Great Big Fat Guy Voted Today (Great Big Fat Guy, Day 374)

The polls opened in Michigan at 7AM. (Michigan has no early voting, and heavy restrictions on absentee voting.) A few minutes before 7AM, I set off on foot for my polling place, which is about a half-mile away. I walked because it was still dark and I don't like to drive at night anymore.

At the polling place, I got into the longest line I've ever seen up close and personal at a polling place. I went early thinking I might beat the rush, and then on the way I thought, But what about the people showing up to vote before they go to work? That might account for some of it. But I'm also pretty sure I heard an election official saying on the phone that he'd never seen lines like these.

I stood in line for about an hour, voted a straight Democratic ticket, and walked home. Michigan has a Republican governor who signed a bill into law abolishing the straight party ticket option on Michigan's ballots, but a Federal judge overturned that law. Now if we Michiganders could just get into the habit of voting more often than every 4 years, and vote these Republicans bums out of office, and vote in a majority of some people in the state and local offices -- Democrats, that is -- who actually want to encourage voting instead of making it more difficult!

I did not see any Trump thugs attempting to intimidate voters. I've still only seen one Trump sign in town, in my next-door neighbor's front lawn. This, and the voting history of our town through the decades, made me hope that maybe the big turnout meant a nice result for Hillary. It seemed that most of the people in line were women.

I saw only one clear indication of someone's political sympathies: a women in line ahead of me was wearing a Hillary button.

If you've read all of my Great Big Fat Guy posts you might think I go out walking every day, which would lead to my not being so huge anymore. And it very likely would. The thing is that I don't go out walking every day. It seems that after I've come back home from a long walk I feel like writing a Great Big Fat Guy post. Probably because I know that walking is a very healthy thing for me to do.

I haven't written a Great Big Fat Guy post every single time I've taken a walk. But close enough, unfortunately.

Still doing the push-ups and crunches every day, and attempting a bridge (see photo) every day.

I'm continuing to have the same result with the bridge every day: every day, starting from lying on my back with my legs bent and my hands on the floor under my head, I get everything but my hands and feet off of the ground, and keep it off of the ground for a while, but fail to straighten out my arms and extend the bridge fully.

Your turn, Katy:

Straight Democratic Ticket, Is What I Recommend

At 4:02 today, Ex-US Representative Joe Walsh @WalshFreedom of Illinois tweeted:

On November 8th, I'm voting for Trump.

On November 9th, if Trump loses, I'm grabbing my musket.

You in?

About an hour later, having apparently suffered in a meantime a backlash over that tweet severe enough to alarm even him, Walsh explained in an interview that he was "talking metaphorically."

Walsh is an unbearable jackass.

Metaphorically speaking, of course. He's not actually a donkey. That part was metaphorical.

The part about him being unbearable was not. And I'm not the only one who feels that way. Walsh was one of the Tea Party freshmen Congesspeople voted in in 2010 and voted out again in 2012. He has repeatedly gotten into trouble for speaking in a racially insensitive manner and repeatedly had to explain that he was speaking metaphorically and so forth and that what he really meant was, and so forth.

Earlier this year, Walsh Twitter account was suspended -- not for the musket tweet, but for something much worse which Twitter deleted, which I won't repeat here. Walsh had to explain that he hadn't really meant what he said and promise to cut it out to get his account back. In an interview the next day, Walsh said of what was in the deleted tweet which he hadn't really meant that way:

That's crazy and stupid and wrong. It would end my career and it's wrong."

It would end his career -- AND it's wrong. Nice to see a man of integrity who has his priorities right.

My point is just to remind my readers, once again, that Trump didn't come out of a vacuum, that Trump really isn't even much of an anomaly in the GOP. As much as the Republican primaries seemed to be a complete cluster****, they in fact did not nominate him completely by accident.

Of course, for those of you who live in the many parts of the US represented by Republicans who aren't distancing themselves from Donald Trump, it's probably not even necessary for me to point out that Trump is not an anomaly. This is more for those of you watching all the Republicans running full speed away from Trump on the nationwide news and in places where he's messing up the campaigns of the local Republicans.

You know of any Republicans running for office or for re-election in areas where Trump leads Clinton in the polls, who are distancing themselves from him? Me neither. Isn't it a remarkable coincidence how closely bad poll numbers for Republicans and Republican moral outrage at Trump coincide?

