Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I really should read my own blog.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

Bark louder, little dog.

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

In after Baud. Damn.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

You are here: Home / Organizing & Resistance / Don't Agonize - Organize / Open Thread: An ‘Angry (But Positive!) Mob’ — of Women Voters

Open Thread: An ‘Angry (But Positive!) Mob’ — of Women Voters

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From the Washington Post, “Anti-Trump fervor fuels a new movement aimed squarely at winning elections”:

JACKSON TOWNSHIP, Ohio — President Trump’s political nightmare, a mother of two in a custom campaign polo, bounded down the driveway like a sweepstakes winner. She had just chatted up a shirtless Republican out to mow his lawn, and he liked what she said.

“He’s with me on the cost of health care and preexisting conditions,” Lorraine Wilburn, a first-time Democratic candidate for the Ohio statehouse, told her 11-year-old son, Finn. “He said he would take a look at me.”

Finn was used to this sort of enthusiasm, ever since his mother started attending liberal activist meetings after the 2016 election. He had learned not to be surprised if Mom started sounding like a comic book heroine akin to Wonder Woman, whose image she keeps on her phone…

Thin margins of error have not discouraged the new foot soldiers of the Democratic resistance. They don’t cover their faces with bandannas, speak of socialist revolution or get lost in debates about the best model for Medicare expansion.

Instead, many of them juggle campaign events with school commutes and soccer practice. They leave the kids with their husbands to march, come out of retirement to register voters and form close bonds with neighbors who were strangers when Hillary Clinton was the presumptive president. An aspiring blue wave with a decidedly pink hue, they are women defined by a desire to atone for their relative inaction in 2016.

“People are making social connections that they really, really like,” said Abby Karp, an organizer for Swing Left in North Carolina, who works days as a dean at a private school in Greensboro. “I don’t even have a Facebook page anymore. I have a political page. I don’t know what my cousin is doing. I know what canvass is coming up.”…

ActBlue, a central conduit for Democratic campaign contributions, has recorded 4.5 million contributors so far in the 2018 cycle, with about 61 percent of the money coming from women. That compares with 1.5 million donations in the 2014 cycle, when about 52 percent of the money came from women.

“Coming together is the antidote. It’s the antithesis of the divisiveness,” said Lauren Friedman, an Ohio state Senate candidate and mother of three, who started organizing with Wilburn in Canton days after Trump’s election. “Even us just going and canvassing — that is making a change.”…

Michelle Goldberg, in the NYTimes, on “A Cure for Political Despair”:

… There is, I find, only one thing that soothes my galloping anxiety, and that is talking to women who are actually doing the work of campaigning. The people who are knocking on doors and organizing rallies tend to be much more cheerful and confident than those who spend too much time on Twitter obsessing over each new poll.

“One of the things I was a little worried about was maybe enthusiasm would wane, maybe people would get numb,” Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan’s Democratic nominee for governor, told me of the huge outpouring of women’s activism that followed Trump’s election. “I haven’t seen that at all. For 22 months, it’s been solid or growing.”…

This year, Democrats in Michigan — which Trump won — are running women for every statewide office: governor, senator, attorney general and secretary of state. A poll last month shows that Michigan women favor Democrats by over 20 percentage points. Campaigning for the Democratic nomination for attorney general, Dana Nessel ran an ad asking, “Who can you trust most not to show you their penis in a professional setting?”…

I showed Whitmer my friend’s text and asked her if she was really confident that Democrats would make the midterms a turning point. “I am,” she said. “I see it every day. I talk to people every day.”

Now, part of the job of a good politician is projecting optimism. But again and again over the horrible months of Trump’s reign, I’ve found that spending time with the women who are working their hearts out against him is at least a temporary cure for despair. So if you, too, are scared, or furious, or despondent, find a Democrat close to you and go canvass for her (or him). “It’s the best way to feel good about the world and connect with people,” Whitmer said.

(Tim Eagan via GoComics.com)
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Reader Interactions

60Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    “Coming together is the antidote. It’s the antithesis of the divisiveness,” said Lauren Friedman, 

    One might even say that we are Stronger Together.

  2. 2.

    MazeDancer

    Right now, only 8% of the people who have asked for addresses to write PostCards are men.

    While we love these guys – shout out to BJ Men – not sure why so few.

    PostCards are a serious campaign tool. Get 4% return, which is up there with canvassing.

    Step up, my Brothers. Write.

    PostCardPatriots.com

  3. 3.

