vote for the one most likely to remove a republican.
it’s that simple.
Vote them out.
Vote for the candidate that sees every person as a human being.
not if they can’t win, buddy. i’m serious. LISTEN. VOTE OUT THE REPUBLICANS. EVEN IF THAT MEANS VOTING IN SOME REGULAR ASSHOLES.
if the candidate who sees every person as a human being is green party, then you vote for the democrat who sees every person as a stepping stone, because unless we get rid of the republican who sees every person as a target a lot of us are going to goddamn die. people are dying already. like, not to guilt you, but if we don’t get a democratic majority in the house and senate ASAP we’re screwed.
it doesn’t fucking matter if you voted for Jesus Actual Christ if he was running on a penny ante party ticket. we need you to vote for Joe Slick Bastard Democrat instead, because there is no such thing as a green party majority in the senate, do you understand? there will not be a green party speaker of the house. green party will not get to put up supreme court nominees.
if you vote for the Good People instead of the democrats, we’re gonna end up back in this toilet bowl again, only deeper this time because the republicans will take it as a mandate to do whatever they want.
take a deep breath, put on rubber gloves, and touch the poop. don’t be precious.
In the primary you vote for the best candidate. In the general you vote for the person who can remove the Republican. You have your chance to do both.
In the primary you vote for the best candidate. In the general you vote for the person who can remove the Republican.
I read on another post “this is about setting the difficulty of our boss battle for the next two years” and that is absolutely true. You’re not voting for someone you agree with, you’re not voting for someone who is perfect or great or even good.
You are voting for the person who is a) going to get elected and b) is easiest to fight for what you need. Until we move the needle, the best we can expect is ‘the best of all enemies’ and not ‘an ally’.
We did this in Canada.
And guess what?
IT FUCKING WORKED.
We don’t have an awesome government, and it’s not the Prime Minister I would have liked or thought was the best or the party I would have normally voted for. The Stop Harper movement got him out, it defeated the Conservative Government resoundingly, and while it’s not ideal, it’s a far cry better and easier to work with than what we had before. It wasn’t the man who was described as ‘Stalinistic’ by his OWN party members.
This is called Tactical Voting here in the UK and I have been doing it my entire adult life (because our voting system here is stupid in its own special way) but the thing is, @aperskicketylemon is right, it works. It doesn’t give you the MP from heaven, much less the government from heaven, but it can upset the government from hell, remove them from office or undermine their parliamnetary majority enogh to stifle the worst of their impulses. It WORKS.
Hey so friendly reminder about voting and elections that I haven’t seen going around yet but is SUPER IMPORTANT.
Watch what you wear and say while you’re waiting in line for the voting booth/at the polls. It is against federal law to do anything that might be considered campaigning once you’re there, and since we know that voter suppression is the name of the game this election, there will be people looking for ANY reason to remove you from the polling place. And they will nitpick. You have a shirt with a artistic picture of donkey on it? You’re visibly supporting the Democrats, you’re disqualified from voting. Want to wear a Black Lives Matter shirt? Not there you don’t. They’ll call it intimidation and kick you out. Pins, buttons, stickers, none of it. Wear the most bland, plain clothes you can imagine.
And then keep your mouth shut. Even the slightest hint of discussion about which candidate you’re voting for can get used against you. Don’t assume the people around you are safe to discuss it with. You might be overheard. There WILL people watching for these things, hoping to get rid of anyone they can. Voter suppression isn’t just about making registration impossible. It happens at the polling stations too. Be smart, be bland, be quiet, and make sure your vote gets in.
Also- and I have seen this mentioned but it bears repeating- DO NOT TAKE A PICTURE OF YOUR BALLOT. EVER. It’ll also disqualify your vote. Take a selfie when you’re out of their with your fun little sticker.
This is for your protection as much as your oppression: this means the opposition party can’t use those tactics against you either – and if anyone tries, REPORT THEM.
