Yes, It’s a Midterm, But It’s Much More Important Than You May Realize

by Doug

OK, kids, time for some thoughts.

This is a really important election, perhaps the most important in your lifetime. It doesn’t matter who you are. You need to vote. Get all of your friends to vote. Yes, I know some of you think the parties are the same. They are not. Some of you have never voted for anyone with a “D” after their name before. It’s time to start. There are four big issues that will be decided by the federal government in the next couple of years, and if they go the wrong way it is, to me, unclear that the US will ever again be the country we know.

1. A woman’s right to control her body. Numerous politicians, across the country, have said that they support a total ban on abortion (and several are adding birth control to that.) If a woman does not have any say in whether or not she carries a fetus to term and gives birth, she is not a citizen, or even a person. She is a reproductive machine, livestock. It is shocking that anyone with a mother, or wife, or sister, or daughter would think that this is appropriate. But of course those politicians know that it doesn’t really apply to them… if they, or their daughter, or their mistress needs a quick abortion it will always be available to them.
2. Numerous jurisdictions are making it much more difficult, or even impossible, for people who they do not want to vote, to vote. In some areas virtually all polling locations within a precinct have been closed, resulting in hours-long voting lines. Voter rolls are purged illegally. Note that there is NO statistically significant voter fraud in the US, and that the majority of voters charged with, and convicted of, fraud have been wealthy republicans. It’s simply not a problem… but if you can disenfranchise your opponent’s supporters, it’s pretty easy to “win” your election. Don’t let people run the election system who think only their friends should vote.
3. There are literally hundreds of 2020 election deniers running for office. Many have already told their supporters what they will do “to be sure it never happens again…” they plan to change state laws so that instead of presidential electors being elected by popular vote they are simply appointed by state governors or legislatures (depending on which is more reliably republican in that particular state.)
4. And just in case you’ve spent a lot of time under a rock recently and missed this one, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy goofed and posted this on his official website recently. Of course someone noticed and he took it down right away, but also, of course, screen shots exist and the internet never forgets… The republicans are indeed preparing to put Social Security and medicare on the chopping block if they get a majority in the house, and to enact massive cuts if they get majorities in both chambers. The proposal on his website was to create a needs test where anyone with any kind of pension or post-retirement benefit would be ineligible for Social Security (and I think Medicare as well). Yep, I know that SS is not part of the Federal budget. I assume McCarthy knows that as well. Yes, I know that I and you – but significantly, NOT McCarthy – has(have) paid into it our entire working life/lives with the understanding that it would be there for us when we retired. Yes, I know that it is actually solvent, and will continue to be for decades if the republicans would only pay back the trillions they have borrowed from it to fund huge tax cuts for billionaires. What I do NOT know is how anyone who is counting on SS or Medicare (which is, in fact, everyone I know even kind of close to my age) can vote republican , knowing this. Do people think that even if this happens they will somehow get Social Security? Do they think there is some magic “Middle class white person” exemption from the proposed benefit needs test? And hell, with these current republican politicians, I suppose there could be.

Kansas, as red a state as there is, protected a woman’s right to choose in the primary election in 2022 but only because it was a popular vote by the people. If it had been a decision by legislative body politicians, Kansas would now be a zero tolerance abortion state… Before the leaders of the state republican party, while publicly saying they had no plans to restrict abortion, told supporters in closed-door meetings that the law had already been drafted to make any post-conception interference with a pregnancy a felony; and that it would be announced the day after the results of the primary were finalized. Fortunately they did NOT have that opportunity.

Come on, people, vote. Vote Blue. Please!

As you may have guessed, all of these proposals are deeply unpopular with the public, but if the majority doesn’t bother to vote, that doesn’t matter.