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wilwheaton · 2 months

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The five Justices in the majority opinion, however, went farther than necessary to insulate insurrectionists from being disqualified from federal elections. They didn’t just rule that states cannot disqualify Trump, or Presidential candidates, but rather that states cannot disqualify any insurrectionist candidates for federal office. The Justices gave all the power to a notoriously dysfunctional Congress to do so, even though Section Five did not explicitly make Congress the sole enforcing authority of Section Three. As in the Dobbs case that overturned 50 years of Roe v. Wade, the conservative principle of “judicial restraint” does not exist with this Supreme Court. Republicans like to blast “activist judges,” but as we see yet again, an “activist judge” is just someone who rules against you. Under the Supreme Court’s expansive ruling, a state is currently unable to disqualify a candidate for federal office who engaged in insurrection, even if that person has been charged and convicted of insurrection. Even a federal court would be unable to bounce an insurrectionist from the ballot absent a law enacted by Congress.

There's No Restraining This Activist Supreme Court

This SCOTUS needs to be burned to the ground and rebuilt with actual Justices, instead of these unelected activists who are opposed by nearly 8 in 10 Americans.

The Courts are not going to save us. The Courts aren’t even going to enforce existing laws that were written to protect us. The Courts are actively working against Democracy and doing everything The Courts can do to hasten Fascism’s hold on the levers of power. Fascism has already come to America. It is taking root in every state that is under Republican occupation, urged on and enabled by this SCOTUS majority, and their ideological partners in the House and Senate. The only way we can stop this from spreading like a Zerg creep over all of America is to overwhelmingly put Democrats into office and then force them to act.

If Congress won’t do something to limit the grotesque abuses of power by people who don’t interpret the law, but make law from the bench, it will be up to America to rise up and demand action.

I refuse to be ruled by 6 Christofascist Nationalists, and I refuse to sit quietly while people who have the legal means to do something throw up their hands and furrow their brows.

This is going to be our last election that matters, if we don’t.

I’m serious. If Trump somehow gets into the White House again, we will never have another election in my lifetime.

LISTEN TO ME: any vote that is not for Joe Biden is a vote to end Democracy in America. Any vote that is not for a Democrat is a vote to end Democracy in America. When I see people insisting they won’t support Biden or Democrats because they aren’t Left enough, I want to pull my hair out. The stakes are too high for all of us -- especially the most vulnerable among us -- to indulge temper tantrums.

It’s a very simple choice: you can vote for Biden and Democrats, or you can vote to turn America into a Christian Nationalist Theocracy, ruled by autocrats.

This will be our last free election, if Republicans are not resoundingly and forcefully rejected at all levels.

#uspol #scotus

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robertreich · 1 year

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youtube

The First Step to Fixing the Electoral College

Should someone else's vote count more than yours?

For 80% of Americans, that’s exactly what’s happening. Their vote for president isn’t nearly as valuable as the vote of someone in a so-called “swing state.” Why?

Most of us live in states that have become so predictably Democratic or Republican that we’re taken for granted by candidates. Presidential elections now turn on the dwindling number of swing states that could go either way, which gives voters in those states huge leverage.

The 2020 election came down to just over 40,000 votes spread across just three swing states.

2016 came down to fewer than 80,000 votes also across three states.

In those elections, the national popular vote wasn’t that close. In fact, in the last five elections, the winners of the popular vote beat their opponents by an average of 5 million votes.

The current state-by-state, electoral college system of electing presidents is creating ever-closer contests in an ever-smaller number of closely divided states for elections that aren’t really that close.

Not only that, but these razor-thin swing state margins can invite post-election recounts, audits, and lawsuits — even attempted coups. A losing candidate might be able to overturn 40,000 votes with these techniques. Overturning 5 million votes would be nearly impossible.

The current system presents a growing threat to the peaceful transition of power.

It also strips us of our individual power. If you’re a New York Republican or an Alabama Democrat, presidential candidates have little incentive to try and win your vote under the current system. They don’t need broad popular support as much as a mobilized base in a handful of swing states. Campaigning to a smaller and more radical base is also leading to uglier, more divisive campaigns.

And it’s become more and more likely that candidates are elected president without winning the most votes nationwide. It’s already happened twice this century.

Now, fixing the Electoral College should be the ultimate goal. But this requires a constitutional amendment — which is almost impossible to pull off because it would need a two-thirds vote by Congress plus approval by three-quarters of all state legislatures.

But, in the meantime, there’s an alternative — and it starts with getting our states to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Don’t let that mouthful put you off. It could save our democracy.

