Vote like your life depends on it

Carl Muecke illustration.

Because of Typepad problems I am late in posting this urgent plea.

Vote like your life depends on it. Don't believe the polls. Some are fake. All risk dampening Democratic turnout.

Vote like your life depends on it. If Republicans win one or both Houses of Congress next week, you won't recognize this country next year.

Vote like your life depends on it because today’s GOP is a radical nihilistic cult worshipping Donald Trump. Its the party of Ginni Thomas, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ron DeSantis, Herschel Walker...of election deniers, those who would dismantle the safety net, privatize Social Security, switch Medicare to inadequate vouchers, and abandon Ukraine.

Vote like your life depends on it because there are no moderate Republicans.

Vote like your life depends on it to begin Arizona's long steps back from the brink.

Is Arizona really a purple state as some anticipated? I don't know. What I do know is Arizona’s GOP is a crazy hotbed of election deniers and conspiracy theorists. The so-called independent redistricting commission has reshaped the state's congressional districts to favor Republicans. Thugs in tactical gear are trying to intimidate voters at drop boxes.

Vote like your life depends on it to stop Kari Lake. That this nullity former newsreader from the local Fox affiliate could be in a tossup to win the governor's race is astonishing. Trump in a skirt. Vote to flip the Legislature to the Democrats for the first time in decades. This would be a real test of purple-ness. Only the Legislature has the power to address the state’s many challenges.

Vote. Vote like your life depends on it. Because it does.

 

 

 

Comments

[Rich Weinroth]

Jon, I appreciate what you are saying, but the average voter does not care. They care about inflation and the price of gas and food, and they are looking for someone to blame. They do not vote on democracy. I hope I am wrong, but as has been said, nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

[Dale]

Sooooo hysterical bro.

Yes, if Republicans win, everyone will die lmfao.

those who would dismantle the safety net,...yes the "safety net" is working perfectly, which is why there are junkie cities in downtown Phx and every other city. Government just needs moar money and the problem will disappear instantly.

privatize Social Security,..." most boomers love this stupid ponzi scheme way too much. But when you make a deal with the devil, you're gonna get burned

Should've gone the route of your kids taking care of you in old age, like they do in civilized countries instead of putting them in this obvious ponzi.

Should've cared more about stopping endless wars after the 9/11 hoax, endless debt and endless regulation (not there when you were building wealth), making it harder for the next generation to build wealth. Plus putting the country onto fiat depreciating currency, eroding the value of any savings accrued.

Then thinking that completely removing the dollar from gold/silver would have no ill effects. But muh 401k and PrOpErTy vALuEs are goin up! But muh econ professors on CNBC and Fox News says it's good!

switch Medicare to inadequate vouchers,
Same thing

and abandon Ukraine.
Why do you boomers care about that stupid fake country? And yeah, I've been there and know wayyyyy more Ukrainians and Russians than you guys.

Why push us closer to a nuclear war with Russia? You're not the ones who are gonna have to fight, so who cares? Must protect the American Empire! Endless money/weapons to Ukraine, they're MOAR important than our kids.

Shouldn't have done a CIA coup in 2014. Shouldn't have allowed Zelenskyy and his predecessor to attack those eastern provinces when they wanted to secede. I was told not to go to there in 2016, too dangerous.

Shouldn't have encouraged a hilarious comedian to want to put nukes on Russian border and then keep listening to the hilarious comedian in a t-shirt (ready for action!) saying they're gonna win the war for sure against Russia, they just need endless money/weapons and oh yeah you should totally nuke Russia.

But it doesn't even matter if Republicans win. Most of them are clowns like McConnell or Ted Cruz who fight with the Democrats about who can go deeper into debt! Who can start moarrrr wars! Who can give moarrr money to Ukraine

[toughterry]

Whoever you are and wherever you are - Bingo!

[Cal Lash]

Bingo is on Thursday night.

[Cal Lash]

"Its the Economy Stupid."
James Carville

[buckobear]

Voting is like driving, to go forward, choose “D,” to go backwards, choose “R.”

