Tag: senate

On the election, mental health, and a matter of great historical import

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, PoliticsLeave a comment

I need all of you to know something very important: never once in my life, nay, never once in the entire history of the human race, have the Democrats lost a Presidential election the day after I got a Platinum trophy in a PS5 game. It hasn’t happened once.

That is as optimistic as I intend to get. I was burned hard by 2016, as many of you were, and I’m refusing to hope, like, at all right now. I intend to go into tomorrow night being surprised by even the slightest scrap of good news. I can’t afford hope right now. I just can’t.

Minerva Grey asked me this in comments yesterday:

I am curious and a bit afraid to ask because I don’t want to run the risk of being talked into it, but how is watching election returns not detrimental to mental health? It strikes me as doomscolling and hopescrolling combined, and the likelihood of a definitive answer in the wee hours of Wednesday morning (at least on the U.S. east coast) seems highly unlikely.

First, let me be as clear as I can that, while I will be either on my couch or at my desk tomorrow, likely scrolling and reloading on my phone, my iPad, and a laptop simultaneously while watching one or more cable stations, that is because I am insane, in a way entirely different from my actual diagnosed mental illness. I mainline the news during elections, presidential and midterm. I have been like this since I was a teenager, and at 48 I’m not interested in swapping out those particular stripes. I will likely be up very late tomorrow night, and when I finally go to bed it will only be so I can go to sleep and open the news right the hell back up. For me, not throwing myself into as many news sources as I possibly can during that time is what’s going to drive me crazy. I can’t ignore an event of this magnitude. If you can, and if that will help you get through the next 48 hours, I enthusiastically recommend you turn absolutely everything off and do whatever you need to do. I took personal days tomorrow and Wednesday because I know myself and I don’t need to be around my students while I’m stressing this hard. But not watching everything as it comes in is not going to help me.

And while I really don’t want to make any predictions, I actually do think we’re going to have an answer tomorrow night, if not perhaps in the wee hours of the morning, or at the very least we’re going to have some results that point rather conclusively at one answer rather than another. I think when I do go to bed I will have a pretty strong idea of who the winner is going to be, and while there will absolutely be all sorts of litigation afterward, I don’t think it’s going to go much of anywhere.

Of course, I know nothing about politics, and I am wrong all the time, so you don’t need to pay too much attention to that last paragraph, and if we lose via court shenanigans the thing that happens next, where I kill God and leave his body on the steps of the Supreme Court, has absolutely nothing to do with me having made a prediction that some heavenly being, I’m not specifying which one, decided to make cataclysmically wrong, probably out of pure spite.

(I’m taking some refuge in the fact that Joe Biden is President right now, and I’m reminded of something Andrew Jackson once said about another Chief Justice named John: “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”)

I voted!

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics1 Comment

I did get a sticker, but I got Indiana’s boring one, not any of these cool stickers.

I always try to vote early, but I don’t recall ever voting on the very first day I was legally able to before. This year, though? I wanted that shit over with, and I drove from work directly to Mishawaka’s county services building, arriving about 20 minutes before the doors closed. The line for early voting was out the door, and it took about an hour to get my vote cast.

For the most part, my votes will not surprise you.

These six fine ladies, along with two male ticket members:

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz for President and Vice-President
Jennifer McCormick and Terry Goodlin for Governor and Lieutenant Governor
Valerie McCray for Senate
Lori Camp for US House
Destiny Wells for Indiana Attorney General
Maureen Bauer for State House

(They’re up there as a gallery, so it’s possible the order of the pictures doesn’t match the order of the names.)

I voted for the Democrat in all of the local races with one exception: I did not vote for Dave Niezgodski for State Senate, because Dave Niezgodski is a sex pest and I don’t vote for sex pests. I thought briefly about voting for his opponent, but without knowing anything about him, I decided to refrain; honestly, this will be a small enough turnout contest that I feel like simply withholding my vote is enough. I don’t need to actively vote for the other side.

I got to vote against the loathsome Derek “I have a penis” Dieter again, which always pleases me, because fuck that guy.