    Raoul

    Former Secretary of Defense and former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel will head to North Dakota on Tuesday to campaign for embattled Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, per a Lincoln Journal Star reporter.
    Not nearly enough moderate (aka RINO) folks on that side have the guts to do what Hagel is doing. But I’m glad some are. Her latest poll numbers look bad, unfortunately.

  5. 5.

    SiubhanDuinne

    WaPo:

    BREAKING: Supreme Court shields Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross from being deposed in lawsuit over census citizenship question

    Because of course they did. Fuckin fuckers.

  6. 6.

    Baud

    Rachel covering GOP attempts to surreptitiously use purity politics to keep progressives from voting for the Dem candidate.

  7. 7.

    WaterGirl

    @SiubhanDuinne: I knew that was going to happen. I must be psychic.

    Does that make it less infuriating? No. They don’t care what they destroy. Power is everything.

  8. 8.

    Raoul

    @MazeDancer: Just requested 20 names for TX-07. I went to high school just a few miles from that district. I live 1,000 miles north, now, but still have fam and friends in the Houston area!

  11. 11.

    Mike S

    @MazeDancer: My problem is seriously pitiful handwriting. that’s why I love keyboarding, but computer printed post cards just won’t cut it for this purpose.

  12. 12.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: Yep. Anyone who fell for that bullshit has be pretty stupid.

    Did you see my invitation in the Garden thread?

  13. 13.

    Ocotillo

    Mrs. O is an election judge and today was first day of early voting in Texas. Her polling place typically would see around 200 voters a day in a midterm, today 800+. I am not sure if that is a good thing or not although greater participation is good to see. Our area is a conservative suburban part of the city so it could be motivated Trumpers for all we know.

  16. 16.

    tobie

    @Raoul: I’ve been phone banking for Heitkamp and have a bad feeling. Maybe her campaign is using out-of-state phone bankers to clean up their lists but I’ve hardly come across any supporters. In two hours tonight, I did not come across one. Weird.

  19. 19.

    Baud

    @tobie: From my experience phone banking, they provide no Intel on who is going to win. The polls are more worrisome, but it is what it is.

  21. 21.

    WaterGirl

    @tobie: Hardly anyone answers their phons anymore, and you never know what kind of list you are getting. As you obviously know, you just have to do the work and the outcome will be what it will be.

    I truly don’t think anyone can predict with accuracy this year. There is nothing normal about this year.

  26. 26.

    Raoul

    @tobie: Grand Forks Herald says the latest poll has her opponent up 16 freakin’ points. For an incumbent in a year like this, wow. Not sure how much her Kavanaugh vote mattered, vs. longer simmering issues.
    The state is probably too conservative to sustain even a centrist Dem for the foreseeable future. As places like CO grow and become purple, the planes states shift more and more right. Metro Kansas City and one Omaha district as exceptions.
    The ‘great sorting’ of America continues, to everyone’s eventual loss, I suspect. Entrenched regionalism isn’t going to fare very well for us.

  30. 30.

    Baud

    @Raoul:

    The state is probably too conservative to sustain even a centrist Dem for the foreseeable future.

    Obviously, they’re waiting for a true progressive.

  31. 31.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: Because I asked? :-)

    Okay, I guess not. Maybe you can just fill in the blanks?

    Tack 2: So a temporary stay has been giving until _____ at which point __________ happens.

    Your check is in the mail.

  32. 32.

    Baud

    @WaterGirl:

    They can’t depose Ross for now to give the Administration time to file for proper Supreme Court review. After that, my guess is that the stay will be permanent because the Administration will win.

  34. 34.

    tobie

    @Raoul: I saw that poll, too. it’s not good. Has the population in ND changed markedly in the past 6 years? I gather a lot of gas and oil workers moved in when the going was good and maybe they’ve stayed, even though there’s no longer an energy boom. People sure are cagey and unfriendly on the phone.

  38. 38.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: This is just my ploy to get your address.

    I mean, please let Anne Laurie know your address so I can send the check.

  39. 39.

    MazeDancer

    North Dakota has 750K voters.

    It feels so wrong that they get 2 Senators.

    And even more wrong they get to express their warped racism in choosing them

    That said – Write more PostCards for Heitkamp. We got thousands of addresses.

  41. 41.

    NotMax

    @WaterGirl

    It’s a House district map. My understanding is orange represents a for all intents and purposes uncompetitive, foregone conclusion and gray a toss-up.

  44. 44.

