Chafee and Webb announced.

[nadinbrzezinski]

161. If you bother with the full thread

you will realize that I am all for voting... but NOT JUST VOTING. In oligarchies just voting gives legitimacy and if that is all you do, they really love you for it. People need to get far more active than JUST MERELY VOTING, or going GO TEAM. Not voting because it feels good is electoral ludism (once again, thanks to John M. Ackerman for that term, it is on point), but you will not get me to say that all is well, and that we do not have a crisis of democracy that is profound. Nor to blame one party over the other... I am done with that crappy thinking.

And DO NOT expect me to either tell you who I intend to vote for, or even if I did, or for that matter to send money to any candidate, or walk precincts. I used to do that. Not anymore. I cannot afford to give any of these pols enough money for them to give me the time of day. And since I am not a multi millionaire none of them will ever be on speed dial. It is what it is in oligarchies.

And anyway, I do not run a partisan news outlet, nor do we concern ourselves with day to day horse race matters. With Citizens United I prefer to educate people on the policy issues and other aspects of the system than who is merely running or why, or where they had lunch. That is rather superficial shit. Anyway, we have plenty of outlets doing that shit and ignoring things like redistricting, or more money than god in races due to citizens united.

But in the big picture, it really does not matter who is in office for some very specific big picture policies. There is SOME variation in some social matters, but at the real top, not as much as there used to be, to be charitable. That is also a nature of oligarchies. And I get to hear this from people, you know regular folks, who are not partisans. They are pissed, that their needs are ignored. I mean real pissed, and some of those folks will not vote, because they believe that will make a point. You could not get them, at this point, to vote for an R, a D, or for that matter anybody else. They are done.

It is NOT my role to get them voting, just to educate them as to why that might not be a good idea. It is their decision whether they are going to vote ever again, or not. I know some will not vote ever again, and they have good reasons not to. And this... is part of the demobilization of voters that we are seeing nationwide. The type of US Oligarchy prefers it that way. But if you are going to vote, they also prefer that it is the only thing you do.