They sent pipe bombs to Obama, Clinton, CNN, and a major Democratic donor. They marched through the streets chanting “Jews will not replace us.” They jailed and brutalized and outright killed Black protesters. They ran a woman down with a car for protesting their hateful rhetoric.
They threatened from the start to resort to violence if they didn’t get their way, and then got their way…and resorted to violence anyway. They are the purveyors of a body of politics that sees most of us as subhuman and undeserving of life, and actively works toward our destruction.
Remember that during this election.
This is not a matter of choosing the “lesser evil”. This is flawed politicians vs. actual fucking terrorists. This is human failings vs. inhumanity. This is not being progressive enough vs. silencing the opposition with violence.
No fucking contest. Get out and vote.
It was a terrorist attempt on several people, including two previous presidents. And our current president decided that the best thing to do tonight would be to hold a political rally.
You have to vote. Lives are on the fucking line here.
They sent pipe bombs to Obama, Clinton, CNN, and a major Democratic donor. They marched through the streets chanting “Jews will not replace us.” They jailed and brutalized and outright killed Black protesters. They ran a woman down with a car for protesting their hateful rhetoric.
They threatened from the start to resort to violence if they didn’t get their way, and then got their way…and resorted to violence anyway. They are the purveyors of a body of politics that sees most of us as subhuman and undeserving of life, and actively works toward our destruction.
Remember that during this election.
This is not a matter of choosing the “lesser evil”. This is flawed politicians vs. actual fucking terrorists. This is human failings vs. inhumanity. This is not being progressive enough vs. silencing the opposition with violence.
No fucking contest. Get out and vote.
It was a terrorist attempt on several people, including two previous presidents. And our current president decided that the best thing to do tonight would be to hold a political rally.
You have to vote. Lives are on the fucking line here.
god this is a big ask but I really wish there were like….. a site where you could plug in your state/district/whatever and tick some boxes on issues you prioritize and then the site would give you a rundown of the potential candidates in your area and where they stand on those issues in like….. clean simple bullet points. gimme the cliffnotes, I literally do not have the time or energy to comb through god knows how many articles and shit to figure out who to support, just tell me what their stance is on X, Y, and Z, and that’s gonna have to be enough.
There’s BallotReady!
It goes through who’s on your ballot and explains things like that based on your address.
this is really great. it gives you bullet points on what each candidate has said and done on each issue.
very illuminating, frankly, seeing the candidate’s own words and actions. for instance, under ‘defense/veterans’ the republican candidates almost always say something about a well-funded military, and the democrats almost always say something about getting veterans the medical care they need. makes it pretty obvious that republicans don’t care about soldiers once they’re done with them.
go vote kids, no excuses
fuck every democrat who says the issue of trans rights is a “distraction.” fuck every single liberal who say that the threat of stripping every trans person of legal recognition is a red herring or a losing issue and if we focus on it too long we’ll throw the election. we’re talking about human rights, access to medical care, sex education, discrimination, citizenship, and a whole lot else, for millions of people.
trans people aren’t a “distraction.” we’re human beings. the fact that so many liberals turn their backs on trans people is fucking despicable.
Okay…but this, right here? This is exactly what the Republican party wants. Young voters turning against the Democratic party and either not voting at all, or voting in favor of some third party candidate that has literally zero chance of pulling in enough votes to win. They want division among the ranks. They want to split our vote.
In political terms, calling something a ‘distraction’ means it’s a distraction tactic, not that the issue itself isn’t important. The Republican party has a very longstanding history of dropping hints of major policy changes right before big elections in the hopes of getting the “hot-headed liberals” all fired up about it so we start bickering among ourselves. They deliberately drop issues that they know are hot-button topics because these are the topics that have the potential to be the most divisive.
They’re awful but they’re not dumb. They know trans rights is an issue that could potentially split the democratic vote. It’s an issue that’s very heavily weighted toward the younger side of the party, which again, was a deliberate move on their part. If they can convinced you that the “big bad Democrats don’t care about you little trans and nonbinary kids so why bother,” then they’ve effectively won the election in a walk because the democrats went in divided–again.