[Cal Lash]

Bill and Michael
Left you notes on
Living with Drought

[Rogue Columnist]

Cal, per your Carville quote, here is my Seattle Times column from this past Sunday:

If political fortunes rise or fall on “the economy, stupid,” as Bill Clinton’s strategist James Carville said in 1992, then Democrats could be in big trouble this year.

With inflation remaining at 40-year highs, Republicans hope to make President Joe Biden into Jimmy Carter when he was confronted with the same problem. Unlike Carter, who was thrashed by Ronald Reagan, Biden isn’t running in November. Yet voters may similarly punish the president indirectly.

Wait …

The national unemployment rate was 3.5% in September, the most recent month for which data are available. That’s better than where economists place “full employment” and as good as January 2020, before the pandemic. Carter faced an unemployment rate twice as high. Biden is on track to preside over the strongest economic growth since Clinton, whose time in office was the longest expansion in modern U.S. history.

It may not matter. Voters in polls from the Pew Research Center list the economy as a top concern, specifically inflation. This gives Republicans the chance to not only gain control of the House of Representatives but generate a “red wave” that threatens blue states, even Oregon.

In Washington, Sen. Patty Murray enjoyed an 8-point lead over Republican challenger Tiffany Smiley in the most recent polling. It’s uncomfortable enough for a long-term incumbent that Democratic big guns such as Vice President Kamala Harris have come to help energize the base.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, can get away with the disastrous gaffe calling for negotiation with Vladimir Putin over invading Ukraine (the letter that was hastily withdrawn, blamed on staff). Neville Chamberlain 2.0 from Seattle’s congresswoman? Never you mind. Jayapal is safe.

But if the worst predictions for Democrats come to pass, they may be left next year with only blue islands in the House such as Seattle. They might lose the Senate, too. And this paves the way for a Trump comeback or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis winning the presidency in 2024.

All this is particularly true if the Federal Reserve ratchets up interest rates so high that it brings on a recession during Biden’s term.

In reality, inflation is a global phenomenon. Its causes include Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, cutting off grain shipments; sanctions against Russia raising energy prices in Europe, which depends on Moscow’s natural gas; and the Saudis raising oil prices. Inflation was also rising because of clogs in supply chains and China shutting down pandemic hot spots, raising the price of imports.

Big corporations have taken advantage of inflation to jack up prices.

Writing on the Project Syndicate blog, economist Dambisa Moyo argued that “deglobalization” has shattered the low labor and production costs of recent decades, making inflation a semipermanent fixture.

She wrote: “heightened geopolitical tensions threaten to make higher input costs a fixture of a deglobalizing world. While the cross-border movement of goods, capital, and people characterized the globalized economy of the past three decades, the growing Sino-American rivalry could be a harbinger of an era marked by a widening ideological divide and a balkanized global economy.”

In addition, “Barriers to migration would make it harder for U.S. companies to attract top global talent and drive up labor costs.”

The Federal Reserve is uniquely positioned to fight inflation, but the central banks of industrialized countries are not coordinating their actions — again, keeping inflation high globally.

For what it’s worth, Fed Chair Jerome Powell, a Trump appointee, is a former investment banker, not an economist like his recent predecessors.

Inflation can only marginally be blamed on moves by the Biden administration to invest in infrastructure, attack climate change and cap prescription drug prices.

Republican control of the House and even the Senate won’t make things better.

The typical GOP prescription of tax cuts for the rich and corporations will arguably make inflation worse by increasing demand.

“It is unlikely that any of the policies proposed by Republicans would meaningfully reduce inflation in 2023, when rapidly rising prices will still be a major problem for the economy and for consumers,” Michael R. Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, told The New York Times earlier this month.

Meanwhile, today’s GOP is very different from the one that saw Reagan defeat Carter in 1980. It’s stuffed with election deniers, conspiracy theorists and Trump supporters. Even staunch conservatives such as Wyoming’s Rep. Liz Cheney have been pushed aside for challenging the cult of Donald Trump.