This compact would guarantee the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes nationwide WITHOUT a constitutional amendment.

How does it work?

The Constitution assigns each state a number of electors equal to its number of representatives and senators. As of now, the total number of electors is 538. So anyone who gets 270 or more of those Electoral College votes becomes president.

Article 2 of the Constitution allows state legislatures to award their electors any way they want.

So all that’s needed is for states with a total of at least 270 electoral votes to agree to award all their electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote.

The movement to do this is already underway. 15 states and the District of Columbia have joined the compact, agreeing that once enough states join, all their electoral votes will go to the popular vote winner.

Together, states in the compact have 195 electoral votes. So we just need a few more states with at least 75 electors to join the compact and it’s done.

Popular vote laws have recently been introduced in Michigan [15 electors] and Minnesota [10 electors], which if passed, would bring the total to 220.

Naturally, this plan will face legal challenges. There are a lot of powerful interests who stand to benefit by maintaining the current system.

But if we keep up the fight and get enough states on board, America will never again elect a president who loses the national popular vote. No longer would 80 percent of us be effectively disenfranchised from presidential campaigns. And a handful of votes in swing states would no longer determine the winner — inviting recounts, audits, litigation, and attempted coups that threaten our democracy.

If you want to know more or get involved, click this link to read about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

If your state is not already a member, I urge you to contact your state’s senators and reps to get your state on board.

#youtube #Donald trump #electoral college #politics #election #vote #video #videos

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inquisitor-apologist · 6 months

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Started reading Light of the Jedi, and it’s been really good so far—the pacing is good despite the POV shifts, the characters are distinct, and the worldbuilding is very good, especially for an established setting. It feels like someone could read this as a stand-alone sci fi novel with no background with Star Wars and get along just fine.

But one of the things I like the most so far is this kind of general ‘people are inherently good’ philosophy that the whole book kinda has.

Idk how to explain it exactly, but all of the characters feel very realistic and human, and they all try to help others. The captain in the first chapter likes and cares for her passengers, and even knowing she’s going to die, she does everything to save them. The scan techs are scared and have lives and people they want to see again, but they put out the warning first, even though they might’ve survived if they hadn’t. The elected official guy stays behind with to coordinate the evacuation and tries to get everyone else out first. And, duh, the Jedi are Jedi.

It’s just really refreshing for a Star Wars project to have that faith, since most of Star Wars is set in some of the worst times possible: civil war and descent into fascism, life under fascism, rebellion against fascism, civil war, post-war and post-fascism reconstruction, the resurgence of fascism. Those are times where it’s hard to trust anyone, let alone have a hopeful outlook on humanity. For most of Star Wars, the elected officials are corrupt and power-hungry, the normal people feel like it’s everyone out for themselves, and the Jedi aren’t allowed to just be Jedi.

It’s also pretty good worldbuilding; like Yoda said in Clone Wars, the prequel Jedi couldn’t take the right path, they had to take the only available path. But in this time, the Republic is working, people are helping each other, the Jedi are allowed to be Jedi. The Jedi have the ability to take the right path, to stay behind on Hetzal and stop the explosion—in the prequels, Palpatine and the Senate wouldn’t have let them stay behind, and even if they did, they might not have been able to move the Tibanna, because the Dark Side would’ve been clouding everything and making it harder to use the Force.

That the Jedi are able to help and that other people are willing to help really helps emphasize that this is a completely different time period and landscape than most of Star Wars. It really sells the idea that this was the galaxy’s golden age.

Idk I’m rambling, but I really like Light of the Jedi so far, and if it stays good I might get into the rest of the High Republic

#just picked this book up from the bookstore bc there wasn’t much else interesting #but damn it’s actually really good #wasn’t huge on the high Republic before but maybe #high republic #light of the jedi #star wars the high republic #sw the high Republic #sw thr #sw light of the Jedi #pro jedi #prequel Jedi #is this the original post tag

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odinsblog · 1 year

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“Democratic centrists suffered setbacks that should keep them in check

Because the Republican Party is so terrible, I want Democrats to win any seat they can. That said, I am often leery of the tactics of some Democratic candidates, particularly from the party’s more centrist bloc. Many of those tactics failed this week — which should ensure that they don’t spread within the party.

Rep. Tim Ryan, running for a Senate seat in Ohio, sharply criticized Biden’s student loan cancellation and implied (inaccurately in my view) that the Democratic Party is writing off states that don’t have lots of college graduates.

