Vote like your life depends on it, because it does: Election Day Open Thread

Well, the senate looks depressingly hopeless, but we’re at 19 more seats to go to flip the house. Counting on you, CA.

@Buttercup Q. Skullpants –

I tend not to vote for people with roman numerals after their name, under the assumption that they come from a dynasty and are therefore less in touch with the needs of ordinary citizens.

Juniors are okay, but III and IV are pushing it.

And Roosh V is way out. 😛

@Alex –

Question 3 in Massachusetts

I just looked that up. What the hell??? People are still pushing the bathroom nonsense? The “no” side video cited here is laughably bad, but there are people who believe that shit, or at least use it as an excuse to discriminate…

Anyway, I really really hope the “no” vote loses. The article I linked to ends on a hopeful note:

A Suffolk University Political Research Center/Boston Globe poll released last week [that would be mid-September] similarly found that 73 percent of voters said they favored keeping the law as it is, while 17 percent said they would vote no and 9 percent said they were undecided.

Fingers metaphorically crossed for this and all midterm votes.

Florida’s ballot measure to restore voting rights to millions of felons who’ve served their sentences is on pace to pass the 60% necessary threshold \

Restoring voting rights to felons aside (and don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy about that!), Florida, you are now worse than Kansas

So excited that Kobach lost! And Sharice Davids, a queer Native American Democrat flipping a house district!

@weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee
BTW just saying this ahead sorry if Orange County votes GOP majority instead of Dems. This place is too damn red for its own good.

@David Futrelle
Yeah seems to be that way. As long as we win the House I can be happy.

DEMS WIN CONTROL OF THE HOUSE
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2018-election/midterms/

FUCKING FINALLY SOME GOD DAMN NEWS TIME TO TURN DONALD TRUMP TO A NEUTERED LAME DUCK

I expected it to happen, but it’s still sad to see the nazis keep control of the senate.

The ABC coverage is totally nauseating. They just blamed Andrew Gillum and Beto O’Rourke for losing by being too left-wing, when they lost by less than a point and 3 points. Meanwhile, Joe Donnelly, Phil Bredesen, and Heidi Heitkamp lose by double digits and these anchors all talk about how they ran the best possible campaign and it was just hopeless for them.

All the while claiming that racism played no factor in people voting for DeSantis.

Question 3 dashes to victory in what’s looking like a pretty good night (all things considered, obvs) for LGBTQetcs

MA question 3 came through the right way.

I voted. In the corner of the small landing at the top of the stairs above which voting was happening. Facing an elevator that worked a few elections ago. Bearing on a novel (presumably scrounged up from the workers).

The only signage at my polling place was “Vote Here [hours]” and “Vote Downstairs”. I can’t stairs. And there were no workers at the top. It took two strangers to get me what I got. And 5-10 minutes to get any response at all. If I weren’t so stubborn, I mightn’t have voted at all. And I wouldn’t have called my county election board. And I wouldn’t have the direct line to the appropriate person on the state election board. But I am and I did. And I hope I will more.

All polling places should be accessible. But at absolute minimum, all the requirements for curbside voting -the route of last resort- should be faithfully met. You’ve got to show and explain the option, have a way to request it at the time and place, respond promptly (I thought I’d been forgotten or ignored), and provide everything needed (clipboard?). Whether or not you’ve had anyone need, because persons in wheelchairs, for example, tend not to patronize business that require stairs. If I hadn’t been so stubborn… But, fortunately, I am.

Which also means I’m currently too caught up in right to vote to try to get much into election results themselves. And I can be ok with that, I think.

@AnyBeth

My county just flipped blue.

I live in a upper middle-class suburb. MY COUNTY WENT BLUE. I didn’t think that was possible.

Bring on the House Committee supeonas. Also looks like my Republican gov got ousted, huzzah!

Does this mean we can finally stop with the doom-and-gloom nonsense? I mean, healthy cynicism is one thing (hell, it’s my superpower), but the whole “Why even try” tone around here lately’s been driving me up the fucking wall.

I’m so happy that Kansas is performing far better than expected. Sharice Davids in the district next door, and possibly Paul Davis here in Topeka, as well as having a definite rejection of Kobach (the biggest bullet dodged). I’m sad to see the Florida news, but can still hold out hope for Georgia (the two other governor races I was really watching besides my own).

Off topic, but has anyone else recently noticed youtube start pushing a HARD right wing slant?

