Go to the Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State to get a sample ballot. Then show up and vote on Tuesday. I want to see a good turnout by responsible citizens on an election that is not presidential. You’ve got to build a collection of people working for your causes at all levels, and stop expecting that you’ll put a magic person in place at the top of the pyramid and make everything work.
And I will unabashedly recommend that if you really despise Trump, you have to vote a straight Democratic ticket. I’m holding my nose and voting for Collin Peterson, Blue Dog Democrat, for the first time ever in this election, despite not liking him at all. Note to all you Stein/Johnson fans: another strike against them is that most of us won’t even find a Green/Libertarian candidate to vote for or against in these lower level elections.
In addition to local representatives, we’re voting on a Minnesota supreme court judge position. We get to choose between 3 people running for the job. Foss, a guy who wants to be a supreme court judge because, as he admits, he can’t find a job; MacDonald, who was endorsed by the state Republican party and lost her last election because she was caught driving while drunk; and Natalie Hudson, the incumbent and a Mark Dayton appointee, who is the only one with experience as a judge.
You might want to vote for the qualified candidate, Hudson.
Go find out who your candidates are and be sure to get out there and vote.
I will be nagging you again on Tuesday, Minnesotans.
As John Oliver pointed out, the reason that the NRA has such a massive influence isn’t because they represent a lot of voters (Planet Fitness has three times as many members), but because they are more active in getting Republicans elected and in constantly calling their (usually Republican) representatives on matters which the NRA promote. And Republicans appear to be much more likely to vote for sub-Presidential elections than Democrats, judging from past voter turnouts. If you truly want one candidate over another, and you don’t vote, you’re not helping anyone.
And if you *dont* vote, you may end up with a local representative like this:
‘Godly’ Legislator Has Cyber Sex, God Tells Him Not to Resign” http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2016/08/07/godly-legislator-has-cyber-sex-god-tells-him-not-to-resign/
” was caught driving while drunk”
Cue playing the “repentant sinner” card!
Voted by mail. Man that system rocks! Hopefully the wife’s ballot arrives Monday. And Minnesotans, remember there’s “no excuse” vote by mail for the general election!
It’s too late to vote by mail if you haven’t already requested it. Only votes received by Aug 9th will be counted.
Thanks PZ, I had forgotten that our process has made it necessary to go vote three different times this year. My congresswoman is up for re-election and it’s weird to have an early caucus and the normal primary. The entire electoral process needs updating.
Vote if you can. Then you can complain about the results, without sounding like a hypocrite, since you participated.
To quote the fictional POTUS from the show, West Wing, “Decisions are made by those who show up.”. So show up.
Those who don’t vote shouldn’t complain about the results, as you let other people make the decision.
Sorry, PZ. I’m a typical left wing voter and I only leave my home when it’s time to vote in a largely symbolic way like making a black man or a woman president. Otherwise I need to stay home and keep on top of what color I have to change my FaceBook avatar to this week.
What does that have to do with anything? That you don’t have a Green candidate for Congress has nothing to do with who you pick for President.
Politics is not a sport. Party loyalty should never factor into your decisions.
@HidariMak 1:
And there’s the ever-present catch: If you truly prefer one candidate over another, you’d better vote. And if you find all the candidates interchangeable? Well there’s simply no explanation for why Democrats have such great difficulty turning out voters. They have all this GOTV infrastructure! Maybe they’re using it wrong?
@Troll 6:
Yes, you show up and announce your support for a war in Syria, torture of political prisoners in Guantanamo, and an unlimited-use get-out-of-jail-free card for big banks. Your input is accepted, the decision is made, and you get your way.
Then you spend the next four years insisting that the policies you decided on are the fault of the people who showed up to oppose them or didn’t bother to show up in the first place.
I’m pretty sure that if you complain about the results you voted for, then you’re actually more of a hypocrite than the complainers who stayed home.
@williamgeorge 7:
Concern troll has a great many concerns.
Jake Harban
Correct, but what PZ was getting at was for this primary election, no other party has managed to muster enough votes to even get on the ballot. Neither the green party or the libertarian party have enough support to win even a low level election, much less the highest elective office.
