I’ve come to the conclusion that one of the few things that might scare Republicans into voting to remove Trump would be an epic ass-whupping this fall in state and local elections. So vote in your local elections if you have them this fall!
The most high-profile state elections are in Virginia. So let’s flip both chambers (both held by Rs by a single seat right now). You can give here to the Virginia Democratic Legislative Caucus.
Omnes Omnibus
You’ve got to scrape that shit right off your shoes.
barbequebob
It’s all happening down in Sweet Virginia
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Damned right. I feel pretty good about our chances here in Virginia this year.
cain
Folks, I love boobs like a lot of people, but this stupid bra ad is really annoying the crap out of me. It is just not something that I’d like to see especially if I want to read balloon-juice (yeah, not using BJ given the content of this post) out in public.
Elizabelle
Cheryl from Maryland put up a great roundup from Blue Virginia, about how the state’s House of Delegates and Senate races are looking.
One-Stop Shopping: Virginia General Assembly 2019 Races We Need to Pay Attention To
I like our chances AND there is lots of work to do. Plus: a lot of local ballots: county supervisor, etc.
bemused
We bought tickets to DFL Iron Range Fundraiser (NE MN) next weekend and Al Franken is the keynote speaker.
John Revolta
@cain: Count your blessings. All’s I got is two ugly mice sticking their heads out.
frosty
@John Revolta: I’ve got both! Mice on the top, boobs in the middle, Hollywood Reporter on the side. I’m looking forward to seeing wht the new site will bring.
randy khan
It should not go unmentioned that one reason the Dems are optimistic about Virginia’s General Assembly races is that the Republican gerrymander got overturned, so there are a bunch of formerly-safe R districts that now look good for Team Blue.
Another Scott
Thanks for this. Donated.
Go Team Blue!
Cheers,
Scott
Kay (not the front-pager)
I’m gonna go broke tapping that ActBlue link like a crack-addicted lab pigeon, but it’s worth it. Keep puttin’ em up & I’ll keep clicking.
Redshift
@Elizabelle: In the local races in Fairfax, we have a mix of old and new dirty tactics from the GOP. School board taxes are officially nonpartisan, so there’s no party ID on the ballot, leaving plenty of room for muddying the waters. A gang of Republicans (officially a nonpartisan group, but they have “Concerned” in their name, so…) are showing up to candidate forums and shrieking that the Democrats will change school boundaries and have “forced busing” (geez, maybe your dog-whistles could be a little more subtle?) The reality is that there are two schools, both highly rated and in the wealthier party of the county, one is overcrowded and the other is underfilled, so the boundary needs to be moved. They’re also demagoguing the “One Fairfax” social equity policy as a liberal plot, even though it was adopted by the county board unanimously, including the Republicans. We need all the help we can get to keep them from getting any of their truly awful candidates onto the school board.
There’s more (stealth candidate who ran in the Democratic primary and stayed in the race claiming to be a “moderate Democrat” until that wasn’t working, etc, but you get the idea.)
Redshift
OT: I’m still slogging the Mueller Report on my Kindle, and I noticed today that with sunlight in the screen, I can definitely read through some of the redactions! Which should mean that the text is to be in the file. That seems… kind of important?
Mary G
@Redshift: Republicans never give up on anything. They even got a majority on the Air Quality board here in blue California and tried to loosen the rules on poisons emitted into the atmosphere.
RAVEN
I caught some nice reds in Louisiana last week!
cain
@frosty:
I know, right? Jeezus :D
John Revolta
@Redshift: Lucky you. Some states have those Sunshine Laws.
cain
@RAVEN:
snappers?
Central Planning
Any chance we can create a BJ PAC or SuperPAC and donate through that? I don’t want to get all the thank you notes and get on every candidates mailing list for the next few years.
frosty
@Kay (not the front-pager):
You’re not alone!! There’s two of us lab pigeons in this house!
John Revolta
@frosty: @cain: Okay, now I’ve got Trumpf up on top. So one boob anyway.
JPL
@Redshift: Anything interesting? If you can it might be worthwhile letting someone know.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@bemused:
Who? //
germy
@Redshift:
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
debbie
@randy khan:
Ohio’s gerrymandering won’t be disappeared until after the 2020 election. I shudder to think of the Trumper-packing that will be waged until then.
RAVEN
@cain: No, Redfish.
Kent
@Redshift:
Unlikely. They used to do electronic redactions until hackers figured out how to roll them back. Now days the normal procedure is to do electronic redactions (on screen), print the document onto paper, then scan it into a .pdf so there should be zero chance of anything bleeding through, electronically or otherwise. If anyone did anything different with a doc as big as the Mueller report they would be fired for cause.
Another Scott
@Redshift: Are you sure? It seems unlikely to me that the various conversions of the file to different formats would preserve the redacted materials. E.g. the PDF that was originally released was a non-searchable image file.
But if you can read things, please spill the beans! :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Marcopolo
@Central Planning: Well, after I gave my first $25 to “The F*ck Gerrymandering Fund” which splits contributions among 14 VA legislative candidates, a few weeks later I received a nice thank you postcard from one of the candidates…for my $1.79 contribution to their campaign. So…I am not quite sure how donor information is used/distributed but the individual campaigns appear to be able to see it. I don’t think I am getting fundraising emails from them but I created a special gmail address for use in campaign donations–fundraising appeals go to the “promotions” tab which I don’t even look at any more since so many folks are spamming me all the time. And in case anyone is wondering, I did go back and specifically donate $25 to the candidate that sent the postcard (and I have made a few more contributions to the fund–I’ll get up to giving all of them $10@ by the end).
For anyone who wants a really quick link to be able to see/donate to any of the states/candidates holding elections in a month just go to this page & pick your state. It is a really great resource.
New Deal democrat
I just finished canvassing for Shelly Simonds, the democrat who lost a coin flip two years ago in a tied race that would have given Dems a majority in the Assembly.
I didn’t even have to get to the issues pitch. As soon as I mentioned what happened two years ago, the Democrats were fired up and ready to go!
P.s. currently unwinding with a dry martini…
low-tech cyclist
Had some money set aside for the VA legislative races. Gave about 1/4 of it to the link in DougJ’s post, and about 1/2 to the “F*ck Gerrymandering Fund” that Marcopolo mentioned, which looks like a good list since it overlaps pretty well with the ‘One-Stop Shopping‘ list that Elizabelle mentioned upthread, as well as the lists that Wason Center forecaster Rachel Bitecofer provided in this piece last month.
Still got 1/4 of my fund left for when we have a better idea of which races are coming down to the wire.
DougJ
Thanks a lot, everybody!