No Republican politicians running for office anywhere should be considered completely free of association with Trump. The main difference between "moderate" Republicans and jackasses like Trump and Walsh is that the "moderates" have a better sense of when it's expedient to keep their mouths shut -- or, for example, to distance themselves from a colleague who's going down like the Hindenburg, or to pretend that they think Hillary is just swell and always have thought so. And, of course, the "moderates" are running for office in places where people like Trump and Walsh are very unpopular.

Who Cares Whether Trump Concedes?

I'll tell you who: fewer and fewer people. His own campaign leaders are bending over backwards to say that he didn't really mean what he said about not conceding, the same way they've been bending over backwards to say that about so many other things he's said the whole campaign long. You think you've been seeing lots of Republicans distancing themselves from Trump up until now? That will be nothing compared to the mass migration away from him if/when he refuses to admit he lost after Hillary stomps him on November 8.

Yes, it's true that up until now, there has been a gracious concession speech by the loser in every single Presidential election -- usually the night of the election, a little while later in 2000 -- after which there is a bunch of talk from both sides about how the other side fought a great campaign but now it's all about bringing the country together, yada yada yada. There might be no gracious concession speech this time and no talk from Trump about everybody getting behind President Clinton, but that will be just one more thing Trump was the first at, one more way in which he makes himself a bigger and bigger jackass, and supportable by fewer and fewer people.

Many pundits have been saying that Trump never wanted to win anyway, and that his real plan is to start a Trump TV news network. So many pundits have been saying this that if Trump didn't want his own news network a week ago, he might want one now. As far as that having been his plan right from the start -- I'm not totally convinced yet that there is anything in Trump's mind as complex as a plan.

Anyway, if he does start a Trump TV news network, it will give us all a chance to see how fast a TV news network can go bankrupt.

I hope you all remember just exactly which political party it was which allowed Trump to take it over -- partly, temporarily, but still -- and that you'll all vote the straight Democratic ticket for that reason if for none of the very many other good reasons.

"This Beltway Narrative About The Republicans Being Way Ahead Is One Of The Dumbest And Most Fact-Free Things I've heard In A Long Time"

-- Jess McIntosh of Emily's List, just a minute ago on "All In With Chris Hayes."

So it's not just me.

Quoted from memory, my apologies to Jess if I quoted inexactly, but that is the gist of it.

So get out there and vote and let's make this a Democratic landslide.

There's No Difference Between Democrats and Republicans Except --

-- on women's health and freedom to choose, green energy, tax breaks for Big Oil, labor unions, whether one fears that the government has too much control over corporations or that corporations have too much control over the government, whether the best way to help all of us is to help the poorest and weakest or the richest and most powerful, whether or not everyone should have access to affordable health care, whether too many tax breaks are available to corporate CEO's making 8 figures a year or more or to teachers and firemen making $50,000 a year or less, whether GLBT's don't have enough rights or whether they have too many, whether or not it's time to revoke the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, whether or not drilling for oil and gas in national parks would be a good idea, whether it should be easier or more difficult for people in the US to obtain guns and ammo, whether or not Obama is a secret Kenyan Muslim Communist...

That's just off the top of my head. But yeah, if none of the above matters to you, you might as well vote Green. Or Libertarian. Or not at all, depending on what kind of stupid you are.

The Sky May Actually Not Be Falling

In a piece for the New York Times, Jonathan Weisman fears that the House may lurch even further to the Right in November:

"In districts where generally mild-mannered Republicans are exiting, their likely replacements may [bla bla bla doom, gloom, conventional 'wisdom,' bla bla bla]"

Weisman gives no consideration to the possibility that people who voted for those relatively centrist Republicans will vote against the extremist yahoos who beat the incumbents in the primaries, or simply not vote.

And it seems that just about every single "pundit" in Washington assumes that Democratic turnout will be low. "Well, Democratic turnout is ALWAYS low in the mid-terms." Well, before 2009 an African-American had never been President. Before 2011 no-one who occupied a seat in Congress ever said some of the stupid things Tea Partiers say. (Maybe if you go back to the 1830's or so.) Things CHANGE. A lot of the people who voted Democratic in 2012 were first-time voters. It makes no sense to simply assume that they will tend to sit out the mid-terms as Democratic voters have in the past.

Nor does it make sense to assume that a significant number of Democratic voters who've sat out previous mid-terms have not noticed the Republican extremists and become alarmed and politicized.