If Ryan had won in this red state, his approach would have been hailed as what Democrats must do to win, even though it’s really just pandering to moderate and conservative-leaning White men. But Ryan lost to Republican J.D. Vance by about 7 percentage points.

In Florida’s U.S. Senate race, the Democratic candidate, Rep. Val Demings, emphasized her tenure as Orlando’s police chief and repeatedly rebuked activists who have called for defunding the police. I hope Demings’s crushing defeat (by more than 16 points) shows Democrats that whatever electoral problems they have related to crime, policing and race, those aren’t going to be solved by trying to out-cop the Republicans.

Democratic policies did even better than Democratic candidates

South Dakota voted to expand Medicaid. Kentucky rejected an antiabortion amendment to its constitution. Missouri voters legalized marijuana. Democratic candidates resoundingly lost in these states.

There were a lot of progressive ballot initiatives this year adopted on those issues and others, in both red and blue states. This continues a pattern — Democratic policies were passed by referendums throughout the 2010s even as Republicans kept winning elections.

I would trade in a heartbeat Michigan and Minnesota going blue at the state level and all of those successful progressive ballot initiatives in exchange for Democrats keeping the House and Senate. Congress is just hugely important. I’m not sure a party can consider it a good election cycle if it loses a house in Congress, as still seems very possible for Democrats.”

— The 2022 Midterms in Review (by Perry Bacon, Jr.)

(continue reading)

#politics #midterms #centrism #2022 midterms #neoliberalism #when will southern dems learn?#you cannot out conservative republicans #i mean - not unless your name is bill clinton #but i digress #midterms 2022

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gatheringbones · 6 months

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[“Many victims may not even see political coercion from their partners as an abusive act. In our conversation, Tawni Maisonneuve, the survivor and advocate I referenced earlier, attributed this in part to the reality that we still “have a hard time believing emotional and mental abuse occurs,” let alone recognizing political control over a partner as abusive. But Maisonneuve experienced abuse in this form firsthand, from multiple abusive partners obstructing her access to political information, and at different points, even controlling her voting. She finally began to understand her partners’ political coercion of her as abuse when, in 2013, she joined a program that she called “intense victim recovery therapy.”

“In that group, our instructor brought up that sort of behavior. I never really thought of it before as if it was some kind of control,” Maisonneuve said of her former abuser’s control over her politics. She added that she doesn’t think a lot of people talk about “politics in domestic abuse” because “they think, ‘oh, yeah, it’s an argument anyway’ or ‘yeah, people don’t usually see eye-to-eye” and dismiss the potential of these “disagreements” to yield violent outcomes and disenfranchisement.

Yet in many ways, Maisonneuve believes controlling a partner’s vote is one of the most powerful forms of abuse. “When you look at that, if I can control the way you vote even in your community and everything else, I know I really have control of you at home. That’s what we dove into in my victim recovery class,” she said.

Maisonneuve recounted how her “first marriage was the hardest one when it came to voting.” Prior to her abusive marriage, she had worked as a manager in a state senator’s office and had deep roots in community activism and political engagement. “It turned into a situation where I didn’t even register to vote anymore,” Maisonneuve said. Again, her divorce was finalized in 1994, but she says she “didn’t even vote after that for the simple fact that I didn’t want to run into [her ex-husband] at any polls” or “deal with any of those dynamics.” In her next relationship, Maisonneuve’s partner accompanied her to polling places and voted on her behalf. “I felt if I didn’t vote the way he did, or I didn’t agree with those political views, it would really be a physical issue,” she said. “So whenever I would go vote with him, I would need to get things approved before I submitted them. And he would tell the people, ‘Oh, she’s slow, I gotta walk her through it.’ It was those kinds of humiliating things that I dealt with when I went to go vote, when I was in bad relationships.”

This might seem like a lot of effort from her ex-partner, all for one vote that’s hardly likely to sway an election. But according to Maisonneuve, this extent of calculation and control by an abuser isn’t at all out of the ordinary. For an abuser, acts of political coercion including controlling a partner’s vote aren’t necessarily about impacting an election or achieving specific political outcomes, but making their victim feel powerless, denying them agency in the home and in society at large. “It’s about complete power and control,” she said, “where there’s no room for disagreement, no room for your own opinions or even your own thoughts.” Maisonneuve said she also thinks political control within abusive relationships is rarely discussed because of the broad cultural misunderstanding that it’s easy for victims to get the resources they need to leave and be autonomous after an abusive relationship. “But we don’t even really have victim recovery services, we have battery intervention programs, sure—but unless a victim really, really seeks out some mental health help, it’s not even really offered to us,” she said. “We’re given protection orders, or people think you’re at a shelter so everything’s fine. But victim recovery services are far in between, just like shelters.”]

kylie cheung, from survivor injustice: state-sanctioned abuse, domestic violence, and the fight for bodily autonomy, 2023

#kylie cheung #currently reading #cw abuse #cw rape #cw racism #history stuff

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shinobicyrus · 1 year

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I’m really pleased that the Bad Batch is carrying on Clones Wars’ tradition of adding some political intrigue into their animated space show. Padmé made speeches about welfare funding and investigated war profiteering so Chuchi could champion for clone rights and dig into...well...different war profiteering.

