillary lost to DT, we showed that we’d decided the presidency was an entry-level job, no experience necessary—that we would accept a reality TV star and many-times bankrupted failed businessman rather than a woman so competent she scared the Russians. Now Warren is out of the race. Who do you think worried the Russians more—Biden, Sanders or Warren?

Warren had a plan for everything—-which got criticized—-as men without a detailed plan or the guy who doesn’t believe any experts keep winning. Baggage? Nothing that even compares to almost all of the male candidates at every level that have ever gotten elected (and re-elected).

Yes, I will vote for whatever blue candidate gets nominated, which at this point is certain to be another old white guy—-maybe even the one who says he’d take a Republican as his VP. (And how, exactly, is that going to create any change at all, when we’ve seen no willingness for the GOP to rein in Dear Leader, no matter how he shreds the constitution?)

Please, no attempts to mansplain why Warren is so much worse than the men. I am just so fed up with this country’s utter disdain for women that I could howl at the moon.

Gail Z. Martin is a novelist who writes thrilling fantasy and science fiction adventures. Her web page is here.

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Are women candidates held to a different standard than men candidates?

Yes.

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Republicans know that if everyone votes, they lose

Republicans know that if everyone votes, they lose.

That’s why they have spent 50 years

  • fighting against the Voting Rights Act
  • purging people from voting lists
  • closing precincts in minority neighborhoods
  • enacting restrictive voter ID laws
  • prohibiting felons from voting
  • stopping early voting and mail-in ballots
  • making sure election day isn’t a national holiday
  • killing any bill designed to prevent Russian interference
  • making sure no paper ballots are used
  • getting rid of election finance laws
  • fighting against abolishing the electoral college
  • promoting gerrymandering

There are even tapes of them admitting it.

Anyone who denies this is true is just denying reality. These guys are literally against democracy.

cartoon by Steve Sack

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The next President…

The next President is going to need an adviser who is an expert in both economics and law if we’re going to fix things in America. Maybe a person who taught those things at a top school like Harvard Law School. Maybe someone who has written a lot of books on the subject that have been used as textbooks over the years. Maybe even someone who has been an adviser to the President on these subjects in the past.

Oh, wait.

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Democrats: Stop trying to appeal to people who will never vote for you

Look.

There’s like 33% of the population who will never vote for Democrats no matter what (as we have seen, based on those who are supporting Trump no matter what). These are almost all the same people who also think gay marriage should be illegal and blacks should know their place and women should be subservient and Christians should run everything.

So Democrats: Stop trying to appeal to them. Stop being afraid to standing up for what is right. It’s not going to work. All it does is discourage the majority of Americans from supporting you, because they don’t think you actually believe in anything.

Elizabeth Warren was recently asked a question about how she would respond to an “old-fashioned” supporter who believes marriage is between one man and one woman.warren
“I’m going to assume it is a guy who said that,” Warren replied, “And I’m going to say, ‘Well, then just marry one woman. Assuming you can find one.”

Ooh, snap. Some people loved it and some Democrats sweated buckets and said, “Oh, goodness gracious! She’s going to alienate some voters with that!”

Well, no, she isn’t. The kind of person who would be insulted by a comment like that would never consider voting for her in the first place.

Republicans know this. They don’t care a bit about trying to appeal to a “middle.” They say what they think. Of course, they are more confident of winning because they cheat (through gerrymandering, voter suppression, voter purges, voting machines that don’t leave paper trails and their buddy the Electoral College, but that’s a separate topic).

Democrats are always advised to “reach for the middle” and that makes them afraid to say anything that may alienate a pretend group that would consider voting for them “if only.” That group does not exist. We are the majority. We are the mainstream.

And we should act like it.

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Warren the Cougar

So a bunch of right-wing trolls decided they’d hold a press release so some young guy could claim he had an affair with Elizabeth Warrren. No one believed him, especially after it came out that he is a convicted felon who had lied about his military experience and responded to the question “Are you on any kind of medication?” with “That’s a violation of the privacy laws concerning medical records” (which is totally what people who are not on medication say).