On youtube, you can set up “brand” accounts. I basically use it to segregate my different video interests and focus each account on an interest (music, animation, human rights, etc).

I only have one “political” account, the others are all entertainment related and relatively tame, other than being very gay. So why the ever-living FUCK is youtube constantly barraging me with suggestions such as gamergate videos (“why rey is bad and female characters are devolving”), transphobic propoganda (transition regret documentary), and even anti-feminist compilations. If anything, there should be bleed-over from my main account, resulting in only partially unwanted recommendations of leftist videos.

What’s worse, I’ve repeatedly smashed the “get this shit out of my face” button, and these shitty videos keep coming back. Sure, the vast majority of my recommends are appropriate to the content of the account’s history, but those right-wing videos pop up every day, sticking out like a sore thumb.

I’ve seen lots of stories about people inadvertently falling prey to gateway fascism through youtube, but it seems from this experience that youtube is deliberately trying to indoctrinate people. Unless the alt-right is just so prolific that when youtube looks for generic money-making clickbait videos to coax people to watch, that’s frequently the kind of video that gets picked. But then, regardless if youtube is just trying to make an “honest” profit, if it results in fascist indoctrination, it’s still fascist indoctrination.

Not sure if it’s just youtube, or the internet, but alt-right being the default of society is pretty revolting.

Also congrats to you americans on a few small victories. Here’s to hoping it’s enough to take society and the world back from the brink of insanity (or at least the beginning of turning in the right direction).

I was voter number 19, and we had almost 50% turnout! (We were about 6 voters away from fully 50%) Every race went Democrat, one race (state Senate) had a one vote difference.

My state has mostly done a good so far. Democratic wins for both senate races and governor. We lost house district 8 but picked up 2 and 3. District 8 is rural northern MN and 2 and 3 are Twin Cities suburbs. So not a huge surprise, but I was far from assured about district 2 and 3, so yay!

It sucks about the Senate and Abrams and Gillum, but this is about where the Dems were always expected to end the night at. Picking up some of those governor races is also super important. So, I’m not popping champagne or anything, but very relieved that the House is blue and Trump will not be able to get any new legislation passed.

Now time to immediately focus on 2020. We can do that with slightly less fear now that R control isn’t total.

Does this mean we can finally stop with the doom-and-gloom nonsense? I mean, healthy cynicism is one thing (hell, it’s my superpower), but the whole “Why even try” tone around here lately’s been driving me up the fucking wall.

It’s a potentially good sign that Iowa flipped some seats blue. They’re one of those states that predicts the winner of presidential elections. So take it as a sign they could vote for the D nominee in 2020.

There’s a positive thing for you.

I’ve been so anxious that it’s been impossible to feel positive for me lately. But I feel a little better now, even if the blue wave wasn’t a blue tsunami. I won’t be trying not to cry in my cubicle tomorrow at any rate.

At the risk of spamming, one big project now needs to be unseating Susan Collins in 2020. Buttercup and any other Mainers we might have here, please let us know how we can help in the coming two years.

@weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee
I can at least sleep easier. Yeah sure I still have to worry about my own Cali district probably going red but at least the nation generally is getting back on its good feet.

On behalf of my state, I apologize that Florida once again has it’s head up it’s ass.

At least voting rights for ex-felons passed.

And a big relief that the House really did go blue.

We’ve had a bit of a political shakeup here in Canada. Conservative Tony Clement, a major figure during the Stephen Harper years, has resigned from his parliamentary duties after being the victim of an attempted extortion. Clement admitted to sharing sexually explicit pictures and video with what he thought was a consenting woman, but was apparently someone seeking blackmail material. Given that he was a member of the new National Security Committee, which is charged with overseeing Canada’s intelligence activities, the obvious question is whether a foreign intelligence agency was in any way involved.

@Gaebolga, hopefully the Florida state legislature won’t try to overturn those voting rights.

Waiting for results in my state. They won’t release any results until everyone who was in line when the polls closed is able to cast their ballot.

Polls closed two hours ago and we’re still waiting.

@tim gueguen: I’d say this would be an awesome opportunity for the right wing to re-evaluate their devotion to victim-blaming around revenge porn, but white male conservatives have a long history of gladly shooting themselves in the balls as long as it maintains the status quo.

I feel like MMA fighter, lawer, and congress person is on paper something that the alt-right and misogynistic men would admire as totally alpha.