Majorities of Americans are wise to worry about our democracy even as they seem prepared to vote in a party that’s hostile to it.

Interestingly, voters blamed President Herbert Hoover and Republicans for the Great Depression, and they didn’t regain the White House for another 20 years. Republicans gave us long wars of choice after 9/11 (warnings were ignored by President George W. Bush), the Great Recession and Donald Trump. But they keep coming back as strong as ever.

My 2 cents are that Democrats’ biggest problems have little to do with the economy, although Americans’ love of driving and cheap gasoline are paramount, never mind the cost to the climate.

Democrats are seen as soft on crime, eager to defund the police and unable to address homelessness, despite spending billions of taxpayer dollars.

Many white people see Democrats as favoring people of color (the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory), something fueling the Ohio Senate campaign of J.D. Vance. He wrote the bestseller “Hillbilly Elegy,” which touches on the abandonment of poor white people — even though he has a law degree from Yale and worked as a venture capitalist.

Is it only the economy? Ignoring the larger landscape would be stupid.

(It had 303 comments).

[soleri]

What Republicans get is that Americans don't care about policy so much as they do their cultural matrix. In a social reality turned upside down by the hurly burly of shifting values and alien concepts like transgendered children, GOP apparatchiks and Fox News eagerly stoked the anger and fear inherent in change itself. What Trump promised was a restoration of America's status quo ante. He knew most Americans are not ACLU contributors or, God forbid, "woke". It's more like stop the world, I want to get off.

Democrats wandered into this cultural briar patch as if it was so obviously well-intended that only racists and bigots could disagree with it. They collapsed their political capital into arcane concepts like "equity" and "social justice". Never mind that most voters don't care about airy abstractions. If anything it's those alienating buzzwords that reminds them why they despise elitists and smug academics. I wish I had a dollar for every time someone asked me to explain the meaning of "woke". The moment you have to explain what you're really saying, you're losing.

Let's face it: we are those elitists. We read books. We use obscure words. Worse, we blame the racially dominant majority as "oppressors" of "BIPOCs". It's almost as if we're secret agents in Trump's toxic campaign. Where the hell did James Carville go?

I moved to Portland nine years. I was in heaven! It was everything Phoenix wasn't - urbane, politically left, and culturally hip.I wished I was paying closer attention because Portland was busy undermining the very reasons for being celebrated. By 2020, it all blew up. The pandemic started it but the George Floyd killing was the earthquake. Anarchists rampaged through downtown afterwards and every night for the following five months. Did any Democrat object to this? No! Antifa were the good guys! Sure people died, buildings burned, and civic monuments toppled, and businesses driven to bankruptcy, but revolutions are not for the faint of heart.

Today, downtown Portland is an empty shell of its former self. What it reaped in the wake of its wanton self-destruction was thousands of the drug-addicted homeless who pitched their tents on city streets. The sanctimonious left blessed them as "victims" (the highest praise you can earn from these drama queens).

The left's cultural revolution has exhausted itself. Democrats may feel pure and untainted by the real world but they still have to make a sales pitch that resonates among the broad middle class, not just the white upper-middle class who are now the base of the Democratic Party. The big problem is that the democracy may not survive the latest steep learning curve the Democrats find themselves in. In 2016, it was Bernie Sanders who seduced the Democrats with his purity. Since 2020, it's been the cultural Marxists. Idealists are bewitched by simple explanations but this latest iteration could come at a very steep price.

[Cal Lash]

Jon and Soleri i can't
challenge your expertise.
I posted Carville on what i hear being loudly expressed in the
grocery check out line and
at the gas pump.
It begs the question?
Does your wallet vote?
Most folks dont check in with Aristotle and Socrates before marking the ballot.
I hear 90 percent vote straight tickets?