Only in your delusional arrogant idiotlogical mind.
Show up and cast your ballot, or you live with whoever someone else tells you to vote for without your imput.
Don’t worry, you might one day grasp the concept of actually participating in elections and what it means.
@Tethys 9:
Then why mention Stein? She is on the ballot. Voting Stein for President is completely independent from who you vote for Congress.
This just assumes most people vote on the basis of party loyalty— since the Greens aren’t running candidates in many low-level races, there’s very few Green Party Members who treat voting solely as a matter of showing up to root for their team.
However, if you treat voting as a matter of politics and hold no party loyalties whatsoever, then Stein, for all her flaws, is the only viable candidate for anybody left of center to pick for President. Which candidates to vote for in other races will vary from one district to the next, but those decisions are completely independent of who you pick for President.
@Troll 10:
That’s some real hi-def projection on your part, since you seem consistently unable to grasp the idea that elections determine who gets to make laws and run the government. A ballot is not a form you fill out to get the right to complain, and an election is not a show of tribal loyalty where you make a gesture to support your team because your team is good by definition because it’s yours.
Once you do understand the concept of participating in elections and what it means, you’ll understand my earlier point— if you vote for something and win, then it is the height of chutzpah to declare that the thing you voted for is actually the fault of people who voted against it.
No, Jill Stein is not on the Minnesota primary ballot. Minnesota has in fact elected a third party candidate before. His name is Jesse Ventura and he was a failure as Governor, so you won’t find candidates from third parties attracting any attention in Minnesota. Stein is neither viable as a candidate or qualified to be POTUS., which was the point in PZ pointing out that those other parties aren’t even on the ballot because they failed to muster the necessary support.
@Jake Harban:
Jill Stein is making thinly veiled anti-vax statements. I literally cannot make myself vote for her if she is even saying that to court voters. She also has other ideas that wouldn’t work in practice, just like every other candidate. But that bit of anti science is just too far. And I was looking at her with interest until I saw that.
Everyone’s comments about how there are no greens or libertarians, etc, on the ballots means they will have no support from their party in Congress. You may not play party politics, and neither do I, but they do in Congress.
Clinton supports endless wars against countries across the planet, torture of political prisoners, the massive surveillance state, and the persecution of whistleblowers who question any of it. She supports the Trans-Pacific Partnership, she considers big banks to be above the law, she opposes health care reform, and she plans to take no concrete action on global warming. She has long been in favor of the so-called “War On Drugs,” she is responsible for expanding the prison population, she opposes even the most rudimentary of LGBT rights (with the exception of same-sex marriage, which she “supported” the instant it hit 51% nationwide), and the best thing you can say about her immigration policy is that it’s technically not quite as bad as Trump’s.
Yet Stein being an anti-vaxxer is impossible to tolerate? This is the rationalization of someone who is trying to explain the decision they made on illogical grounds.
I’d much rather see an anti-vaxxer in a position with no real authority over the fine details of health care than a warmonger in a position with very real authority over the army.
Yes, and…?
If Stein were to win, it could force the Democrats to accept that abandoning the left has consequences. We’d finally have the chance to force the Democrats to embrace liberal policies and run actual liberals in 2018 and 2020. Until then, Stein would serve as a gatekeeper on the worst of the conservatives’ policies— no more wars, no more persecution of whistleblowers. If she convinced them to pass any actual liberal policies, that’d just be an ancillary bonus.
Half of Trump’s appeal comes from the fact that he’s anti-establishment. Many people are sort of vaguely aware that Washington insiders are screwing them over and want to support someone who will tilt the balance of power in their favor. Trump is cynically manipulating that desire, but he’s not facing any real opposition on that front since most liberals are actually endorsing the Washington insiders screwing them (and ourselves) over on the lukewarm assurance that however bad they may be, the person promising to fight them is definitely worse.
