linky

The simping of uk is legendary

great electoral strategy guys, just stupendous five-dimensional chess thinking

Harris campaign officials believe that talking about the current landscape of abortion restrictions in the United States is a winning strategy with female voters, particularly liberal and liberal-leaning ones. But Mr. Baier did not bring up the issue, and the vice president did not guide him there.

Instead, both of them stayed focused on immigration and border security — a topic that, according to recent polls, is near the top of the list of concerns among female voters.

At several points, Mr. Baier asked the vice president if the families of women killed by undocumented immigrants were owed apologies from Ms. Harris and the Biden administration. He read off their names from a list, one by one, and played a clip from the mother of one of the victims, who blamed the administration’s border policies for the loss of her daughter.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/16/us/politics/kamala-harris-fox-news-interview.html

Dog shit political instincts. This is the same person who had to exit the primaries first in 2020. Can't win an election to save her life.

It will be amazing if the Dems lose again, the fact that this is even in the cards is frankly fucking insane

The Green Party has correctly responded to the anti-democratic "Democratic" Party political machine's ugly propaganda and disinformation smearing Green presidential candidate Jill Stein. Here are some of their responses:

Margaret Elisabeth, co-chair of the National Lavender Green Caucus: "If Kamala Harris is defeated in November, the reason won't be Jill Stein. The Biden-Harris administration continues to send military aid for Israel's ethnic cleansing and extermination of civilians in Gaza, which Trump also supports. Millions of voters can't stomach the idea of voting for pro-genocide candidates."

Cassandra Lems, co-chair of the Green Party of the US: "The DNC wants Jill Stein off the ballot. They assume that if Dr. Stein dropped out of the race, Stein voters would vote for Harris — which is like believing that Harris voters would vote for Trump if Harris were to drop out."

Justin Paglino, co-chair of the Green Party of the US: "The DNC wants the public to believe that Jill Stein is siphoning votes from Kamala Harris, which shows that the DNC thinks Harris owns my vote. Harris doesn't own anyone's vote except her own. Candidates have to earn my vote. Stein did, Harris didn't."

Randall Toler, co-chair of the Florida Green Party: "Democrats scream like banshees when Dr. Stein receives a check from a Republican, while they brag about the flood of endorsements and generous contributions for Harris from Liz Cheney, her war-criminal father, Karl Rove, and other top Republicans."

Ann Link, Green National Committee delegate from the National Women's Caucus: "In other democratic countries, voters have a choice of more than two parties and two candidates on the ballot with a wide range of political views. Only in the US is the participation of alternative parties treated like an unnatural interference that must be eradicated. It's appalling to see so many in the US media parroting the DNC's talking points."

i tell myself i bear witness

So what does Kamala wanting a Republican in her Cabinet mean? All the Cabinet members sit at the same table, right?

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/kamala-harris-pledges-republican-cabinet-member-rcna168879

“I have spent my career inviting diversity of opinion. I think it’s important to have people at the table when some of the most important decisions are being made that have different views, different experiences,” Harris said. “And I think it would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my Cabinet who was a Republican.”

Is there a 'transitive property of fascism' defined yet?

Her opponent was even more xanned out than her and did a dab at the end of the televised debate

In the leadup to an election is when there is maximum ability to influence the policies of the candidates. At no time before or after this period will any individual voter have more influence. Libs could have joined in with the uncommitted movement months ago and continually demanded an arms embargo on israel as a precondition for their votes. They could even have fucking lied and in their cowardly little hearts known that they were going to vote for the dems anyway. But no, even that small amount of effort was too much. Instead they immediately en masse announced their unconditional support for the dems and spent all their effort viciously attacking anybody who even mildly criticized their candidate. Absolutely useless dumb fucking crackers. I will not forgive them.

I think some leftist accelerationists believe that electing Trump will galvanize resistance the way it did 2017-2020. The ways that regular folks joined us, marched, and actually paid attention to things besides soccer practice was legit heartening and often helpful. I'm thinking about popular demonstrations against the migrant camps, organizing Covid relief and mutual aid, and generally saying "fuck this guy and his policies."

But if Trump returns, none of that shit is going to happen.

1. Those would-be allies might conclude that all that resistance was for nothing, and give up. Especially if he wins an outright majority.

2. Trump is pretty open that he intends to use violence against his political opponents, and this time he likely won't be constrained by any sort of deep state. Especially if he wins an outright majority.

That's my thinking, but any accelerationists want to tell me where I'm wrong?

he win election

Everything else afterward has been one brunch liberal bumblefucking after another.

Red MAGA vs Blue MAGA, yeah yeah I know, but I'd still like to see eat shit as a silver lining and she isn't helping her own chances.

I think one significant part of the low turnout among US overseas citizens is quite simply the typical voter suppression associated with postal voting in general, including people simply not being told their own rights, exacerbated by some added bureaucracy from being situated outside of the USA and the ballot needing to pass through different postal systems. There might also be some demographics overrepresented among overseas citizens that have their own obstacles to voting, too. This is all a neat explanation of why my own family has generally not voted, however I don't think this is the full story.