Except that said congressperson elect is Sharice Davids. Lesbian, Native American, and Democrat. This must be misandry and white genocide.

Some under the radar good news, the North Carolina courts race has gone Democratic, which means that the GOP effort to rig the vote in the state is in danger.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/11/6/1810593/-N-Carolina-elections-are-a-huge-win-for-democracy-paving-the-way-to-strike-down-GOP-gerrymandering

We needed this to have a shot at the state in 2020.

Spamming again, but one of the best reasons to be excited about Angie Craig winning in MN2? GOP incumbent Jason Lewis is basically an MRA.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/18/politics/kfile-jason-lewis/index.html

I mean

Lewis, who was a regular fill-in for Limbaugh’s national radio show, also offered a defense of the right-wing radio host for his comments on Fluke, saying, “Now Limbaugh’s reasoning was, look, if you’re demanding that the taxpayers pay for your contraception, you must use a lot of them and therefore, ergo, you’re very sexually active and in the old days, what we used to call people who were in college or even graduate school who were sexually active, we called them sluts.”

A GOP congressman once lamented not being able to call women ‘sluts’ anymore
By Andrew Kaczynski, Chris Massie and Nathan McDermott, CNN

Updated 4:32 PM ET, Wed July 18, 2018

(CNN)A Republican congressman from Minnesota has a long history of making deeply misogynistic comments on the radio, including lamenting that women can no longer be called “sluts.”

CNN’s KFile reviewed several months of audio from Rep. Jason Lewis on the “Jason Lewis Show,” a syndicated radio program Lewis hosted from 2009 until 2014 with the tagline “America’s Mr. Right.” In one instance, while arguing that “young single women” vote based on coverage of birth control pills, Lewis said those women were not human beings and were without brains.
Lewis, who was narrowly elected to represent Minnesota’s 2nd District in 2016, is considered one of the most endangered House Republicans in the midterm election. CNN rates the race as a “toss up,” the most competitive designation.
Lewis can be heard on the radio repeatedly demeaning women, and particularly women voters, in 15 months of audio provided to KFile by Michael Brodkorb, the former deputy chair of the Republican Party of Minnesota. Brodkorb, who is currently a columnist for the MinnPost and works in public affairs, initially revealed some of Lewis’ radio comments in a column in February 2016. KFile contacted Brodkorb after seeing his 2016 column and requested raw audio files of Lewis’ show, which he provided.
When radio host Rush Limbaugh called women’s rights activists and then-graduate student Sandra Fluke “a slut” in February 2012, Lewis repeatedly expressed disbelief that people could no longer refer to women as sluts.
“Well, the thing is, can we call anybody a slut? This is what begs the question. Take this woman out of it, take Rush out of it for a moment,” Lewis said in a March 2012 episode. “Does a woman now have the right to behave — and I know there’s a double standard between the way men chase women and running and running around — you know, I’m not going to get there, but you know what I’m talking about. But it used to be that women were held to a little bit of a higher standard. We required modesty from women. Now, are we beyond those days where a woman can behave as a slut, but you can’t call her a slut?”

Fluke, a law student at Georgetown at the time, found herself at the center of a national controversy in early 2012 after Limbaugh attacked her following her testimony to a Democratic congressional group. In her testimony, Fluke said that students paid as much as $1,000 a year for contraceptives and made the case that religious institutions should cover birth control. She said she was “stunned” and “outraged” by Limbaugh’s remarks.
Lewis, who was a regular fill-in for Limbaugh’s national radio show, also offered a defense of the right-wing radio host for his comments on Fluke, saying, “Now Limbaugh’s reasoning was, look, if you’re demanding that the taxpayers pay for your contraception, you must use a lot of them and therefore, ergo, you’re very sexually active and in the old days, what we used to call people who were in college or even graduate school who were sexually active, we called them sluts.”
He continued, “Especially if you want somebody to pay for it. Now you know, obviously that’s a stretch. It was meant as an aspect of entertainment radio.”
He continued, “But have we really got to the point where you can’t refer to Madonna as a slut without being sued? I mean, Madonna has had a series of lovers, as have many in Hollywood. Now in the old days, what did we call this? Madonna dresses up in these sorts of prostitute-like outfits on stage, and she goes there and she sings and she shows half of her body. What did we call those people? 30 years ago? 40 years ago? 50 years ago? You can’t do that today, it’s too politically incorrect?”