    JoeyJoeJoe

    @tobie: Don’t forget that as of now, as far as I am aware, that is the only poll to have her down that much. Other polls have her behind by less, which isn’t good for her at all, but unless more polls come out showing Heitkamp that far behind, I’d recommend not assuming that that or any one poll is correct

  45. 45.

    JoeyJoeJoe

    Also trivia: North Dakota has had at least one Democratic senator since 1960, a longer streak than all but 9 states, one of which is West Virginia by the way. Florida has the longest streak of having at least one Democratic senator I believe

  47. 47.

    tobie

    @JoeyJoeJoe: No worries. I’m not assuming anything from my extremely limited experience with the ND electorate. The state’s so tiny and there are so many out of state phone bankers that people are just being inundated with calls. I just wish the campaign would try to do some other things like texting voters to recruit local volunteers.

  51. 51.

    Gaffa

    @tobie: Speaking as a local North Dakotan who has done canvassing for Heitkamp before, as well as regularly acts as an election day judge — texting isn’t effective here. Not enough of the regular voters you want to reach (many of the older farmers and their extended family) know how to or even bother with texting, let alone email.

    The polarity of North Dakota is a microcosm of the US in general. Something around 60-70% of our population lives within 20 miles of the eastern border with Minnesota (the Red River Valley that the song was actually written about, if you want some bar trivia), and that tends to vote more Democratic, as the two big cities there (Fargo and Grand Forks) have to keep up with the vastly more liberal Minnesota in laws and regulations, or else reliably see all their young people (and money) just drive over the river to their Minnesota counterparts and watch their tax dollars plummet. The other 500+ miles of east-west traveling are solidly Republican, paranoid, racist — except when theyr’e not.

    There’s a lot of weird things in North Dakota. We are the only state with no voter registration, by our own laws — if you show up at the polls with proof of address that you’ve lived at for the past 30 days, you can vote. We are the only state with a state-owned bank and a state-owned mill — highly socialistic remnants of the power of the Farm Labor movement during the Great Depression, and it’s hilarious listening to the Jack Birchers describe to their fellows around the small town cafes how the state bank and mill aren’t actually socialist (because they *help* the farmers, of course — both institutions are extremely popular). Enclaves of weirdness you don’t expect to find pop up among the far reaches of the western buttes — isolated near-fortified monasteries of Catholic wine makers, quasi-Amish type settlements of Hutterites and Mennonites, and, yes, the Posse Comitatus, the original tax protesters of the infamous Gordon Kahl. But on the eastern border of the state you get enclaves of the Ku Klux Klan that you won’t see outside of the deep South.

  54. 54.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Gaffa: Enclaves of weirdness you don’t expect to find pop up among the far reaches of the western buttes — isolated near-fortified monasteries of Catholic wine makers

    You have piqued my curiosity…

  55. 55.

    tobie

    @Gaffa: Please some day, when all this is past, write a special post here or elsewhere on the weird and wacky and unexpected sides of North Dakota. I had no idea about the Catholic monasteries or Hutterite and Mennonite settlements in the state. The state bank and state mill doesn’t entirely surprise me given that the “nonpartisan league” (NPL) still lives on as a part of the Democratic party, but the justification otherwise conservative types come up with to explain their love of socialist institutions is great. I hope the tide in ND turns. Thanks for chiming in and good luck in the home stretch.

  56. 56.

    Ruckus

    @Mike S:
    My handwriting is getting worse and worse as I progress towards dust. But if I write slowly it’s not all that bad. Only looks like a 4th grader did it, rather than a 1st grader. And I’d bet that people getting post cards from random people that are obviously hand written, rather than an email or form would really appreciate it.

  57. 57.

    Citizen Alan

    @tobie:

    the justification otherwise conservative types come up with to explain their love of socialist institutions is great.

    It’s also not at all surprising. Most white conservatives would be perfectly fine with socialist policies so long as none of the benefits went to POCs.

  58. 58.

    tokyokie

    @MazeDancer: Thanks for the suggestion. I bought 50 postcards yesterday, got addresses for five candidates, including Heitkamp, and plan to finish them before doing anything else this morning.

  59. 59.

    tokyokie

    @MazeDancer: Thanks for the suggestion. I bought 50 postcards yesterday, got addresses for five candidates, including Heitkamp, and plan to finish them before doing anything else this morning.

  60. 60.

    SMignon

    Thanks to your enthusiastic and continuous recommendations of Postcard Patriots, I already have written 25 postcards for Vangie Williams and just got a second batch of addresses, this time for Heidi Heitkamp. With two jobs, my time is limited, but this is doable for me. Just to let you know it didn’t fall on deaf ears!

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