Looking back, the episode Truth and Consequences really gives an effective three-punch combo about the Empire, how it works, and where the clones fit into it. The first blow came in the Senate Chamber, when Omega was told by Chuchi, an elected official:

Omega is a child, and is pretty naive to the ways of the galaxy. Not crime or violence, but politics and power. She doesn’t understand why the clones, her brothers and herself, have zero rights or representation in a galaxy they’re a part of. But, as Chuchi says with regret, clones aren’t considered people. They’re “military assets.”

The follow-up punch comes immediately in the next scene, as they walk through the streets of Coruscant and a propaganda announcement by Rampart declares:

“The galaxy is at peace, but our work is never done. A new military, comprised of our own citizens, will usher in a new era of safety and security.”

Again, the clones are othered, made separate from the rest of the people of the galaxy. They are not citizens, and should be replaced by citizens.

The real knockout punch, the pièce de résistance, came at the very end. A scene that literally made me say ‘oh shit’ aloud: the arrival of the Emperor on the floor of the Senate. Not as a shadowy sith lord, but as something worse. Palpatine the political figure, the Head of State for the Galactic Empire.

This was genius. Everyone knows that the clones were literally made to be obedient soldiers - forged in their DNA and their upbringing. Hell, Palpatine was the one that arranged for the clones to be that way in the first place!

They slaughtered the Jedi en masse with single command from him, and now he’s standing in front of the entire Senate, the Galaxy, and is saying with a straight face: “Wow soldiers that follow orders without question sure is a recipe for violence and corruption. I am very concerned about the trustworthiness of these slaves we had custom-grown to follow our orders.”

It all culminates here. The clones follow orders without hesitation and do terrible things if they’re ordered to, with the implication that these new Imperial Stormtroopers, composed of Imperial Citizens, would never do such a thing.

First the Jedi, who had been guardians of the Old Republic, now the clones, who had been its soldiers. Who had been raised from birth to fight for the Republic, and now find themselves soldiers for a new Empire they don’t recognize, and have begun to defy. To even disobey and desert. There was always a lingering question why the clones, who are the better soldiers by far, were replaced by less effective stormtroopers. Now it’s clear: the Empire can’t run on clones. A stormtrooper wouldn’t balk at falsifying an official report. A stormtrooper wouldn’t protest putting down rioting citizens they’d just a few years ago fought beside or liberated in the last war.

Unlike the clones, stormtroopers were never made to fight a war against an external enemy.

The stormtroopers were made to be used on citizens.

#Nerd Rant #Long Post Sorry #Bad Batch Spoilers #I had *thoughts* about this and I think it was really really well done #Star Wars #The Bad Batch #Truth and Consequences #Emperor Palpatine #Riyo Chuchi #Omega TBB #Clone Troopers #Galactic Empire

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haven-is-happy · 6 months

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How Battle Changes: Don't Eat That!

Chapter 7

Pairing: Dogma x Jedi!reader, platonic Wolfpack,

Chapter description: A politician's dinner is rarely without consequences

Warnings: !!!unhealthy eating habits!!!, reader has very little mental health stability, angst, reader is at their breaking point

Wordcount: 2,3 k

Masterlist

Somewhere along the line, your statements went from “mildly controversial” to “assassination worthy”.

You’re not sure when exactly that happened. You don’t care. It just means you are focusing on the right thing, pissing off the people who should be exposed the most.

The thought should be frightening.

Key word: should.

“It’s times like these that I think about my parents. My birth parents, not the parental figures of the caretakers and creche masters at the Jedi Temple. Are they still alive? Was I welcome in their family? Did they wait with bated breath until a child came, tears of joy when I first screamed my lungs out to signal I am breathing and healthy and then reluctantly given with tears to the Jedi? Or was I an intrusion, an accident, an inconvenience they gave away with a sigh of relief?”