Sorry again, PZ. I remembered that I also can’t vote for this person since Bernie wasn’t on all of the ballots from President down to the local school board. Which is more evidence of the grand conspiracy against him. Instead I’m just going to stay home and insult people for not supporting my largely symbolic candidate, Jill Stein. She is certain to be the next golden calf that will usher in a moonbat utopia.
My FaceBook is a delight to read.
@jake harban:
Realistically, do you not see a problem with an anti-vax president going on the record as saying vaccines are evil and we should not listen to doctors about them? Also, Congress is supposed to be the one to declare war, so the president doesn’t have “very real authority over the army”. Seriously, the president has a decent amount of influence over both. Congress can also bring us into a war without the President’s backing, or do you not remember your US government class?
You have no right to tell me that I should vote for a candidate that has 0% chance of winning, who I don’t agree with over major issues (for me), and who will not be able to get a partisan Congress to do anything because both sides are different parties than she is. A medical doctor spouting anti-vax nonsense has to have some really fucked up things going on in her head to rationalize it. Again, we will likely still have war even with a pacifist president. Democrats and Republicans in Congress are all bloodthirsty warmongers. Well, not all of them, but enough that the president being pacifist won’t have much effect.
@PZ, I’m a *lot* behind on keeping current on e-mail alerts of postings. Kindly excuse that, familial medical issues have distracted me by a lot.
That said, you’ve found common ground with the goopers, who accept Trump.
Voter dissatisfaction with the lamestream candidate.
The simple reality is, both parties and full knowledge of both parties being paid for on each election campaign by the same SOB’s.
Hell, if I were Richie Rich, *I* would do the very same damned thing.
Our mutual problem is, some arm up and think that that’s the way to go.
Lately, that’s been ignored by specific extremists.
Seriously, I’m seriously out of ideas, lest a civil war erupt.
Others, please chime in, with ideas acceptable for one and all.
So, how in hell do we keep the peace?
Then, move forward.
For, I’ll be honest, I’m not wanting a civil war within the next decade and that *is* what is moving forward toward today.
I’m equally ready to fully commit to such a war, to protect our advances in society.
I’m efficient at causing harm to other human beings, even in groups. I also loathe that capability, to the very point of hatred. Being potentially placed into a situation where that very well may become real, rage creating and depression creating, simultaneously.
So, does anyone got a good idea, which would be effective, in this current political environment?
If we’re now talking about civil war I want to be on Captain America’s side. He’s dreamy.
Supreme Court elections turn out like that in NC too (I run a polling place so I vote in every election; I literally have nothing better to do). In NC applying a “who has judicial experience” filter to Supreme Count elections usually narrows the field to one.
I’ve found my local alt-weekly to be a good source of info, they run endorsements (with detailed reasoning, so they’re informative even if you’re not a commie like me) every single election, from President on down to Soil & Water Conservation Board.
Curse my lack of Preview use: One, two, three cases! Ah ah ah!
Jake Harban @ #14:
This is true. What about Bernie Sanders?
Looks like he also supports military violence abroad.
He also backs the persecution of Edward Snowden, which means he doesn’t support whistleblowers (I have a feeling Snowden and I have very different political world views, but I consider him a hero who should be welcomed home with a ticker tape parade and full diplomatic immunity).
Actually, she’s been campaigning hard on blocking the TPP, but of course she could change her position once in office, so it’s not like she can be trusted, there.
Actually, she’s campaigning on the opposite. Again, of course, she can’t be trusted, but still…
This is a lie I see repeated again and again about HIllary Clinton, and I honestly can’t figure out where it’s coming from.
When it comes to health care, I see Clinton as a realist. I want Universal Health Care. It would be miles better than the shit we had before the ACA, and would, obviously, be miles better than the ACA itself.
Thing is, though, that scrapping the ACA and just implementing Universal Health Care would fail miserably. Why? Because there’s no support for it in Congress, the health industry is still too strong, and the people the ACA has helped (I happen to know many, and I’m able to still be on my family’s plan right now because of it, but will have to rely on it even more when I turn 30 next year; and with my anxiety and depression issues, I need health care) will be left in the cold.