Lewis, during a December 2012 segment on changes in the culture, said, “Only we can tell our young women, ‘don’t look like some slut and you won’t get hit on.'”

A GOP congressman once lamented not being able to call women ‘sluts’ anymore
By Andrew Kaczynski, Chris Massie and Nathan McDermott, CNN

Updated 4:32 PM ET, Wed July 18, 2018

A Republican congressman from Minnesota has a long history of making deeply misogynistic comments on the radio, including lamenting that women can no longer be called “sluts.”

Lewis, during a December 2012 segment on changes in the culture, said, “Only we can tell our young women, ‘don’t look like some slut and you won’t get hit on.'”

In a statement, Lewis’ campaign defended his comments.
“This has all been litigated before, and as Congressman Lewis has said time and time again, it was his job to be provocative while on the radio,” Lewis’ campaign manager Becky Alery said in a statement.
Lewis’ time as a radio show host initially came under scrutiny during the 2016 campaign. In addition to Brodkorb’s column, The Atlantic magazine dubbed Lewis Minnesota’s “Mini Trump” in an article that reviewed a sampling of comments he made about women and minorities, including a comment in which he called young female voters “ignorant of the important issues in life” who needed to be educated.

He added, “One of the reasons that the Democrats love the quote unquote female issue is because they know women vote more liberally than men do. Now you could say in a very, very sexist, misogynistic way that, ‘well, that’s because women just don’t understand money. They don’t understand, they’re, they don’t handle finances. They’re guided by emotion not reason. Why, that’s why they didn’t have the vote for a full century in the country.’ Well, it is true that women cast more votes for Democrats. All I’m saying, I’m not validating the stereotype. I’m married to a woman for heaven’s sakes, but I will say this: Do not, do not pander and move left to get the female vote.”

@Jane Done

About the youtube videos: I got really sick being inundated with alt right stuff whenever I would look at any political stuff too (Top 10 SJW FAILS,etc.) Eventually, after YouTube didn’t really change anything (even if I said I didn’t like those videos) I found a few extensions that will allow you to block YT from suggesting videos from specific channels. Once I blocked all the big troublemakers (Lauren Southern, Milo, Ben Shapiro, Thunderf00t etc) I have been getting almost no alt right suggestions, or least way, way less. The one I’m currently using is called BlockTube. It might sound like a lot of work to block all those channels and it will take a while, but it’s very easy to add them to your block list. Personally, I think it’s worth it, and I’m very proud of my blocked channels list. 🙂

Holy fuck. Blockquote Mammoth made a return. Sorry about that.

Anyway, spamming again, but I just found out that Dave Hutch won my county’s (Hennepin) sheriff race. Incumbent Rich Stanek sent cops to Standing Rock to put down the protests, coordinates with ICE and has been all pissy about Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey’s commitment to having us as a sanctuary city.

So glad Stanek is ousted. People don’t normally pay attention to sheriff races, but Hennepin county voters clearly wanted to vote against ICE tonight. Yay!

Well, it looks like things turned out more or less as the polls predicted. Actually, in terms of tangible losses I think the GOP got off relatively easy. They lost the House, but did very well in the Senate, and they won a few high-profile gubernatorial races… so to me, it looks like a wave election, but not one of historic significance. You can’t lose ground in the Senate and call it a tsunami.

The margin of the Democrats’ popular vote win is interesting, though – IIRC, roughly in line with the Republicans’ margin in 2010. But while it’s a nice talking point, in the ends it’s seats that matter.

A good night for the Democrats, but not a great one. As a “wave” it seems roughly in line with the 2014 midterms: that year the GOP won REALLY big in the Senate but only added a handful of representatives and governorships.

With the Dems winning the House, I have 2 hopes:
That the Repubs will realize their slavish boot licking of Trump won’t get them elected, so they can start acting like they represent their electorate, and stop ass kissing the wanna-be dictator.
And that the wanna-be dictator gets so outraged by the outcome that he pulls a Rumplestiltskin. (Apparently, he is still baffled at why Roy Moore lost after he stumped for him.)

Something odd: on Saturday Nov 3, I found a door hanger for Stacey Abrams on my porch with my polling place listed (a tabernacle).
Except my polling place is my local elementary school – I double checked it last week and after I got the door hanger.
Hubby & I voted early, at a different location, so it didn’t matter to us, but I can only wonder if it was an accident (someone crossed a precinct boundary & didn’t realize it) or something more nefarious?

