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91·7 days agoAt the federal level, drag out everything and block everything you can. Their margins in the house, should it be called in their favor, will be extremely narrow. Let them in fight and flame against each other. Use every procedural rule to slow stuff down. Filibuster everything. Even if a specific issue is a losing fight, make them have to fight it so they cannot move on to something else. Republicans have used these tricks to block progress for a long time, time to flip it back on them
At the state level, we can much have more room to push back. A lot of what they are likely to pull is pushing things back into the states. Codify everything at state levels. Ensrhine our rights into state constitutions. A lot of federal operations rely on state government cooperating behind the scenes. Without it, a lot more can be slowed way down or made much more difficult
Outside the government, we still have power as individuals. Organize unions, protests, etc
28·7 days agoMost people actually voted in favor of the florida abortion ammendment. The threshold is just unusually higher (60%) than most states. It was close to 60% but just a little shy at around 57%
With a different national environment with just a bit higher dem turnout, it probably would’ve passed
Many of groups most likely to be affected did overwhelmingly vote. For instance, queer people voted even more for Harris in 2024 than they did for Biden in 2020. They didn’t want this, and we now need to stand up for them
Grief is natural, but we cannot give up the fight. Tens of millions did not vote for this. If they want to take away rights, make every one a fight
Everything we fight is time they cannot spend moving on to the next thing. Drag every fight out even if it’s something seemingly minor. Give them no ground
The more resistance they see, the weaker they become
4·7 days agoStart at the local level and build up. It’s a lot easier to have strong progressives run in races that might not really be all that contested in the first place. And make even small primaries count
That kind of power starts to add up. The local politicians tend to flow up the party. Obama first rose from the Illinois state senate. Tim Walz first rose from an unexpected flip in a deep red house district in Minnesota
Power doesn’t always flow top down. It also flow from the bottom up
Understand that when your goal is blocking things, you somstimes do things you know will almost certainly fail. Republicans have used this playbook for ages to block the Democratic party
Make them get tied up in as many pointless tasks to distract them from their other goals. Sometimes you’ll even occasionally win a long shot challange
After you vote, you can also volunteer to phone bank for last minute get out the vote calls!
They already killed it for Supreme Court nominees when it suited them. If they really wanted something they’d kill it for that
By 2017, roles had reversed — Republicans held the majority in the Senate, and President Donald Trump sat in the Oval Office.
After Senate Democrats, now in the minority, filibustered the confirmation of Judge Neil Gorsuch — Trump’s first nominee to the Supreme Court — McConnell engineered his own “nuclear option.”
The Republican-controlled Senate voted 52-48 to reduce the vote threshold for confirming nominees to the Supreme Court from 60 to 51, per The New York Times.
Note that Harris has called for eliminating the Filibuster should dems get a trifecta
Harris says she would support ending the filibuster to bring back Roe v. Wade
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/23/nx-s1-5123955/kamala-harris-abortion-roe-v-wade-filibuster
We can do a bit better than just hope, there is still time to volunteer to help get out the vote today and tomorrow on election day!
Huh, turns out the Republican earlier BS claims of stolen valor for Tim Walz were just talking about the wrong Tim all along
There are also still opportunities to volunteer in person and online - including on election day!
Unfortunately they put tougher requirements on the types of accepted IDs, yes. This especially impact Native American voters in North Dakota
Native Americans continue to fight discriminatory voter ID laws in North Dakota
It is really funny how they’re both named Tim and look a lot like each other
If we’re going on history, then they would not be safe seats either. The margins they won by in their last election were quite close
Rick scott was re-elected in 2018 by a margin of just 0.12% (just ~10,000 votes of ~8 million)
In Cruz’s last election, he narrowly won by just ~2.6% in 2018. He’s unpopular among even many republicans. The state has gotten more blue since then. Texas is an ~R+5 ish state. It’s not as solidly red as people think it is
Neither Texas nor Florida is at all safe R if you’re going by public polling or even earlier leak GOP campaign internals about Texas which put it at 48% Cruz to 47% Allred. It’s more so tilt-R or lean-R by polling averages
One thing that I’ve found with anxiety that can help is volunteering and other things that help dem turnout. It moves the needle a little and if nothing else it makes you feel productive and some more degree of agency besides just voting yourself
Can find some phone banks, canvasing, and text banks near you
Also another small thing that can also help is reminding and encourage any dem leaning friends, family, etc. to go out and vote. Helps more than you’d think
Nevada, Wisconsin, and Michigan* have same day registration through election day
North Carolina has it only during early voting (ends Nov 2nd)
The rest of the battle ground states do not (i.e Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia)
Across the US, 23 states + DC have same day voter registration
* not at the polls in Michigan but at the clerk’s office and then you can vote there after doing same day registration
That’s assuming that all Trump supporters vote down ballot. I’ve been reading that a non-negligable percentage of Trump voters just voted for president and left down ballot races blank. Considering Trump only won the swing states by tiny percentages, a small percentage of Trump voters leaving blank the rest is easily enough to sway it
For instance, if we look at Wisconsin senate, we see that Tammy Baldwin has almost exactly the same number of votes as Harris (only a couple hundred more), but Eric Hovde shows less substantially votes than Trump got
Results with ~99% reported:
Donald Trump: 1,697,769
Kamala Harris: 1,668,082
(And about 40k for third party)
Vs senate
Tammy Baldwin: 1,668,545 [+436 from Harris]
Eric Hovde: 1,641,181 [-56,615 from Trump]