Clinton wants to bring back the Public Option. On this I believe her because she campaigned on her own health care plan that included a public option in 2008 and actually fought for it in the ACA when she was in Congress. She voted in favor of it when her colleagues (including President Obama, I’m sad to say) killed it.
The ACA with the public option would be a strong stepping stone in the right direction towards Universal Health Care, assuming we can keep the presidency and congress moving towards the left. But it can’t just be done in one fell swoop. It has to be done incrementally, purely because the culture in congress on it will have to be changed incrementally.
Actually, while it’s true she wouldn’t make the sweeping changes necessary as a first action (which we can hold her feet to the fire on, and I plan to), she does have plans that will help… a lot.
She was. She has also changed her mind with the evidence which, for me, is a good thing. Yes, she has many sins in this area, but she also supports states that legalize marijuana, and wants to change the way we deal with drug offences so that we’re focused on rehabilitation and treatment rather than incarceration. She shouldn’t be easily forgiven for her sins, but she should be allowed to have a change of heart, and all evidence suggests her change is genuine.
This one I cannot disagree with. The way black people are treated by the police today is, at least in small part, her fault (“super predators”), and she needs to answer for that. Interestingly, though, black people by and large (yes, with exceptions) seem to have forgiven her, as they are the main reason she beat Sanders. As a white man, I’m not going to tell black people that they’re wrong.
So here’s her own platform on LGBT rights. Obviously there are omissions, since it’s her website. So I dug deeper…
Here’s a great column by Michelangelo Signorile you should probably read.
You have to scroll down to get the section on LGBT rights (the header is “Hillary Clinton on Gay Rights”), but here’s what On The Issues says about it.
And it’s… mixed. Like the vast majority of Democrats, she’s “evolved” on the issues, only coming out in full support of marriage equality relatively recently. So you are right about that. But she seems determined to support those rights now.
As usual, we will have to hold her feet to the fire, letting her know that, if she wants to stay in office, she better keep her promises to the LGBT community.
Not quite as bad?
I would argue that it’s miles better. Again, On The Issues…
Both are very hard to tolerate. We have a fucking creationist and global warming denier heading the fucking science committee in Congress. The last thing we need is an anti-vax, anti-GMO, pro-Alt Med president.
That said, yes, the Green Party is much more progressive than the Democrats as whole on foreign policy, economics, the climate, and so on. One thing you can never ever criticize the Dems for is being ahead of their time. They tend to follow public opinion. I wish I could say that the Green party participates in shaping it, but I can’t, for the following reason:
Where are the Green party candidates in local and state elections? Where are the Green party candidates running for school board? For Mayor? For Governor? For local judges in local courts? For state congresses?
From what I’ve seen, Jill Stein is just about the only candidate they really run, and only for president. What that tells me is that the Green party doesn’t exist for actual change; they exist as a spoiler… she is the Ralph Nader of 2016.
I admire parties like the various socialist parties who focus nearly all of their attention on local and state elections, working to build a base. The Dems and Repubs have so much power for a lot of various, and many nefarious, reasons, but one of the less nefarious reasons is that they both run candidates at all levels of government, not just federal. You can find Dems and Repubs on ballots from President all the way down to school boards.
Personally, I’ll be voting as left as I possibly can down ticket. That means if a socialist candidate is running, I’ll be voting for them.
But for president?
I won’t be casting my vote for a spoiler who has zero chance of winning. I’ll be voting for the status quo, because as bad as the status quo is right now, it’s better than going way backwards, which is what Trump represents. Then we’ll have four years of holding the Dems’ collective feet to the fire, and Clinton will know that, if she wants a second term, she’ll need to go even more left, or risk losing to a possibly more left candidate. At the very least, we (hopefully) won’t have to worry about Trump in four years, and since I really don’t see the Repubs surviving this intact, we may not even have to worry about them… unless, of course, idealogues like you cause Trump to win…
If you really think things under Trump won’t be that much worse than under Clinton, then I’m sorry, but you’re an idiot. If you’re paying attention at all, then you have to realize the danger Trump represents.
And if you don’t care, then… well… fuck you.