@Jane Done, WWTH: Possibly the problem videos are paid placements. There’s a lot of dark money backing right wing causes, from the older usual suspects like the Kochs and from the newer ones like Putin’s goons.

AnyBeth You deserve a medal, or at least, a gold plated “I Voted” sticker.
I should think that using a building without handicap access as a polling place would be illegal. Is there any state that doesn’t require public buildings to be handicap accessible (though churches might be exempt from these laws)?

Trans and in Florida here. I won’t pretend I’m not disappointed with the results, but I’m trying to look at the fact that it was so close and take it to mean that more people care around here than I thought.

Either way, I still hate the weather, so this is hopefully the last time I vote in Florida. I’ve been eyeballing Seattle, but if anyone’s got a recommendation for me, I could certainly use some more options to research.

lamenting that women can no longer be called “sluts.”

And I lament that women can no longer slap men across the face when they behave like sexist cads and their menfolk can’t take them out behind the barn to thrash some manners into them.
I mean, that would be assault & illegal (just like touching women without their consent) so I really don’t advocate for it but if you are longing for the “good old days”, are you advocating for this too?

May it be so. . . .

Opinion
US midterms 2018
Donald Trump’s unchecked hold on power has come to an end
Richard Wolffe

The midterm elections just fundamentally changed the president’s life. He may not know it yet, but he soon will

It turns out that so-called populism isn’t all that popular. It turns out that suburban women voters don’t much like forcing family separations and slashing healthcare coverage. After reading all those interviews with Trump voters in small-town diners, who knew?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/07/trump-unchecked-power-end-midterms

As far as I know, Youtube hasn’t been recommending me much in the way of right-wing videos. I mean, I’ve got video game and tabletop gaming interests, which sometimes intersect with entitled dudebros, but on the rare occasions where I stumble across someone overtly right-wing, I scrub them from my watch history and that all but removes those suggestions entirely.

It’s not impossible that some of the more apolitical channels I watch secretly harbor right-wing views, but if they do, they keep it under their hats pretty well.

I get a ton of leftie-type suggestions. Contrapoints, Seth Meyers, Lindsay Ellis, etc. And I mean I click on them a lot so I guess the algorithm has got my number.

(The most baffling suggestions I got were the dashcam car crash compilations. I’m not sure why Youtube thinks I want to see those. I guess because sometimes there are cool things that get caught on dashcam footage and youtube assumes I like all dashcam footage.)

I wonder if living in Canada makes a difference- maybe the right-wing targeting is focused on bigger-ticket places like the States.

@calmdown: awesome, thanks for the recommendation. And it’s no bother, blocking shitty people is one of my favourite pastimes, in no small part because it pisses off alt-right trolls when they’re not allowed to shove their disgusting views in your face.

@Surplus: yeah I have no doubt money is involved, just surprised at the sudden change and the in-your-face-ness of it all, especially on a platform that demonitises and shadowbans respectful, humanising lgbt content. Oh, wait, guess that kind of explains it.

@Catalpa: see, that’s the thing. Obviously on my main channel I don’t get anything nasty recommended, but on my secondary channels that, for lack of a better term, are apolitical and only have music etc in watch history, I get alt-right suggestions. It’s like the default is alt-right, or rather that everyone is attempted to being indoctrinated.

@Jane Done
“blocking shitty people is one of my favourite pastimes”

Honestly, same.

*or rather youtube attempts to indoctrinate everyone, until their left-leaning views are confirmed (damn edit time limit, can’t grammar under stress)

I voted early and, to my great joy, just saw our wonderful Kate Brown retain her job as Oregon governor! Plus, Democrat Peter DeFazio once again is going to D.C. as our Congressman. So far, almost all in my state went Democrat.

On an equally happy note, we now have more women governors and more women in Congress. And they are a full rainbow of colors! Yay! Something is shifting and I sincerely hope that this is just the beginning.

I know that quite a few Native Americans, many women, also ran for office. Anyone know how many made it?

Oh, one more thing – I am given to understand that one of the first things the new House will do is subpoena Trumps tax returns.

I am Soooo excited! I cannot wait to see that evil being revealed for the liar and thief that he is.

Via The Guardian:

After calling the night a “tremendous success” earlier, Trump is now tweeting praise of himself.

Of course he is…

I’m mostly going to be intrigued by the voter turnout results, and what they augur for 2020.

Scott Walker just went down. And I don’t mean the singer, or in the fun way.