Look, the democratic party isn’t perfect. Not by a long shot. But it’s literally the only party that has a snowball’s chance in hell at overtaking the republican majority right now. If we as trans and nonbinary individuals ever want our identities respected and protected, it’s the only party that’s going to be able to get us there, because it’s the party going in the direction we need to go. If you want to vote in favor of our rights, then vote Democrat. No number of videos with pennies is going to change the fact that right now, in this political climate, third party candidates are not going to have enough power to effect the changes we want.
Warning against something being a distraction doesn’t mean “don’t look at it or worry about it,” it means, “hey, I know this is majorly upsetting, and absolutely something needs to be done, but don’t let it divide us.” It’s literally because the issue is so important that democrats are warning against it as a distraction tactic–if we want to prevent that kind of change from happening under republican rule, we have to keep our heads and not let them keep us from voting as a unified party.
Please don’t let the political rhetoric make you think that the democratic party isn’t going to be fighting for us and our rights. That’s kind of exactly what the Republican party wants you to think. It’s a division tactic. Don’t fall for it.
The Republican party has a very longstanding history of dropping hints of major policy changes right before big elections in the hopes of getting the “hot-headed liberals” all fired up about it so we start bickering among ourselves.
THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS
I’ve been voting since 1998. This is what they do every single election.
Humble Charity Book Bundle: Get the Vote Out! supporting the ACLU
Today is the first day of Early Voting for Texas, so I went to do so.
There was a LINE
it took me 30 minutes to vote
I have NEVER seen this happen during early voting
Makes me cautiously hopeful
This is so relatable, I’m dying.
LOUDER FOR THOSE IN THE BACK
MAKE SURE YOU GUYS ARE REGISTERED TO VOTE, THE APPOINTED TIME IS SWIFTLY APPROACHING
Containing the Catastrophe
Anyone still unsure of how (or even whether) they’ll vote in the midterms should consider this: All three branches of government are now under the control of one party, and that party is under the control of Donald J. Trump.
With the addition of Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court is as firmly Republican as are the House and Senate.
Kavanaugh was revealed as a fierce partisan – not only as a legal advisor who helped Kenneth Starr prosecute Bill Clinton and almost certainly guided George W. Bush’s use of torture, but also a nominee who believed “leftists” and Clinton sympathizers were out to get him.
He joins four other Republican-appointed jurists, equally partisan. Thomas, Alito, and Roberts have never wavered from Republican orthodoxy. Neil Gorsuch, although without much track record on the Supreme Court to date, was a predictable conservative Republican vote on the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit – which is why the Heritage Foundation pushed for him and Trump appointed him.
Even under normal circumstances, when all three branches are under the control of the same party we get a lopsided government that doesn’t respond to the values of a large portion of the electorate.
But these are not normal circumstances. Donald Trump is President.
Need I remind you? Trump is a demagogue who doesn’t give a fig for democracy – who continuously and viciously attacks the free press, Democrats, immigrants, Muslims, black athletes exercising First Amendment rights, women claiming sexual harassment, anyone who criticizes or counters him; who treats the executive branch, including the Justice Department, like his own fiefdom, and brazenly profits off his office; who tells lies like other people breathe; and who might well have conspired with Vladimir Putin to swing the election his way.
Trump doesn’t even pretend to be the president of all the people. As he repeatedly makes clear in rallies and tweets, he is president of his “base.”
And his demagoguery is by now unconstrained in the White House. Having fired the few “adults” in his Cabinet, Trump is now on the loose (but for a few advisors who reportedly are trying to protect the nation from him).
All this would be bad enough even if the two other branches of government behaved as the framers of the Constitution expected, as checks and balances on a president. But they refuse to play this role when it comes to Trump.