Bette Midler had a great response:
midler

But then Elizabeth Warren came out and admitted that yes, she is a Cougar:
cougarThis is how you deal with trolls like these: laugh at them.

Of course, that doesn’t stop these idiots who somehow think they’re making some grand point or are pulling a fast one. Take this Trump-supporting girl who showed up at an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez meeting, pretending to be a supporter, who made a ‘modest proposal’ that we all needed to save the planet by eating babies. It wasn’t long before Trump tweeted “Seems like a normal AOC supporter to me.”

AOC responded like a human being does, saying “This person may have been suffering from a mental condition and it’s not okay that the right-wing is mocking her and potentially make her condition or crisis worse. Be a decent human being and knock it off.”

Of course, it didn’t take long for people to discover that this was just another stupid troll from the right.

That, of course, won’t stop AOC’s detractors from sharing the video and trying to claim this person is one of ours. After all, they have demonstrated many times that facts don’t matter.

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If you don’t vote for the Democrat, your vote is for Trump

Look.

For the next election, you’re either voting for the Democrat or you’re voting for Trump. There is no “third choice.” Any other candidate you waste your vote on helps Trump.

Yes, you want to make a point. Yes, if we got rid of the Electoral College and had ranked voting, your third party choice might have a chance. But for now, we have to play with the rules we are given, and if you waste your vote on a third party candidate, you may as well have given your vote to Trump.

If you want to stop Trump, the best possible way to do it is to vote for the only other candidate who can beat him, and that’s the Democrat. If you are voting 3rd party from either side (even as a Republican protesting Trump), you’re not doing that.

These third party votes can lose you an election.

Look at it this way:

When you vote third party instead of Democrat, yes, that’s a vote Trump doesn’t get. But it’s not a vote the Democrat gets.

Here in Pennsylvania in 2016, Trump won by 44,292‬ votes.  49,941 people here voted for Jill Stein.  I’m not saying all of those Stein votes would have gone to Trump, but none of them stopped him.

If a thousand people upset with Trump vote 3rd party as a protest and then the Democrat loses the state by 999 votes to Trump, then what’s the point? Where’s the protest there?  What good did that “protest vote” do?

If you’re not doing everything you can to stop Trump, you’re helping him. If you’re not voting for the only possible choice who can beat Trump, then you might as well vote for Trump, because that’s where you’ll end up anyway.

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GOP election strategy: Cheat to win

If we come out and vote, like we did twice for Obama and in 2018 in the “Blue Wave” midterm, then we win. There are more of us than there are of them, and we represent what the majority of Americans want.

They know that. And so they know that the only way they can win is by cheating. And that’s why the Republican party has worked so hard (especially over the past twenty years) to do the following:

  • Purge voting rolls of registered voters for no real reason
  • Make it harder to register
  • Gerrymander districts to allow them to win even when they get less votes overall
  • Fight against mail-in ballots
  • Remove the Voting Rights Act
  • Refuse to pass legislation to prevent Russian hacking of voting machines
  • Refuse to pass legislation requiring paper ballots
  • Removing voting precincts in minority-held districts
  • Pass ID laws that make it more difficult if not impossible for some people to vote
  • Fight against early voting laws
  • Restricting those with criminal records from voting
  • Creating an atmosphere of fear at the precincts (especially for Latinos who worry about being detained for voting, even if they are citizens)
  • Refusing to consider getting rid of the Electoral College

You’d think the most basic right in a democracy would be the right to vote, and you’d think anyone who really supports democracy would want everyone to vote. But the history of America has constantly been one of the people in power doing everything they can to prevent that from happening, starting with the establishment of the Electoral College. Women and non-whites had to fight and die for this very basic right, and the battle continues today.