Maybe later we can vote on changing that hideous seal?
I only realized this weekend that we have an election this Tuesday. I’m so used to thinking of elections happening in November that I almost overlooked it.
At least deciding who to vote for is easy: if they are a Republican, there’s no way any sane individual could support them. Democrats, as usual, are an undisciplined mess, and somehow, multiple candidates are running as Democrats. Who to vote for? I propose a simple rule: vote for the incumbent Democrats. Normally, that would be a way to perpetuate lackluster leadership, but right now, with Evil in the opposing slot, we need as simple and clear a rubric as possible. So, yeah, I’m going to vote for boring, uninspiring Walz for governor.
Other obvious answers you already know for winnowing down the field: don’t vote for amusing weirdos, so no, we don’t want Captain Jack Sparrow for lieutenant governor. Don’t be seduced by tangential issues: I’m entirely in favor of legalizing marijuana, but do we really need two new parties, the Legalize Marijuana Now party and the Grassroots Legalize Cannabis Party, to advocate for a single issue? No, we do not, they’re just splitting the liberal vote.
This year, we should be all about holding the line presenting a solid front, and less about revolutionary actions. We can get radical when fewer people’s lives are on the line, and believe me, when Republicans get elected, people will die.
QFT.
Notable among those who will die are pregnant girls and women.
The GOP/christofascist badly misnamed prolifers have decided that children getting pregnant and being forced to give birth is actually OK.
The prenatal and postnatal outcomes of children’s babies are also less favorable than older women’s.
I took a look at The Great Seal. The farmer depicted does not have shoes.
@2 But the Native American on horseback does! :P
@2
Well that’s just not good from an occupational health and safety front. Apart from being near a tool with a cutting edge there could be anything in those fields.
While it doesn’t always produce the outcomes I would prefer, at least here in Australia with preferential ranked voting we have less chance of vote splitting (and used it to oust our conservatives from government recently).
@1 “The prenatal and postnatal outcomes of children’s babies are also less favorable than older women’s.”
How are we defining “older women”? Asking because I am expecting to see a wave of maternal mortality in 40 and 50 something women in the red states, where abortion is now banned and birth control is increasingly hard to get.
Pregnancy can be (and frequently was) a death sentence before Roe and the birth control pill for middle-aged women who found themselves pregnant.
I am expecting the US life expectancy to take an overall hit, in no small part because of the antiabortion laws in the red states, both due to maternal morbidity in teen and preteen (!) mothers (witness the 10 year old rape victim, whom the forced birther crowd would have forced to give “live birth”–as if that was a likely outcome) and in middle-aged women, just as surely as the average life expectancy in Afghanistan plunged after the Taliban took over. And for pretty much the same reasons.
“Republicans are evil” seems to work out well for corporatist, neoliberal Democrats. Good strategy.
If we all did a better job tending our gardens – that is, knowing when state and local elections are happening and who’s running in them – we wouldn’t be where we are. All we can do about national politics is vote every two years and we can’t do anything about elections in other states, but that’s where we’re putting all our energy and attention.
Bring it all back to town halls and county commissions and we can build a strong national party from there.
“I’m entirely in favor of legalizing marijuana, but do we really need two new parties, the Legalize Marijuana Now party and the Grassroots Legalize Cannabis Party, to advocate for a single issue? No, we do not, they’re just splitting the liberal vote.”
Doesn’t seem so much like the candidates are concerned with legalizing marijuana as they are in seizing political opportunity–and a public paycheck–for themselves.
Yet another way the Democrats are busy seizing defeat from the jaws of victory.
Ranked voting would go a long way in eliminating this nonsense.
It’s true, white Minnesotans don’t wear shoes. It gets pretty rough in February, leading to many Minnesotans lacking toes.
… when Republicans get elected, people will die.
For specific data, see People in Republican Counties Have Higher Death Rates Than Those in Democratic Counties:
And they calculated that before the COVID-19 figures came in…
” the Legalize Marijuana Now party and the Grassroots Legalize Cannabis Party”
Five will get you ten that at least one if not both of those are astro-turf orgs funded by Republican backers specifically for the purpose of splintering the Dem/Progressive vote.
I haven’t missed an election since moving to Washington, because I receive a postage-paid mail-in ballot in the mail for every election. The information booklet includes party, education, experience and a statement from each candidate. This information is written by the candidates themselves, so it’s very revealing. Every state should do it this way.
At this point, I mainly just want to vote out everyone in the Democratic Party establishment.
In particular, at the end of this month, we in my (new) congressional district have to choose between Sean Patrick Maloney, who is BTW in charge of using Democratic Party funds to fund Republican nominees’ campaigns, and a relative newcomer — Alessandra Biaggi — who seems to be in the mould of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Maybe someday we can depose high-handed Democratic (=Repulican-lite) polititions who just want to continue Business As Usual — e.g., Dianne Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi.
Always interesting to see people convert to the idea that the US has to become a failed state in order to save us from the various things it is making worse (climate change, authoritarianism, poverty, etc.). I mean, that’s what’s happening here, that’s the only way that “vote for known bad candidates” makes any sense as a strategy. It’s like sticking with a doctor who refuses to remove a rapidly-growing tumor from a patient because you’re worried that the patient’s general health is getting worse and they might not survive the operation — a ridiculous standpoint that would not hold up under scrutiny. Surprised to see PZ making the change, though.
PZ:
Strange reasoning here. If fewer people’s lives were on the line, the argument would be that it means there’s less reason to get radical.
And of course, Dems nationally have majorities in both houses of congress and they have the presidency.. In Minnesota, DFL has all the top executive positions (Governor, Lt. Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, Auditor), a majority in the House, and (with two former-DFL independents) 33 seats compared to 34 for Republicans in the Senate…. This is the type of moment when you’ve judged things are just too fucking awful, but you’re saying to yourself (and arguing publicly) “yes, please, more of the same, because I’m afraid it could get even worse.” It is an abusive relationship.
I’d like to propose a new motto for the Dems in this election cycle:
More democracy. Less lying.
This is to counter those lazy sometime voters who tell you, “Oh, they’re all the same.”
For folks in the Saint Paul-Minneapolis area, Naomi Kritzer does a regular election guide on her blog. I’m not even from Minnesota, but I find her posts useful on how to research local candidates, as well as quickly identifying which people would actually be able to do the job, and which are ‘I don’t think this person remembers they are running for office’.
(She’s also explained why Miinesota has two pot-related parties, and that occasionally unrelated candidates run under the banner. She describes the governor candidates for the two weed parties as ‘a Green running on a weed party ticket’ and ‘a Libertarian running on a weed party ticket’.)
Re: The Vicar @ #14..
That actually happens, not quite literally, but close. I was scheduled for an operation to fix a displaced fracture of the right tibial plateau (i.e. a broken leg). About an hour before this were supposed to get started–I was already in the pre-op area being prepped–the anesthesiologist looked at my chart and refused to put me under general anesthesia for fear I’d never wake up. He’d just discovered that I’d have a triple coronary bypass about ten years earlier.
Pointing out that the leg still needed to operated on and the heart condition wasn’t going the change, didn’t persuade. After a bunch of phone calls, a short visit from a staff cardiologist, and shift change (so different anesthesiologist, the operation proceeded.