LaMouffette
LaMouffette's JournalThank you for the hearts, fellow DU members! I'm so glad to have found this community!
I would love to see President Biden nominate Anita Hill to the Supreme Court, just to see Clarence
Thomas crap his robe.
How about in addition to a massive GOTV campaign, we Dems conduct state audits of our own?
These would be "Democracy Audits," highly publicized audits to clearly demonstrate where each state government stands as far as their ability to represent the will of their people and to protect the right to vote for all the citizens of their state.
They would be graded on such things as gerrymandering, voter suppression laws, and even on the sources of campaign donations for each of their Senators and Representatives.
The states would be ranked from most democratic to least. I'm sure we can predict how that would look already, but the whole point would be to make a big stink about it so that it makes the news over the course of the months leading up to the November elections.
Would this make Republicans in office wake up and say, "Oh my God! You're right! We've been soooo unfair! Let's fix things!"
Of course not! The whole purpose of the Democracy Audits campaign would be publicity. To rip the curtain back in a big way that gets covered by the mainstream media with the same furor with which the Cyber Ninja voter fraud audits in Arizona got covered.
Anyway, just throwin' an idea out there.
A horrifying thought: Even if we succeed in getting TFG and his minions locked up, the next Repub
president will likely pardon them all.
What, if anything, can be done to remove the limitless power of the presidential pardon before they retake the presidency?
"Republicans Lie, Democracy Dies!" "Republicans Lie, Democracy Dies!" "Republicans Lie, Democracy...
Dies!" (repeat a million times).
I tuned in to Sean Hannity's show the night after the Jan. 6 Committee sent him their letter requesting information he might have that could further their investigation. I just wanted to see if he looked the tiniest bit rattled. He didn't, of course. He's a smoothie, that one.
But in the five minutes that I could stomach of his show, he repeated the same phrase over and over: "Blah, blah, blah, OPERATION WARP SPEED, blah, blah, OPERATION WARP SPEED, blah blah." He threw in "Joe Biden's failed Covid response!" a few times, too.
It was just striking how many times he repeated these catchphrases. And think of how many times "Stop the Steal!" has been bleated by the Repubs.
That's just one of their techniques they use to brainwash/hypnotize their cult members. It's time for some counter-programming: "Republicans lie, Democracy dies!" is just one possible catchphrase that Dems can start repeating.
I know it's not our MO to use propaganda techniques, but it may be what it takes to lure their followers away from the dark side.
WWRD (What Would Republicans Do) about the Electoral College if it put them at a disadvantage?
Probably something technically legal, but a complete affront to the spirit of democracy, because that's who they are and that's what they do.
So let's not do that. But we need to do something to abolish, or do an end run around, the Electoral College. Something that is not only legal and democratic, but POSSIBLE. We have to do something that does not entail amending the Constitution. That would be impossible, given the fact that Republicans and Republican-controlled state legislatures think the Electoral College works just fine the way it is right now, thank you very much!
Here are just a couple of ideas described in a Brookings Institute article from December 2020. It's a long article, but worth the read. Here is the link:
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/12/09/how-to-get-rid-of-the-electoral-college/
And an excerpt:
". . . A constitutional amendment is not the only means by which an alternative to the current Electoral College can be implemented. The most popular alternative is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). Started in the mid-2000s, the NPVIC is a fairly straightforward system that capitalizes on the constitutional guarantee that states are free to determine the manner in which they award their electoral votes. The compact requires states to pass laws that would award their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote nationally. Under the current plan, states that join will not activate the compact until enough states have joined to total 270 electoral votes. That is, the compact does not go into effect until there is a critical mass of states for it to be effective.
Currently, 15 states and DC have approved the NPVIC. These states currently total 196 electoral votes, although after the 2020 census is completed, projections suggest a net loss of two seats, lowering that number to 194. Each of those states has Democratic control of the state legislature. If the remaining states with Democratic control of the legislature (Maine, Nevada, and Virginia) were to sign on, it would add an additional 23 Electoral College votes.[2] The compact would then be 43 Electoral College votes short of going into effect. It should be noted, there is debate about the permissibility of such a proposal and its going into effect would likely face a flurry of lawsuits. Nonetheless, it is likely the most viable alternative to the current Electoral College system.
Alternatives to winner-take-all
As discussed above, the only practical way of ending the Electoral College is by changing the ways in which states use the popular vote to award electors to the presidential candidates. In addition to the NPVIC discussed above, there are two variations on this theme that could reduce the odds that someone could win the presidency without winning the national popular vote.
In the first instance, states could decide to award 2 Electoral College votes (EVs) to the winner of the national popular vote (NPV) and the remainder to the winner of the state. That means that the national winner would start out with 102 Electoral College votes. In most cases this should prevent the popular vote loser from becoming president. For instance, if a hotly contested state like Wisconsin broke for the candidate who lost the popular vote, eight of its ten electoral votes would be added to their tally. The following table shows how this would have changed the outcome in the two contested elections of the 21st century and includes 2004 for comparison.
Oh my god. I just realized that Repub politicians not only want the pandemic to continue in general,
since that will make Biden look bad, but it seems to me that they also specifically want their own constituents to lose loved ones to Covid because they know that they, the Republican politicians, will be able to direct their grieving voters' anger against Biden and the Dems.
The rising surge in Covid deaths, especially among Republican Americans, is good news for the GOP. The more deaths, the more outrage, which is how they get themselves elected. Before TFG, I wouldn't have thought them capable of such cruel cynicism, but now, I wonder.
They must be banking on enough of their constituents not dying of Covid to still get elected, with the added insurance of voter suppression bills and their efforts to make it possible for Republican-controlled state legislatures to toss out voting results that do not favor Republican candidates.
Yikes.
Hey! Craig Melvin on MSNBC just pointed out that for a few hours today we have a woman president!
Woot woot! A historical moment, albeit a short one.
Go, Kamala! And good luck on the procedure today, Joe!
Michael Avenatti for US Attorney General! Oh, wait. He's in prison. But someone brash LIKE Avenatti
should replace Merrick Garland. An honest Avenatti, with the best interests of all Americans at heart. Avenatti turned out to be a loser, but he did have a certain toughness about him that we could really use in an attorney general right now.
And, now that I think of it, if Traitor Trump should happen to be the Republican candidate in 2024 (shudder!), we need to find someone just as loud, just as in-your-face as TFG, and then some. Again, an honest Avenatti, male or female, doesn't matter, as long as they have an impeccable character and can get loud when it's demanded of them.
I love, respect, and admire almost all of our Democratic elected leaders, but most of them are way too polite for the smack-down free-for-all that will be the 2024 election.
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Member since: Thu Jan 23, 2020, 02:36 PMNumber of posts: 2,272