[Cal Lash]

Side bar:
Jimmy Carter and Bernie Sanders have been called losers and idealistic fools but not cheating lying criminals. I'd go to coffee with both at any rural diner of their choose.
I wouldn't bother acknowledging Bill Clinton or George W Bush if i was standing within 3 feet of them.
I can't think of any president or vice president or senator since 1962 that i would bother to buy a cup of coffee. .

[Cal Lash]

Pollsters and consultant's predict a "bloodbath" as Democrats lose big time.

[Jon7190]

"Vote like your life depends on it. If Republicans win one or both Houses of Congress next week, you won't recognize this country next year."

At this point that doesn't sound like such a bad thing. Though I think perhaps you credit comgressional Republicans with too much will and/or abilty. Not exactly a bumch of bold change agents there, and with Biden in office, they can't pass any laws anyway.

Soleri, time to move to Florida?

[The bird is freed]

It's gonna be a long night for you all, come Tuesday November 8. You deserve to lose.

Nah NAH NAH NAH, NAH NAH NAH Nah, HEY HEY HEY, GOODBYE.

NAH NAH NAH Nah NAH NAH NAH Nah HEY Hey HEY HEY, Goodbye

[hellfire]

“Vote like your life depends on it to stop Kari Lake. That this nullity former newsreader from the local Fox affiliate could be in a tossup to win the governor's race is astonishing.”

Is it really though?

It’s like we’ve all collectively forgotten about 2016.

On one hand, you have an outspoken television personality “disruptor” who was initially written off early in the race, with an open acceptance of populism (gasp!) who flirts with xenophobia and fringe right wing ideology.

On the other hand, you have a perfectly boring career politician with her fair share of controversy while in office, who, while experienced and knowledgeable, can’t escape the bubble of “we know what’s best for you” liberal elitism, dividing likability amongst working class voters.

Have we learned absolutely nothing in the past six years? I am a consistent blue voter, not because I like the democrats, but because the alternative is so much worse. And though I made sure to get everyone in my social circle on board with her, Hobbs deserves to lose. Her campaign was a joke. Lake is batshit insane, and if you’re running for the highest office in the state you should be able to communicate that. You should be able to shut her down in a debate— refusing to do this due to “platforming” Lake is out of touch bullshit.

We’ll see about the other races. I think Finchem is an even bigger threat if he gets in office, but that seems less likely.

Many talk about AZ becoming more and more purple due to coastals moving in. I doubt it. I think we’re probably getting a higher number of conservative transplants who feel alienated by coastal progressives. Remember, Biden only won AZ by 10,000 votes in what should’ve been a massive blow to Trump. We are in the early stages of a Balkanized America. The culture war is here to stay.

[Cal Lash]

Once again Democrats need a big Hispanic and Indeginous turn out.
The recent past legislatures has attempted to ensure minorities have difficulting voting.
Particularly the Dines, Hopis and Apaches.
Will be interesting to see what happens if Lake wins and Masters and Finchem lose.

[El Kabong]

I seldom read books about politics but I read the first volume of Obama's memoirs. He discussed the shellacking the Democrats took in the 2010 midterms. He thought they'd done a good job and the voters would see that. One of his advisers--Axelrod?--told him that midterms don't work that way. They're a referendum on whether the voters are content. In 2010 there was a depression and the voters weren't content.

I've seen some interesting poll results recently. One indicated that most voters understand that inflation is a global problem and that Biden didn't cause it. They still think the Democrats could have done more to reduce inflation. I doubt that. Presidents and congresses can't do much about inflation. It's mostly up to the Fed. But what I think doesn't matter. Most voters seem to feel otherwise.

I hope Jon is wrong because I don't expect to be happy about the results. Two years after getting whacked in the 2010 midterms, Obama was reelected, and I can hope that these elections don't mean as much in the long run as we may fear.

[Everyone trying vote in Maricopa]

Third world election disgrace in Maricopa. What a bunch of morons you have running things down there: Katie Hobbs, Bill Gates, Stephen Richter. Does anyone seriously think they deserve more power? Maybe more people would vote if "democracy" were a little more competent.