House and Senate Republicans have morphed into Trump acolytes and toadies – intimidated, spineless, opportunistic. The few who have dared call him on his outrages aren’t running for reelection.
Some have distanced themselves from a few of his most incendiary tweets or racist rantings, but most are obedient lapdogs on everything else, including Trump’s reluctance to protect the integrity of our election system, his moves to prevent an investigation into Russian meddling, his trade wars, his attacks on NATO and the leaders of other democracies, his swooning over dictators, his cruelty toward asylum-seekers, and, in the Senate, his Supreme Court nominees.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has emerged as Trump’s most shameless lackey who puts party above nation and Trump above party. The House leadership is no better. House intelligence chair Devin Nunes is Trump’s chief flunky and apologist, but there are many others.
Now that Kavanaugh is on the Supreme Court, you can forget about the Court constraining Trump, either.
Kavanaugh’s views of presidential power and executive privilege are so expansive he’d likely allow Trump to fire Mueller, shield himself from criminal prosecution, and even pardon himself. Kavanaugh’s Republican brethren on the Court would probably go along.
So how are the constitutional imperative of checks and balances to be salvaged, especially when they’re so urgently needed?
The only remedy is for voters to flip the House or Senate, or ideally both, on November 6th.
The likelihood of this happening is higher now with Kavanaugh on the Court and Trump so manifestly unchecked. Unless, that is, voters have become so demoralized and disillusioned they just give up.
If cynicism wins the day, Trump and those who would delight in the demise of American democracy (including, not incidentally, Putin) will get everything they want. They will have broken America.
For the sake of the values we hold dear – and of the institutions of our democracy that our forbearers relied on and our descendants will need – this cannot be allowed.
It is now time to place a firm check on this most unbalanced of presidents, and vote accordingly.
This is so important. I am not American but as somebody who has studied politics and as a German growing up with the history of my country let me tell you – never take democracy for granted, you gave to fight for it. Democracies don’t always die with a big bang bloody revolution, more often they are slowly sabotaged by people in power and they die if the majority stays silent. Vote. Demonstrate.
This means you vote the Democratic party ticket, for the record. The time to shift the party to the left is during the primaries. Right now? You vote the goddamned ticket. Even if that means voting for Manchin, or some equally despicable Democrat.
Because let’s be very, very clear about this: if Manchin isn’t re-elected, it’ll be Patrick Morrisey in that seat: a Republican, who will vote the Republican party line on basically every fucking issue (because Republicans tend to have better party discipline than Democrats, at least at the Federal level), and a Republican who helps keep committee control in the hands of the Republicans and procedural control in the hands of the Republicans, instead of a Democrat who helps shift both those things into the hands of a group of people who actually want to block Trump’s agenda. By all means, vote Manchin out—but we cannot afford for you to do it right now. Do it in the primaries in 2024. Right now? You show up to vote, and you vote the goddamned ticket.
Here is a good breakdown on how Democratic voters failing to show up for Democratic candidates in the 2014 midterms is probably directly responsible for what’s happening right now. 2014!! You think 2024 seems like it’s a long time off, and you just can’t possibly wait that long to voice your personal opinion about how insufficiently pure your local Democrat is? Fuck you. We’re going to spend the next 30 years living with a rapist on the Supreme Court because people like you couldn’t suck it up and vote like fucking grown-ups who understand how things like “math” and “their government” work four years ago.
Yes, political parties suck. Yes, they force you, frequently, to gather with people who don’t believe 100% the same things as you. Suck it the fuck up. Sometimes compromise is necessary in adult life! That’s just how it works! This isn’t about one Democrat. It’s not about your Democrat at all. It’s about blocking the Republicans. And the only way to do that effectively at this point in time is to vote the Democratic ticket. Top. To. Bottom.
Reblogging for the @greywash comment especially. Vote like a grownup.
Thank you for saying this! Yes, it has to be democrats! Third party cannot win this one guys!
Dump Republicans is step 1.
VOTE LIKE A GROWNUP SORRY