@on the cusp

very careful to conceal any trace of the party affiliations of all the "non-partisan" offices, like judges, school board, dogcatcher, yadda yadda- in other words, any places where grassroots change might occur. God forbid that we should know which cult the candidates belong to.

Luckily, I have to drive by an ultrarepublican neighbor on one of those 5-acre plots that flies a Gadsden flag, and has a little barn and a wagon that they completely wallpaper with ads for all the republicans running for *anything*. So I just have to take a picture of their place so that I know who to vote against, in the odd case that I might vote in a race. I consider them to be doing a public service of a sort, even though it takes them about 6 months to clean up all the ads after each election...

It's gotten a lot easier since I don't vote for dems anymore either. That reduces the stress of possibly letting one slip though.

I like the county judge, despise the person running as an independent against him.
About the only other races I am interested in involve appellate court judges. Ds make better appellate judges, as a rule. That Cisneros can kiss my ass. I know nothing of the R opponent. I will decide whether to punish Cisneros tomorrow.

@MrWebster
Why knott?

For all positions.

@Enchantress  
If I were Floridian, due to the D party’s long and deep history of DWS-style shenanigans I would be hard pressed to bring myself to vote for D’s.

Everyone makes fun of Florida for voting for all these evil Republicans. But the Democrats don't run anyone worth voting for. Even my Rep. Matt Gaetz (FL-1) is against funding Ukraine. That makes him more anti-war than the squad.

DeSantis has made it harder for people to vote absentee so tomorrow I have to stand in line. Making people apply for absentee ballots is mostly going to hurt the elderly and the disabled. Voting against a tax increase tomorrow. My county wants a one cent sales tax for the next 30 years. Not happening.

@Cassiodorus

I received a text ten days ago from the campaign for Randy Sparacino, who is running for State Senate in my district in Oregon after having been the Mayor of Medford. Here is part of his text:

"We can't afford more of Kate Brown and Tina Kotek's far-left policies."

Sorry, but anyone who thinks that ANY Democrat is "far-left" is either playing me for a fool, or has actually drunk the cult Kool-Aid himself. The Democrats could actually shrink the Republican cult if they wanted to -- but to do so they would have to govern as if the people mattered, and they are too hung up on donor support to do that. So instead they govern as if the Republicans were a cudgel to be used against the rest of us: "you better support our pointless wars, or we'll let the Republicans win another one." And indeed they will let the Republicans win another one, pretty soon now.

@fire with fire seems to have an idealized and distorted picture of so-called "independents". Actually they are relatively few in number. Most independents regularly vote for one party or the other.

On Biden's "landslide", only in the popular vote (a 7m vote margin, usually the stuff of landslides) which, in every other democracy in the world, is what counts. But not in our stupid antidemocratic system. Btw, I expect plenty more Electoral College mischief come 2024, as R state legislators might decide to tweak their state laws on allocating EC votes, regardless of how the voters vote, and also as newly-elected Trumpeter Secretaries of State here and there in swing states will have their hands directly on the election machinery as votes are cast, and can be expected to take and follow through on desperate Trump phone calls if necessary. If it does indeed play out as I fear, that will just about spell Finis to what's left of our experiment in democracy.

Re the attempted coup d'etat, it seems consistent with the way strongman mafia boss Trump is used to operating -- with fear and intimidation and even violence when necessary to enable him to once again get his way. What matters is whether the coup plotters thought it was rational, or perhaps the only card left to be played, all other attempts in the courts and with backroom phone calls having failed. And who's to say, with a tweak here and there in personnel in the right places, or with a corrupt SS getting Pence out of the way to an undisclosed location for his own protection of course, that it might have succeeded. At the very least, I'd say the violent mob that day did enough damage and came close enough to thwarting a peaceful transfer of power that it was a major relief when it was ultimately turned back.

1. I have nothing but contempt for Elon Musk, but his quoted tweet is reasonable. Voting to prevent both parties from total control of the two active branches of government assumes that the blue and red teams are really at odds with each other in significant ways. Based on their respective palaver, this seems to be true, but I don't buy that take, and I will not follow his advice and will instead avoid voting.

The tweet is clearly not an endorsement of the Republicans, and voting blue will not "stop" Musk from doing anything. This is pure bullshit.

2. Biden did not win by a a "landslide". More bullshit clearly fishing for true believers of Blue Team dementia. It was the second cliffhanger election in a row, with razor thin margins in four states providing the Electoral College victory

3."Traitors" -- bandying this term around is worse than bullshit. This carries on the absurd tradition of accusing the opposing party of fundamental illegitimacy. The average citizen has heard both parties push this bullshit line against each other non stop for the last six years, seriously undermining respect for "our democracy." I don't believe we can maintain civilization while our leadership keeps trying to put each other in jail while claiming that the prosecutions are in the offing. The sine qua non of democracy is accepting defeat at the polls and both parties claim that we are a banana republic. They are both right.

4. "Coup d'etat." Biden was inaugurated on schedule and the prosecutions of those accused of breaking the law are moving forward, albeit slowly. At best/worst, you could call the riot an attempted coup. That asserts that there was a meeting of the "minds" among somebodies who really thought that occupying the Capitol would somehow keep Trump in office. If such people exist, they are too stupid to fear. Personally, I have lost all patience with the voices who up-play the event into a serious attempt to overthrow the government. This email is fishing for that group of hard core fantasts.

5. Of course the Red Team is no better. I am old enough to remember the Goldwater movement. One of the books in its world view was called "None Dare Call it Treason." I was only 11 years old, but I joined in the general belly laugh at such lunacy. Now the Democrats have embraced the same rhetorical strategy, bumping the boobs with it to get out the vote.

6. I don't vote.

@fire with fire Biden's popular vote MOV should more correctly be called a "near-landslide" -- as this is seen in the context of the highly partisan, sharply divided, nearly 50-50 political landscape of recent times with a diminished population of swing voters. And it seems like you are trying to diminish Biden's, shall we call it "sizable", 7m margin of victory in the popular. Yes, the PV is not the decisive factor, but it's also not irrelevant in evaluating the nature of the victory.

Re the campaign email, it's ridiculous but all too typical of campaign season emails sent by both sides -- the distorted assertions and overripe rhetoric and overdone urgency is baked into the emotional appeal, and should be taken with a grain of salt and maybe a shot of spiritus frumenti.

Leaving aside the perennial argument about the wisdom of indirect voting such as employed by the US and the United Kingdom, looking at the reported popular vote in 2020, Biden received 51.3% to Trump's 46.8 a margin of 4.5%. In somebody's wishful thinking, that is a landslide. I won't call that cultish, just wishful.

I can relate to the idea that, as bad as the current Democrats are, the Republican are even worse. If one wants to make that point, one should make the point clearly and avoid defending obvious bullshit like the ridiculous outreach email at the top of this thread.