Don't try to shift the blame, either. Those idiots - who were after all elected to do a job - have had plenty of time to fix these known issues with machines, printers, lines, locations, etc. Hobbs has only been to her office 19 days in the past six months. Gates and Richter were warned specifically after the primary. And what do they deliver? An absolute disgrace that disqualifies them from any office ever again.

Who worries about an election denier when the people responsible for holding the elections aren't even capable of conducting them? And the gaslighting that to question it is to question democracy - shove that! Like all the people who tried to vote today won't believe their own eyes!

[Everyone trying to vote in Maricopa]

How in the hell can 1/5 of vote tabulating machines in the biggest county in the state stop working on Election Day? Broken voting machines is NOT normal. Weeks to count ballots is NOT normal. There's nothing "normal" about the world's richest country being unable to count votes for days or even weeks after Election Day. Malfunctioning machines isn’t “expert” work.

They're not even able to acknowledge the issues because they pretend like they don’t exist or are “racist”. No voter should ever have to leave their ballot in a box in the corner of the room and expect it to be handled properly at some point later. It's a chain of custody nightmare and easily exploitable. The entire point of the system they have in Maricopa is for people to see their vote tabulated when they cast it in person.

To act like Oh iTs nO BiG dEaL tHEy'Ll jUsT cOUnT iT lAteR u jUsT dOn'T uNdERsTAnD tHE pRoCeSs is just gaslighting of the highest order. And yet local media is pissing on what little audience it has left and telling them it is raining by peddling that exact line to protect Hobbs, Richter, Gates, and Adrian Fontes right now.

That kind of talking down to protect the incompetence of their fellow members of the political class is what has gotten the left to where it is, which is probably why they can only think of doubling down on the double standards. For example, apparently everyone agrees that it’s "voter suppression" if people have to wait in line to vote for hours, but that's not a problem in Maricopa today, see no evil, AND we should totally also have lots of people in line to register to vote on Election Day. Sure. That would have worked out even better.

But the Babylon Bee said it best: Record Numbers of Voters Show Up to End Democracy.

[Dale]

Maricopa,
You know it's fraud because whenever there's problems with the voting machines, the right freaks out and the left is like 'oh well no biggie.'

I also love that these Dominion (cool name) machines are the only ones used for the elections, especially after 2020. I guess it's too complicated for other companies to make a vote-counting machine?

Also love how in 2020 Dominion (super cool name) refused to open-source their code because transparency means you're not allowed to see what happens.

Also love how they stuck with Dominion (super normal name) after that rather than find another company to write open-source code that everyone can view. Guess it can't be done, vote-counting software is the most technologically complex system in human history and only Dominion is capable.

Anyway, super normal and super fair as always.

[Rogue Columnist]

Here is where we are:

"Your precious gay liberal dem friends have stolen the ballots and are refusing to release the count. Nice animal’s you’re friends with. Like how they covered up the attempted assassination of a superior court judge and how Hilary Clinton tried to blame the Pelosi break in on Republicans when it was her husband’s gay lover."

This from someone I've known since high school. Never left Arizona. Goes to a megachurch.

As to the "gay lover" lie, here is Snopes fact check:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/paul-pelosi-gay-prostitute/

[you’re mom]

Maybe if you rightoids would just send your ballots in the mail like the rest of us you wouldn’t be at the mercy of totalitarian socialist voter suppression.

Are we really surprised that dominion won’t release their source code? Their business operates in the same country full of medical corps that patent lifesaving vaccines after all, intellectual property is just the American way. And corporate regulation is communism, so I guess we’re at the mercy of the voter software execs. Oh well.

I don’t love dominion or anything, but you’d think that after the dozens of audits we had post-2020, there would be a shred of evidence to all of the endless theories about how dems won by rigging the election.

If Kari Lake loses, it was probably 5% because of voter suppression, and 95% because she’s a dumbass loser. Stop chasing washed up celebrities and maybe your party will win next time.