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Good news about election 2018

We didn’t get everything we wanted, true, but only the most naive thought we would. Admittedly, I thought we’d do better than we did in the Senate, but there’s plenty of good news about yesterday’s election:make america normal

We took the House by a pretty big margin. This means there is finally a check on the President’s power. You know, how it is supposed to be no matter which party is in charge.

Colorado elected the first openly gay governor.

In Kansas and Wisconsin, conservative Republican governors who had ruined the economies with their stupid “trickle down” policies were rejected as both went Democratic. Kansas also flipped a House seat, with the first Native American woman being elected (who is also a lesbian).

We also elected two Muslim congresswomen, the first black congresswoman in Massachusetts, the first female senators in Arizona and Tennessee, and over 100 women to various offices.

Utah will never elect a Democrat, but new Senator Mitt Romney isn’t a crazy Trump guy, so that’s a half win and probably the best we can expect from Utah.

The bigot Kim Davis — the woman who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples — lost her seat.

Florida voted to restore felons’ voting rights. Everyone should have the right to vote, and with minor crimes now being categorized as felonies, this was a major prohibition. And it’s especially important in states where blacks are arrested with more frequency.

In Michigan, voters passed a referendum to end gerrymandering in their state by requiring an impartial committee to redraw districts.

Here in Pennsylvania, state-wide Democrats held their seats by really big margins. We made major gains in the gerrymandered state House and Senate (gaining 10 House seats and 5 Senate seats). We added four more Democrats to Congress (including flipping a seat in my district so now I have a Democrat representing me in Washington), going from 13 Republicans and 5 Democrats to 9 and 9.

Yes, Beto in Texas didn’t win, but he was never really expected to. He did much better than almost anyone thought, and he, along with other Democrats who did better than expected, show that the way to do well in red states is not to just be a “Republican lite.” After all, as it’s been said, if given a choice between a Republican and a Republican, voters will choose the Republican every time.

Florida and Georgia governor races were extremely close, and progressive black candidates did very well in these southern states. In Georgia, the person running the election was also the person running for Governor (this is like a judge deciding a case where he is the defendant). He’s a crook who cheated as much as he could to win, and the Democrat has yet to concede because the votes are very close.

So overall, a good night and a repudiation of Republicans and Trump. Not as huge as we had hoped, but still good.

 

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Statue of Limitations

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Robert Ariail

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Republicans are anti-democracy

The history of the United States is all about how those in power have done everything they can to keep the rest of us out of power.

While we are indeed a democratic country, we’re way behind other democratic countries when it comes to truly representing everyone.

The Constitution is part of the problem. The Electoral College and the way the Senate works means that property is more powerful than people, since the states are not evenly represented.  And the fact that we haven’t changed the number of members of the House of Representatives in almost 100 years also hurts.

But the people in power — here, the Republicans — have done everything they can to make sure that we, the people, are not represented. Through gerrymandering, voter suppression, ridiculous voter registration requirements, voter purges, limiting voter access and polling places, and otherwise making the most basic right in a democracy into a burden, they using every tool they have to prevent us from using our voices.wasserman2

And it’s tremendously hard for us to fight them. Thanks to the Republican-led Supreme Court, secret money can be channeled to candidates. Thanks to Republican judges in lower courts, voters can be denied their rights for things like having a PO Box instead of a street address in North Dakota even though it’s plain as day where you live and where it doesn’t even matter in a state-wide election.  And whenever there is a movement to make sure there is no voter tampering or Russian interference, the Republicans vote to do nothing and to shut down investigations.

And they’re cheating in other ways too, such as having the Georgia candidate for Governor oversee the election in which he is the candidate, which is like having a judge oversee a trial where he is the defendant.

Because they know their views are in the minority. They know that if everyone had an equal vote, they’d always lose. Our views are the majority views.

The only way we can be represented by doing what they don’t want us to do: vote. They can’t suppress everyone.

Republicans will do everything they can to win an election except get the most votes.

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The Music Man

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Darrin Bell

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The real threat

This week, radical right-wing white males killed or tried to kill Democrats, innocent black people, and Jews in their place of worship.

Republicans: “Look over there! A bunch of poor brown people coming this way! Be very very scared!”

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cartoon by Rob Rogers

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Defusing

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Clay Bennett

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Another isolated “loner”

Wait, what? The bomber is a right-wing white male Trump-loving conservative and this isn’t a false flag after all? Who would have guessed (besides everyone who has a brain)?

“But he’s just a person with a mental problem who doesn’t represent Trump supporters as a whole!”

Right, right — On his own, without any encouragement from all the people whose posts he plastered all over his van, he decided completely and with no reason whatsoever to target the exact people President Trump has been vilifying constantly. Pure absolute coincidence.

Look, the internal terrorist violence these days always comes from the right. There have been hundreds of attacks on abortion clinics and doctors killed. A nazi drove through a crowd and killed someone. Someone flew a plane into an IRS building, killing many, and someone else blew up a government building in Kansas city. Someone tried to murder a Democratic Congresswoman and shot her in the head. The other day a white man went into a Krogers and targeted and killed black people. The President has praised violence against his enemies.

“Yeah, but one time, years ago, a crazy liberal guy shot at Congresspeople at a baseball game.”

Ah, one example! And that person based his actions on the Democrat’s call for violence — wait, hold on. I can’t find any examples of prominent Democratic politicians or media people calling for violence.

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The bomber’s van, covered in pro-Trump stickers along with pictures of liberal politicians in gun crosshairs. “That van looks like what Steve Bannon would change into if he was a Transformer.” – Hugh Casey

The fact that this was so predictable is the point, isn’t it? These crazy lunatics with easy access to guns listen to the conspiracy-minded Republicans calling for violence and do what they’re told, because they think they’re doing good — that they’re doing what their leaders want them to. And perhaps they are.

There is no equivalence on the left.

“It’s mental illness, I tell ya!”

Yep, mental illness can affect anyone. That explains why these things are always equally distributed between men and women, black and white, liberal and conservative — oh wait. My bad. It’s always the conservative white men, isn’t it?

I long for the days when disagreement with those on the other side of the political divide was based on facts, realism, and the joined desire to make our country a better place with the disagreements being over how to accomplish that. These days, it’s a divide between good and evil.

 

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Same as it ever was

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Darrin Bell

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Stop taking Trump’s bait

Look, I get it. All the stuff I learned getting my Political Science degree means nothing any more. All the experience I got running campaigns and working for candidates is meaningless. Trump has thrown all the rules out the window, because his followers don’t care.

It used to be that you could confront lies with the truth, but no more. When a Trump supporter holds a position contrary to the facts, presenting them with the facts does nothing. They don’t care. They just double down and fight harder, while screaming “fake news” and whining about the “mainstream media.”1535630063840

Better that we just ignore them and laugh at them.

Elizabeth Warren should have taken this to heart when Trump said he’d donate a million dollars if she had native American blood in her. So she took him up on it, proved him wrong, and how did Trump respond? By saying “who cares” and lying about whether he even made that offer.

It’s easy to prove Trump wrong (again) because there is video of him saying this, but the point is this: It doesn’t matter. Not one Trump supporter is now going to say “Well, I guess Trump was wrong. We should all apologize and he should pay that money.”

So don’t take the bait. When a Trumphead screams online in a debate, demanding “proof”, they don’t mean it. You can link to dozens of scholarly articles and facts and they’ll just ignore you.

You have better things to do with your time than talking to a wall.

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“The press is the enemy of the people”

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Chris Britt