So today, I heard DFL Party Chair Ken Martin giving the You Betha award to “all of the DFL women in the Senate who maintained composure while the extremist white men in the Republican party explained to them how abortion works, for 11 hours, except of course Lindsey Port.” Or words to that effect. (Listen to the original here.)

Why was Senator Port exempted from the Straight Face award? Have a look.

Click to see face palm:

.@Lindsey_Port is all of us right now #mnleg pic.twitter.com/SU4rzbOnOu

— Brook Weber (@Brook_Weber) January 28, 2023

@Lindsey_Port is all of us right now #mnleg pic.twitter.com/pmydpNjWrr

— Pro-Choice MN (@ProChoiceMN) January 28, 2023

.@Lindsey_Port is all of us right now #mnleg pic.twitter.com/09J81gUYzS

— Marissa Luna (@rissluna) January 27, 2023

I don’t know what this Senator is saying… but her face gives me some clues… pic.twitter.com/GUKIjsdg36

— Sven Sundgaard (@svensundgaard) January 28, 2023

Sorry, Lindsey, maybe next time! Until then, however, keep up the good work.

*DFL = Democratic Party

**Judging a speech contest

I love that voters between the ages of 18 and 29, inclusively, have voted in higher numbers during the last two midterms. But this midterm, there was a drop, not an increase, in Gen Z involvement, even though they had more at stake. Also, the number is not that large to begin with. Look at the scale of the graph; it maxes out at 50%. Only about a quarter of folks in this age group showed up in an election that promised to ruin their lives forever. I would have preferred to see at least the modest trend demonstrated in 2018 continue, rather than somewhat reverse. Like this:

When democratic activists like myself complain that the youth vote is not there, it has become common to gets scolded that we should not be so tough on the youth vote, and look, they showed up after all!

Listen: You can and should scold me when I’m wrong, but not when I’m right. Younger voters don’t show up (3 out of 4 don’t show up, kind of a lot), they showed up in smaller, not larger, numbers this midterm (if these preliminary data from Tufts hold up), enough to help, and kudos to the one in 4 who did show up. But can you imagine what would have happened if 10% more showed up? A trifecta, that’s what would have happened.

All we need for a full on demographic transition is a change in behavior in existing age groups. Then we’d be done.

• Make the voting age 17.
• Ask states to provide a special holiday: students and teachers in public schools are off on voting day (but no one else, or voting day holiday will decrease, not increase, voter turnout).
• Incentivize election authorities to use the space in schools for voting locations where possible.
• Incentivize schools to incorporate voting day into their programing.
• Allow 17 and 18 year old voters in schools to treat their school location as a valid voting location, as an option (split books if necessary, so their vote is registered in their home district).

This way the major transition that is HS to College, or some other life history stage, carries voting and involvement in our political process with it, rather than making it harder and more likely. Then we’d have this graph (note change in the y-axis scale):

So, since the Republicans, who only lie and would not know the truth if it bit them on the ass (which it frequently does in fact do) said it, and the New York Times verified it in breathless scary headline speak, let us assume it is true. There was a red wave on November 8th. Given this, we can now define what a red wave looks like.

• Democrats hold their slim grasp on the senate.
• Repbulicans will win the house as all out-of-white-house parties do, but by one of the slimest margins in history (and they could actually not win, not all the votes are counted yet).
• Democrats won gubernatorial races that were either flips or serious threats against incumbents in Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Kansas, Maryland, and Massachustts.
• Democrats flipped the legislatures in Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania.
• Abortion rights were enshrined in the constitutions of California, Michigan, Vermont.
• Kentucky rejected an abortion ban.
• Missouri and Maryland legalized Marijuana.
• Nebraska raised the minimum wage.
• South Dakota expanded medicaid.
• There is evidence that the November 8th election is the death knell for Donald Trump’s relevance. Finally.

So, that is what a red wave looks like! We love red waves! All hail the red wave!

So, how did it happen? Because all politics are local, and I’m not talking about pot-hole local, but local as in each election is in fact an independent thing.

• Independents voted with Democrats.
• People were not tricked into voting for odious candidates because Trump told them to.
• For the first time in history other than 2002, the in-the-white-house party almost cleared the table.

I suspect that the places where the Democrats did less well, they were hampered for these reasons, depending on the race (and this is mainly in the house):

• Highly focused gerrymandering by Republican governors.
• Trump failed to zero in on a particular candidate, so they were less likely to be rejected in an election that, in part, was a repudiation of Trump and MAGA.
• In a few places, highly privileged white supremacists are simply in too high a number to ever do the right thing.
• Inflation and other economic issue blunted Democratic support in some cases.

Analyses are still being done, but keep this in mind: it appears that Republicans outperformed Democrats in many areas in voter turnout (R+4). Republicans showed up to protect their MAGA nuts, and Democrats did not show up to protect democracy in as large a number. It was the Independents showing up that saved us, especially independent women, especially in Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. So, when Democrats say over the next two years “there are more of us than there are of them” and “we just have to turn up” tell that person to STFU and get to work on actually turning out Democrats and not just pretending Democrats turn out. Because they don’t. If they did not in this election, Democrats are proven unreliable.

Preliminary exit polling shows that abortion was the second most important issue across the board for most voters, and the most important issue for most Democrats, more so in certain states where the issue was more on the table in local legislation.

*Most of the data presented here, and much of the opinion, is stolen directly from Pod Save America, “You Vetter Believe It!” podcast.