Purely voting strategically, I voted to retain all of the judges up for vote. I don’t really like voting for judges, to be honest; I rarely know who any of them are and they don’t campaign, and for some reason the Indiana bar’s survey isn’t out yet despite their website promising it’ll be ready by September 30th. I voted to retain because all of them were named by Mitch Daniels or Eric Holcomb, and if they were drummed out of office Mike Braun will likely be picking their replacements, and Mike Braun is a fucking lunatic. Whoever he picks will not be an improvement, so absent any information of use for any of them, retention it is.

The only thing left is the school board, and … our school board candidates are not exactly covering themselves in glory this go-round. My specific candidate for my district isn’t up this year, so I’m just voting at-large, and … ick.

I ended up voting for Jeannette McCullough and George Jones. I know both of them and I am not especially fond of one of them– in fact, I have suggested voting against one of them in the past– but the other choices are worse. In particular, if you’re local enough that this matters to you, I specifically do not endorse Gabrel Kempf and I really really really do not endorse Marcus Ellison. Please do not vote for Marcus Ellison. I have known him for a very long time and I do not want him on the school board.

Related:

Getting from work to the early voting center I used involved about ten miles of driving on a road that was sporting a surprising number of political signs. They’re really not all that common yet, although I’m sure that will change, probably by this weekend. And after a while something struck me about all those signs: first, that there were quite a lot of Harris-Walz signs, more than I really expected, and that most of the lawns with Harris-Walz signs also had other signs for local or state offices.

The interesting thing was the Republican signs. For the most part– and I may take this route again on my way home on Thursday to take a closer look and maybe do some counting– it seemed like lawns that had Trump signs only had Trump signs, and even more curiously, lawns with signs for any other Republican candidate often did not have Trump signs. There would either be a Trump sign by itself or a dozen local and state candidates and no Trump sign.

At the moment, I’m presenting this only as an interesting anecdote and I am not drawing any conclusions. I just want it noted for the record. Feel free to speculate on your own, if you like.

In which I have plans

On By Luther M. SilerIn PoliticsLeave a comment

UnknownI’m gonna vote tomorrow.

I will be voting a straight Democratic ticket, with the exception of my local Congressional race, which does not feature a Democrat to vote for.  I will instead be writing in Pat Hackett, who I voted for in the primary.

I will be voting for Oletha Jones over Stan Wruble for School Board.  I have nothing in particular against Mr. Wruble but my preference is to not vote for white men when I have an alternative, and in this case I do.

I will be voting no on Public Question #1, which doesn’t actually literally read “Is it OK if Republicans deliberately force a budget crisis and then steal the pensions of Indiana’s public servants in order to fix the problem they created?” but may as well.  I very strongly recommend every Hoosier vote against this fucking nonsense.

I have no plans to vote for or against any judges.  I honestly don’t have time for this shit and, more importantly, I lack any relevant expertise and therefore I’m not qualified to make decisions here.  I did some brief research on each of the judges up for retention votes (which are always successful; they never lose these things) and found no giant blinking red lights so I will ignore these questions as usual.

I will, once again, almost certainly not be receiving a sticker.

A quick request having nothing to do with money or books

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics2 Comments

Are you human and an American?  Okay, good.  Check this list and see if your Senator is on it.  If he or she isn’t, call them and give them hell.  

Call your Senators

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics3 Comments

Pure anecdata, and I just said this on Twitter but sometimes I like to say things in more than one place: I just called both of my Senators, one a Democrat and one a Republican, and told their staffers that I needed them both to vote against the Senate healthcare bill.  Also said to the Democrat’s staffer (who sounded exhausted) that I expected him to do literally everything in his power to oppose it.

I got through to the Democrat’s office on the first try.  It took four to get through to the Republican’s office.  And damn near every single response to this tweet by Todd Young is anti-AHCA.  It’s amazing:

There’s a lot of weasel words in there, but I’m choosing to take a bit of solace in the fact that it’s not a full-throated endorsement of the bill.

This bill will hurt literally every person living in this country.  Every single one.  Get on the phones, folks, and make your voices heard.  The DC Senate switchboard is (202) 224-3121, but I find more luck getting ahold of actual people by calling the local offices.