A Democratic President Can't Save Us

[RandySF]

Donald Trump is awful. Fact. But it’s exactly that awfulness that presents another real danger. The spectacle of an unhinged and dangerous man in the White House threatens to draw attention from a bigger problem in 2020: Electing a Democratic president won’t save us. Not if we fail to elect Democrats up and down the ballot, especially in state legislatures.

Republicans in state legislatures who gerrymandered themselves into power are inflicting widespread and long lasting damage — and they’re very hard to beat. Take my home state of North Carolina as an example:

North Carolina was once an enlightened beacon of the South, but in 2010 Democrats got wiped out after failing to prioritize legislature elections, giving Republicans control of both chambers for the first time in more than 100 years. What’d they do? First, drew some of the most gerrymandered districts in the country to eventually secure a six-year supermajority. Then, as expected, they went absolutely crazy.

After the Supreme Court ruled Medicaid expansion under Obamacare optional, they rejected Medicaid expansion even though the state wouldn’t have to foot the bill.

Next, they passed a voting rights law so terrible, it was described as having disenfranchised African Americans with “surgical precision.” They snuck anti-abortion provisions into a motorcycle safety bill. Finally, they earned national attention for the infamous bathroom bill that forced transgender people to use bathrooms according to the gender listed on their birth certificate instead of the gender with which they identify. It’s so bad in North Carolina that the state isn’t even considered a democracy anymore. (Learn more about their antics here).

Things don’t go well when we ignore state legislatures. But this time around, momentum is on our side.

Last year Democrats took full control of five state legislatures and we can do it again in 2019 and 2020.
Start by going to votesaveamerica.com and finding out how to support 2019 legislature races in places like Virginia, where we only need to flip two seats per chamber.

Don’t fail to spend your energy everywhere it counts.



https://medium.com/summer-reading-list-by-the-dlcc/a-democratic-president-cant-save-us-806eeac2c134

[JustFiveMoreMinutes]

1. Save us? From what? The US will never be 100% together on anything.

The best any Democratic President can do is hope to unite as many of us as possible and persuade us that the dire warnings of Climate Change and Unequal Opportunity threatens ALL of us in the coming decades.

IMHO of course.

[tirebiter]

2. But when your ideas/ plans platform

Is supported by 60+% of the electorate and 30+% tend to have their way on just about everything you begin seeing the tyranny of the minority.

[ancianita]

8. We need to get organized the way the Right has been. Which caused the loss of over 900 state seats

and 11 governorships by 2014, in what Obama saw as a "shallacking," and the DNC didn't see coming.

imho, too

[comradebillyboy]

11. Those losses were mostly due to the negative public response

to the 2010 Affordable Care Act. It's also why many current candidates are so rightfully leery of MFA.

[ancianita]

13. If that's what you want to believe, go ahead. The deeper story is the entire expense structure

to manufacture consent to all the ideas of the Koch ideology factory -- over $400 million spent.

Which the ACA was only a part of.

Democrats admit since then that they've never had anything even comparable to the Koch 501(c)6 Business League machinery that took over the privatizing of elections and their bought media -- Channel One, Armed Services Radio, and TV cable owners -- to sell it.

Howard Dean's 50-state strategy was the only thing that came close, and the party cut that off at the knees. He'll never trust the leadership again until it's changed. How do I know? I was in an audience he said it to.

MFA?

[brutus smith]

3. Agree

In Ohio the repubs control everything. The when they increase taxes or bail out a nuclear plant, Davis-Besse, they blame Democrats. The people in our state are pretty stupid, that's why trump won it. You can't fix stupid.

[wasupaloopa]

4. I was born and raised in Dayton in 1946.

While growing up everyone’s parents worked at one of the factories. My dad worked for NCR. They almost all were white male unuion members.

They voted for Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Reagan. They were racists, mostly poor.

Then Democrats moved south the Repubs moved north. All because of the Civil Rights Movement.

My point is that when ever we win we set ourselves for the next loss.

[littlemissmartypants]

5. Learn more about...

Adding missing link

https://crooked.com/podcast/rigging-north-carolina-republican-chokehold/

[Hermit-The-Prog]

6. Kentucky needs Beshear, not Bevin this fall!

[comradebillyboy]

12. The good people of Kentucky want to suffer even more pain

so I expect to see Bevin reelected.

[RussBLib]

7. Look into becoming a deputy registrar

And get as many people registered as possible, but FOLLOW ALL OF THE RULES.

We need a big voter turnout in 2020.

[marble falls]

9. But registering the voters the GOP disenfrachised, picking up as much Senate ...

as we can, holding on to the House, electing as many Democrats to state legislatures and local races we can help our next President - who will be a Democrat - get the process going.

[colsohlibgal]

10. +1000

We need to walk and chew gum at the same time. Vote early if you can and vote blue up and down the ballot. They do not provide party affiliation on some of the down the ballot races but when I voted early in 2018 helpful people offered guides on who was who, very helpful.

It all matters more than ever now, this is a big time crisis and pivot point vote coming.

[pecosbob]

14. I think the only thing that's kept ALEC and the Kochs from owning more state legislatures

is that they've been distracted by the open candy shop that is the Trump administration and all it's departments and regulatory agencies. While they were busy elsewhere though, we recaptured a number of governorships (eight or nine I think) and were able to put Scott Walker out of office as well as preventing Kris Kobach from ascending any further.

You are right that the real fight is in the legislatures. We cleaned house in Nevada and now our only obstacle is fear of using that power.

[Vinca]

15. Plus we need the Senate. McConnell is like a giant, nasty hairball in the drain.

I don't believe how civilized that was . . . I was thinking giant turd clogging the toilet.

[Demovictory9]

16. Kick