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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/10/19/2277711/-State-of-the-Race-Don-t-freak-out-get-to-work
What are you doing to win on Nov. 5?
what is there to win?
neither candidate supports living wages above $15 an hour, universal healthcare, less fracking/oil, or police reform, or anything meaningful to the citizens just lots of wins for the corporations that are sponsoring this election no matter who wins
There’s not even a mention of $15 coming from them anymore, much less healthcare. Fracking is up with cop cities.
The federal minimum wage has not increased from $7.25 per hour since 2009.
On the campaign trail, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has said that needs to change
Still no mention of $15, much less a living wage.
Things maybe getting better vs. things definitely getting way worse.
It’s a pretty obvious choice.
The first bit is misleading, as Harris supports doubling the minimum wage to $15 for now https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/company-news/2024/10/23/harris-backs-15-minimum-wage-in-fight-with-trump-over-pay/ while the other guy wants to leave it at $7.25. And I suspect $17 is reachable in the future too, https://www.commondreams.org/news/kamala-harris-minimum-wage - going from $15 to $17 is a much smaller jump than going from $7.25 to $17 after all
Also, Harris did in the past have plans for universal healthcare - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kamala-harris-policy-positions-president-2024/ (without eliminating private healthcare, but this is doable, a good example being the Netherlands - https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/17/21046874/netherlands-universal-health-insurance-private ) while the other guy tried to repeal the ACA (getting rid of what little we had).
Harris wanted to ban fracking in the past, https://apnews.com/article/fracking-pennsylvania-president-campaign-donald-trump-kamala-harris-104f3f051df4d28e4645f05051eb6cff , so convincing to go to lower fracking in the future seems like an easier deal.
On police reform, Harris seemed to support this back in 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/26/politics/kfile-kamala-harris-praised-defund-the-police-movement-in-june-2020/index.html so might be easier to convince to readopt this position in the future.
It’s technically true that neither candidate supports the positions you are pushing for, but it’s clear that one of them is much closer to you than the other in terms of distance. The better candidate from this point of view is obvious.
I suppose refugees and trans people don’t figure into your equation because erasing them is the only way to make it balance.
It confuses me when people who argue “both sides” claim to support all those left policies when they don’t appear to have empathy or awareness of the marginalized. I’m left to conclude that this brand of leftism must be based on vanity, because the only thing it protects is the ego of those who promote it.
You mean like the refugees being chased down on horseback? Or the ones at the border being subjected to Trump style immigration policy? Dems use trans as political pawns as much as Republicans
It confuses me when people who argue “both sides” claim to support all those left policies when they don’t appear to have empathy or awareness of the marginalized.
They don’t even really seem to support left policies that go much of anywhere outside the scope of not voting for Democrats.
They’re not advocating for RCV, supporting protest movements or local races with prominent lefty candidates, or harping on critical climate issues or actions that fall outside the scope of electoral politics completely let alone the specific action of who you’re going to vote for in November. They care a lot about politics. But mostly, what they want you to do is not vote for Democrats.
A very cynical person could draw a particular conclusion from that, but I’m not that person, so I won’t.
Well, not that cynical.
Setting aside the false equivalency here, the presidental race is not the only race on the ballot. We can help with those down ballot races too
There are plenty of viable dem candidates who do support all of what you just mentioned
For instance, Pennsylvania state legislature democrats are supporting a $20/hr minimum wage. There are races this year that could flip the PA state senate and let that start getting through
Or for corperate money side: Dan Osborn (indepdent, and there’s no dem in the race) is a union leader who led the kellog strikes. He wants to get money out of politics and has taken zero corperate pac money. He’s running for Nebraska’s US senate seat and has a real chance to win. Polls put him neck and neck or even up slightly
I’ve done some letters from Vote Forward. I’m not sure it’s the way. For one, you have to hand-write messages, which is time consuming at scale. For another thing, personally, I would like to be partisan. I want Trump to lose, and I’d like to send my get out the vote letters to Democrats.
I’m not saying they’re doing any kind of bad thing, but I did think about finding addresses for Democratically registered people in swing states, and just doing my own thing batch-printing letters encouraging them to vote with handwritten signature and addresses on the envelopes. I think I might be able to have a serious impact that way.
Also, what happened to text banking? I thought about trying to do that but I haven’t been able to find where to sign up.
You are writing to likely dems with Vote Forward. The political campaign ones are explicitly going to likely dems, the social campaign ones are going to underrepresented demographics - which typically lean towards dems. Their research has just found that writing partisan messages doesn’t work as well for increasing voter turnout, so they say not to write parsian messages. Similar for how writing by hand works better
There are still text banks still open! Here’s some with Field Team 6
https://www.mobilize.us/ft6/?show_all_events=true&tag_ids=22573
That makes perfect sense. I’ll finish up the pile I have today, and I also signed up for text banking. Thanks for the link! This is wonderful.
Also note that one the link I sent earlier shows other volunteer opportunities like phonebanking and canvasing (door knocking)
I know for me personally, I don’t want anything printed out ever. It’s just waste, and if I see any flyer or those letters for example it just upsets me. I get the sentiment and maybe in years past, but outside of official communications from an agency don’t send me shit.
“A little over two weeks left, and people are losing their freakin’ minds. And I get it: We have a lot more to lose than they do. If we win, their lives will improve (whether they want to admit it or not). If they win, we’ll lose our rights.”
Unfortunately it’s kinda “worse” than this even…
If we win we still almost certainly lose the Senate, so nothing happens. Because nothing happens and Faux news keeps The Base in a frothing rage, they keep/regain the house in 2026. No improvement or anything happens for the entirety of the 4 year term. If they win they win the trifecta and get their entire wishlist… :(
I hate how “easy” their job is. Stall Democrats plan, they win. Win the trifecta and help billionaires more they win…
It’s not at all certain we lose the senate. There’s actually a real chance we win. If we flip Texas senate (super close) or Florida senate (fairly close) or squeek by in Montana, we can keep the senate
Alternatively, we could also get a 49-50-1 senate if union-leader indepdent Dan Osborn flips Nebraska which polling suggests he is really got a chance to do. It’s gone from a close race to a close race with osborn up slightly
Recently leaked republican GOP senate internals suggest republicans are much more worried about it than they are publicly letting on
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/13/senate-republican-poll-memo-00183570
I really hope that’s true! We really need some good news
I dunno what “get to work” means. I would be open to volunteering, but it seems like they want phone banking and door-to-door canvassing. I’m not willing to talk to right wingers and fence sitters, so I just haven’t done it.
I volunteered for the Kerry campaign, and it was awful. Mostly talked to knuckle draggers who realized that Dems were more in their self interest but didn’t want gay marriage (which wasn’t even on the table as an issue then).
Have you checked out letter writing? That’s a good way to have a personal impact without having to directly interact with Nazis.
Textbank for Democrats: https://www.mobilize.us/ft6/?show_all_events=true&tag_ids=22573
Textbank for Ranked Choice Voting: https://represent.us/
When I canvased it was to a specific list of registered Dems they were looking to get to the polls. Talk to your local field office again. They won’t send you directly into the field of fire to deal with MAGAts if you don’t want to. The couple I did talk to, I just encouraged or thanked them for voting.