US peeps! Do you have a plan for Tuesday? Know where your polling place is, and how you’ll get there? Know when you’re going? Pick a time and treat it like a super important appointment (BECAUSE IT IS) and allow for lines and delays. Maybe there won’t be, maybe you’ll breeze right in, vote, and breeze out with your I VOTED sticker, but build in the time anyway.
If you’re voting on an electronic machine, DOUBLE CHECK YOUR BALLOT BEFORE YOU SUBMIT IT. I’m hearing that some systems uncheck things, or change straight ticket D to straight ticket R if you hit particular buttons before screens load all the way (isn’t that interesting) so be sure that doesn’t happen to you. Me, I always choose paper, but I don’t know if that’s an option everywhere.
Whatever you do, VOTE! It may seem a small and insignificant thing, and the trashfire we’re facing so much bigger than anything you can do, but do whatever you can, even so. Each of us doing small things–it adds up. Snowflakes and avalanches, right? And voting isn’t as small and insignificant as it seems, or the fuckers wouldn’t be working so hard to stop so many people from doing it.
Reblogging for US friends, and because the note about the e-voting machines needs to be publicised.
vote for the one most likely to remove a republican.
it’s that simple.
Vote them out.
Vote for the candidate that sees every person as a human being.
not if they can’t win, buddy. i’m serious. LISTEN. VOTE OUT THE REPUBLICANS. EVEN IF THAT MEANS VOTING IN SOME REGULAR ASSHOLES.
if the candidate who sees every person as a human being is green party, then you vote for the democrat who sees every person as a stepping stone, because unless we get rid of the republican who sees every person as a target a lot of us are going to goddamn die. people are dying already. like, not to guilt you, but if we don’t get a democratic majority in the house and senate ASAP we’re screwed.
it doesn’t fucking matter if you voted for Jesus Actual Christ if he was running on a penny ante party ticket. we need you to vote for Joe Slick Bastard Democrat instead, because there is no such thing as a green party majority in the senate, do you understand? there will not be a green party speaker of the house. green party will not get to put up supreme court nominees.
if you vote for the Good People instead of the democrats, we’re gonna end up back in this toilet bowl again, only deeper this time because the republicans will take it as a mandate to do whatever they want.
take a deep breath, put on rubber gloves, and touch the poop. don’t be precious.
In the primary you vote for the best candidate. In the general you vote for the person who can remove the Republican. You have your chance to do both.
In the primary you vote for the best candidate. In the general you vote for the person who can remove the Republican.
I read on another post “this is about setting the difficulty of our boss battle for the next two years” and that is absolutely true. You’re not voting for someone you agree with, you’re not voting for someone who is perfect or great or even good.
You are voting for the person who is a) going to get elected and b) is easiest to fight for what you need. Until we move the needle, the best we can expect is ‘the best of all enemies’ and not ‘an ally’.
The point of voting blue in 2018 isn’t to make the US perfect. We cannot accomplish that in one fell swoop. There’s gerrymandering, voter apathy, voter suppression, and generations of older party-line fucks we have to deal with.
Voting blue in 2018 is to make it lessimmediately threatening for PoC, LGBT+ people, the disabled, and any other marginalized demographic. It’s a stopgap against Republicans who are aligned with Nazis, white supremacists, and sexual abusers.
Correcting politics in the United States is going to take decades of new voters staying on top of politics and not falling prey to apathy, like our predecessors.
People telling you not to waste a vote on 3rd Party this midterm aren’t saying “never vote 3rd party.” Republicans have united behind one utterly heinous front.We need to unite behind Democrats, for the time being.
unless you’re planning on starting and completing a socialist revolution by november 6th there is absolutely no reason to abstain from voting. it is not a blood pact. you are not beholden to democrats when you vote for them over abstaining. there IS a lesser of two evils and it’s not inaction. every republican voted in kavanaugh and only one democrat did. statistically we are literally safer with democrats in office.
and no, i’m not planning on relinquishing communist ideals in deference to dems. i just don’t think as black and white as “anything short of a communist revolution is useless.” roe v wade is in jeopardy and women WILL die if it gets overturned. leftists sitting on their asses are about as useful as the thoughts and prayers of school shootings
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.
Rebellions are built on hope 