Another US overseas citizen on Hexbear remarked when I brought up the low turnout yesterday,

I'm an overseas American and I am not voting because it would be a bizarre waste of time. Not only would I be voting by mail in a solidly blue state but if votes by mail ever determined an election there would be a coup.

Indeed it seems to be in the "battleground states" where postal voting rights are most challenged. So it would seem that the states where it is easier to vote from abroad, are also the states where there's nothing "competitive" about the elections to begin with.

What stood out to me more in that reply, however, was the remark that "there would be a coup" if postal ballots ever determined an election — essentially that the fact that postal ballots are already treated as inherently suspect, would in itself demotivate people from voting in the first place.

Otherwise there are probably many US overseas citizens who think of the elections as fundamentally illegitimate for other reasons, or who see both wings of the Capitalist Party as roughly the same — for better and for worse — and so they just wouldn't bother voting even for a "third" party.

Or there could be other reasons! Like maybe there might be a stigma against voting in US elections from some countries, because this might make the voter look "disloyal" to their new country, I don't know. This is just speculation.

So I'm hoping someone might have more insight into this topic, or might be able to even say the relative prevalence of different reasons why US overseas citizens don't vote.

https://fxtwitter.com/NewsWire_US/status/1844012151759134896

linky

Intro

Pic related. It's me.

I have to come clean. I'm a lib-for-hire. I need income, and what do you know, it's campaign season and I know how this works... so here I am getting paid to "get out the vote" for this year's elections.

I'm not going to provide details, and I'm not going to say anything that can pinpoint who I work for or where I work, for obvious reasons. I'm also not going to divulge any "trade secrets" or screenshots of things like VAN, again because I need to keep this job...

I'm writing this partly to clear my head, partly to reckon with the lib job I have, and partly to help educate my comrades on some lessons they can learn from this part of electoralism. Some of this will be disjointed because that's how my brain works. If you have any questions about campaigns drop them in the comments and I'll answer to the best of my ability.

Why care about this?

The Democratic (and I assume to a smaller extent, GOP) "industry" makes up a decent chunk of economic activity in a handful of states every two to four years. A huge chunk of groups with millions in funding swoop in, hire up hundreds to thousands of people at a time for temp work, then lets them all go in November.

As leftists, we should understand how this niche within Capitalism exists. This can help explain why some people in this world act the way they do: because their paycheck depends on it. There are material realities behind "having high, high hopes for a living".

These are not GREAT jobs, but for a lot of people they are better jobs than what they have access to during off years. I know of someone who was thankful for their Field Organizer role because it helped them cover the bills in the way their fast food jobs didn't.

There's also a psychological factor at play with these campaign jobs. A lot of Field Organizers are coming into swing states from out of state. They are college-aged, idealistic, and taking a semester off school to do a job that is often 6-7 days per week and stretching to 70+ hours per week when it's time for "GOTV". Imagine being told the thing you just spent your entire October working for is a sham

We act like a c3 during VR, then switch to c4 work for GOTV

Like most industries, the campaign industry comes with it's own unique insider vocabulary.

c3/c4 - This is a legal status for IRS purposes. Long story short, c3 groups can only do non-partisan work, while c4s can do more partisan type campaigning. c3 work might look like issues campaigns, nonpartisan voter registration drives, or general voter education mailings. They can't talk about candidates and can't take stances on issues in a partisan manner. c4s can do those things.

Some big orgs have both c3 and c4 organizations. Planned Parenthood is the one that comes to mind immediately.

VR - Voter Registration. By law some states require this work to be non-partisan, so a lot of orgs tend to do this regardless of their tax status. This typically boils down to running tables in public spaces or walking around with a clipboard in busy areas to find people to fill our a voter registration form. The forms are collected, details are then copied into VAN for contacting these people later, and then they are counted up and sent to the local boards of elections.

GOTV - Get Out The Vote. This is what you're about to see all over the country, but really in just a handful states (PA, WI, MI, NC, GA, NV, AZ). People are going out door-to-door, or making phone calls, or doing "relational organizing", or a few other ways to basically get you to talk to them about "making a plan to vote". There's some studies showing that doing these things increases voter turnout by enough to be worth pouring Scrooge McDuck swimming pools of money into doing every election. Talking to a voter in person and getting them to create a "plan to vote" is considered the most effective form of GOTV and is the one you'll see starting anywhere from 1-3 weeks from now depending on the election calendar in your area.

Note these are NOT persuasion attempts. They don't work. There's some mild talking points that canvassers have to read off, but they're told to move on if there's any resistance to the script. Turns out you can't change someone's ideology based on their life experience by knocking on their door...

All the libs gonna blame me when Kamala loses. It wasn't the genocide it was the spoilers from the green party lol

Ultimately even with an absentee ballot I would be voting from stolen land, so this is why I am hesitant.