I'll tell you one thing which has happened over and over in previous elections and could happen again in November: a great many Washington political "wizards" could be proven completely wrong. Remember all the "geniuses" who were convinced that the race between Obama and Romney would be close, and that the Republicans would make huge gains in both houses of Congress in 2012? (Just in case you didn't notice: in 2012 the Democrats gained 2 seats in the Senate and 8 in the House. And the election between Obama and Romney wasn't close. Just the same way that the Earth wasn't destroyed the way that a lot of idiots said that a Mayan calendar said it would be.)

Get out and vote Democrat, and send all these scary rightwing yahoos home.

Let's USE This Vast Political Capital The Republicans Have Just Handed Us

Let's go after every single Republican office-holder -- unless you can think of a Republican currently holding public office who's stood up to the Tea Party since 2009. Yeah, I can't think of one either. Yes, some of them are critical of the Tea Party now, but look at the size of the clusterfuck it took for them to speak up. Look at what was acceptable to all of them until the writing was on the wall about the 2012 elections, and then to all but a tiny handful of them. The Tea Party belongs to the Republican Party. Let's make them own it. All of them. Let's not let this very recent turn toward bipartisanship make us forget the 5 years before the last 3 weeks.

And please, my fellow Democrats, let's stop this awful pathetic whining about how this or that Republican Senator or Representative or Governor or Councilman or judge or dog-catcher is untouchable. None of them are untouchable after this shutdown debacle. Let's not just win some seats in 2014 and 2016, let's crush the GOP as it now once and for all, so that what emerges is either a GOP as unrecognizably liberal by today's standards as today's is unrecognizably reactionary by the standards of several decades ago, or something like a political landscape where the Republican and Green Parties have swapped places in terms of relevance and clout, a US where it's Democrat against Green instead of Democrat against Republican. (Or better yet, of course, a change in the Constitution to base our government on proportional representation, but at this point the eradication of far-right political power looks like a nearer, more attainable goal.)

They're not untouchable. Let's find a brilliant, charismatic rainmaker in his or her early 20's and run him or her against John Boehner. That's a no-lose proposition for the Democrats because the whiz kid will either actually win, or win enough votes against the sitting Speaker of the House to brighten up any 25-year-old's resume.

Let's go after em all. You may say I'm a crazy wild-eyed dreamer. I say that the Republicans are in such a mess that it'd be crazy to consider any one of them to be invulnerable.

The Wrong Monkey Endorses Obama/Biden 2012, And The Straight Democratic Ticket

-- just in case that wasn't already perfectly clear to everyone.

Like some others on the Left, I am a bit disappointed in the current administration for a few things: ramping up the insane, inhumane War on Drugs; being a little too cozy with some big businesses, and too accommodating with Republicans, most of whom have made it clear they have absolutely no intention of reciprocating.

Unlike those few turnips who are voting Green or Socialist or another party to the left of the Democrats, besides grasping the concept of proportional representation, and the fact that we don't have it yet in the US, as I explained in my previous post, I understand that politics means compromising to achieve something rather than sticking strictly to my ideals and accomplishing nothing, or worse than nothing, as that nincompoop Ralph Nader and his nincompoop followers did when they helped W take the Presidency in 2000. (Nota bene, as usual, I did not say that W was elected President, because I don't think he was.) And unlike them, I can see the huge obvious differences between Obama and Romney, and between Democrats in general and Republicans in general. Democrats actually want government to help people who need help. Republicans want to work people to death at sweat-shop wages and let them die in the streets -- or the ER's, as the case may be. Democrats respect women. Republicans say that their "religious freedom" includes their right to push women's rights back to the 19th century. Many of them, let's be clear, are not only against all abortion, they're against all birth control. Romney and Ryan won't go on the record with this last bit, but neither will they call out and denounce the whackos in their party who are the record in this way. Romney and Ryan also won't distance themselves from the birthers and the racists. Decent people who are more than half-witted need to send the Republicans a real message here. Not just in the Presidential race but all the way down the ticket.

Get out and vote! I know that many of you already have: help get others to the polls. Let's do this, hard. Let's show the whackos that the grown-ups are still in charge.

(And then after the election we can start to get on Obama's case to end the Drug War, and to be more serious about financial and corporate regulation and the environment and so forth. And we can promote a change to proportional representation. After the election. One thing at a time. I repeat: politics means compromising to achieve something rather than sticking to your ideals and thereby accomplishing nothing or worse than nothing. Vote Democrat.)