I direct you to a five minute portion of the November 3rd episode of Pod Save America, “Last Call for Democracy.”

Pfeiffer is correct, and you have to listen to his rant on Pod Save America. This is a brilliantly articulated version of what rolls around in my head all the time.

Starts at 25 minutes and 15 seconds (to include John Favreau sigh). Ends at 29:20

“Last Call for Democracy.”

Listen to all of it, please. Then report back in the comments.

Walk out your fucking door, and touch some grass.

The MAGA Republican Party is a terrorist organization, but one that has infiltrated enough of the Justice Department, State Department, and Congress to not allow our country to classify it correctly as such. Hopefully in a few days, enough voters will realize this that they won’t be allowed to take over our country.

It will be a very sad day if we wake up on November 9th and realize that Americans have chosen to end democracy.

This is a GOTV effort. Here’s how you do it:

1. Create chalk messages to inspire your community to vote.
2. Take a picture or video of your artwork.
3. Post it to Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok with the hashtag #ChalkTheVote. Tag @parentstogether so we can feature your art!

Make sure your post is public so we can see it! The folks at Parents Together, Chalk The Vote HQ, will repost some of their favorites.

Check out some ideas to get started!

Star Tribune headline tells us that the MAGA extremist running for Governor has a tax plan that would ruin the economy. Tope headline of the paper.

Lower down on the same page: Jan 6 panel subpoenas Trump, with a pic of Bannon being shuffled off after sentencing. Trump has a November deadline.

Still on front cover:

Iran, China intelligence among seized documents

Calls for (MAGA Extremist) Sviggum to resign (from UMN regents) intensify (after he says that what may be the whitest of our campuses in Minnesota is too diverse! He refuses to resign, by the way, so this is going to be an interesting fight.)
Biden Touts Falling Deficits

Inside the paper:

• Emmett Till statue unveiled
• Good news for Ethiopian refugees
• First woman (Eve?) PM of Italy
• Page A5: Bannnon gets 4 months
• PA Man gets 34 months for attacks on press, cops, on Jan 6
• Seized (Trump) document describes Iran nuke program

Today’s Strib editorial excoriates MAGA republicans for being insane, mentions litter boxes and bat-boy myths.

Piles of amazing infrastructure news.

DFL AG Ellison’s big GOTV push at UMN

GOP donor in sex trafficking case tapdancing

Weekend weather in the 70s.

#keithonourside

There is new polling, extensive and high quality polling, that seems to make clear one small problem we have in the United States.

Nobody really gives a hoot about key issues such as abortion rights or democracy. People will get mad, there will be demonstrations, but when large percentages of Democrats (yes, I said Democrats) tell us that they prioritize gas prices over democracy, and polls show, as they do, that if the election were held today, Republicans would take over the US House and possibly the Senate, then we have to admit that we are a Republican nation, a nation not in favor of freedoms or democracy. We are an anti-abortion nation, a back ally nation, a nation where we are ready and seemingly even happy to let a right wing fascist government control our lives.

I see it day to day. I see people who in the past helped Democratic candidates not showing up, not donating money, letting someone else do it. But there is no “someone else.” When Democrats lose this rare two-year trifecta on November 8th, and a Republican House is sworn in come January, we will begin a two or four year long deconstruction of this country. Enough election deniers will be in the power positions in key states that the republican party will be able to “elect” (but not really elect) whomever their party puts up for 2024, probably Donald Trump. There is a good chance that at the same time Trump is sworn in, a Democratic house will be sworn in, but with only the slimmest majority. Then two years after that, Democrats will stay home again, and there will be a Republican (Trump) in the White House, a Republican Senate (with McConnell in charge), and a Republican House with who knows which monster in charge.

The only pertinent details will be which of the old men who are bent on turning us in to a fascist country die of natural causes earlier than their plans ideally require. But that is just a detail. Others are eager to step in.

I partly blame the left. We removed the possibility of empathy as part of our way of being when we shouted down anyone who claimed it, in our rush to blame our allies for everything that our enemies are actually doing. We threw out half our good messaging when it failed to come from a repressed group, even if it was about repression. We developed and deployed abysmally bad messaging and wore it as a chip on our shoulder, a guaranteed recipe for losing any argument. We let our identity politics undermine our pro equity efforts. Then, after doing that for about a decade, we stopped showing up. We explicitly put “self care” as our number one priority, then forgot to move to number two after a suitable recovery peirod.

I thought 2016’s election was depressing, but that was just the beginning of the end. The elections of 2022 and 2024 will be the actual end, and we are letting it happen. Making it happen. Choosing for it to happen. When the Republicans take the majority, we will simply have to admit that this is a MAGA Republican country. We are a democracy that is about to vote out democracy, democratically.

This is my third or fourth missive declaring our failures, but in the previous ones, I also asked for help, asked for people to step up. I now see that as too unlikely. Nobody stepped up, and the polls show that nobody will.

So, there is only one thing you can do and save your soul: Sit out this election.

The extremist MAGA Trump Base has spoken. It is the tail that wags the Republican dog. The base has picked the candidate you get to support, or not, and the base has decided that power is more important than democracy, winning is more important than truth, hate is more fun than love, aggression and bullying is better than empathy and thoughtfulness.

And that is what you’ve got, that is all you’ve got. That is what you are voting for (or not).

Is this you? Are you that bad of a person? Or not????