Another scripted speech. You poured your heart out during the nights between senate meetings, because the tears that filled your eyes when you allowed yourself to ask these questions are unbecoming of a public representative.

You basically threatened your way into the senate as a representative of the clones and jedi who wish to leave the rigidity of the places they were raised in. Threatened, not elected.

You bought your presence in the chamber by keeping silent about the carnage Krell was allowed to go on, even before Umbara, keeping silent about the Senate's knowledge about the Malevolence, long before it was discovered by your former master Plo.

No tears. No weaknesses. They will tear you apart.

And so the speech continues as you swallow the most likely answer. It burns on the way down. It might burn on the way back up after you permit yourself to throw it up from stress in the “comfort” of your home.

You’ve researched. You know the sector where you most likely came from, now deep in Separatist territory, being the place of several battles at the start of the War.

“I may never know, as the Jedi Master who brought me to the temple is dead. She died on Geonosis and took dozens of secret parentages of padawans, knights and younglings to her grave. At her pyre I cried for the small child not yet outside their cradle that might never know if those that bore them love them.”

You take a steadying breath. Those wonders have long since passed.

“Perhaps it is better not knowing.”

The Senate is deadly silent to your face, but you know there are mute conversations happening in hand signals across the expansive chamber. Their auras betray even the slightest change of emotions. The colours shift and bleed into another as information is passed.

Seems like they have forgotten you can read them better than an open book.

“I know how many of you feel,” you keep a second-too-long break between the words with an emphasis, “about the Order’s practices around recruiting. The truth is the parents get a choice, having both options explained clearly as day. Give the child away so it may prosper as a part of the Order, with the promise that one day the child will be given a way to contact them, or keep the child and face the difficulties of a force-sensitive toddler reigning chaos.”

Expertly, the diplomatic skill taught at the temple made you slot a joke after threatening your audience in not-so-subtle ways. The clueless laugh. The knowing shudder.

You do not want to be seen as cruel.

But if you aren’t, it leaves room for argument.

Next to you, Dogma checks his comm.

The several months of being your guard didn’t change his face one bit. The v-shaped pattern fits well on his face, accentuated by the widow's peak he keeps his hair in. His eyes scan each individual senate-pod in his field of vision, then flick over to you. You have to remind yourself you’re in the force-damned Senate chamber in front of thousands of influential people to stop yourself from lovingly brushing a hand over his cheek.

His armour has been repainted in vibrant colours. The helmet is forgone entirely to show him being proud of being a clone. Jesse next to him is an even more stark reminder, with the republic cog tattooed onto his face.

The tactic is genius. You’ll have to thank Fives for coming up with that.

“The truth is, the vague feeling of my birth parents is no longer even a memory. Can one miss a vague shape in the back of your mind? When you can’t articulate yourself in childhood, maybe, but as an adult, it is but a shape you will gradually forget with age.”

“Clones, however, never had that shape. Many of us have a warm feeling as the first memory of our parents. Being held, coddled and even loved. But the clones didn’t get that luxury. Forgive me for being a cynic, but if you have a problem with the Order’s practices of child-kidnapping - as I heard many put it - why are you not fighting for the clones to have an equal privilege to childhood?”

Your voice rings powerful and accusatory through the full auditorium. You sweep your eyes over the people at your eye level and below, before solidly locking them where Bail Organa stands in his senator-pod. He sends a nod.

Dogma next to you makes a very quiet sound, pitched low just enough for you and only you to hear. He clicks his tongue once, then pauses, and then clicks again.

A signal for news from the Wolfpack. Thank the Force your speech and time at the proverbial stand is coming to an end.

The entire interaction takes no more than three seconds. An uncomfortable silence to marinate most careless Senators in the implications you’ve made.

“My childhood was cut short after the hostilities on Naboo. I had to undergo more rigorous saber training, even as an empath, someone attuned to the living Force around us. A shadow warrior - a Sith of a lineage long-lost - stole any ability to live as a simple aura reader diplomat.”

“And yet that’s not even a fraction of the cruelty and hardship an average clone trooper goes through in a third of the time. As soon as they walk, they are taught combat. They rapidly age, Corellian Hells, THE OLDEST CLONES ARE THIRTEEN YEARS OLD!”

Your frustration poured out into the air around you. This is the closest you have gotten to yelling and losing your cool since you walked out of the Court Chamber at Dogma’s trial. You have no doubt that at least some of the senators or their aides must have a fraction of force sensitivity, at least enough to glimpse the carefully-masked rage you don’t let the average person see.

You lock eyes with the Chancellor on his high seat, the senator-pod that hovers in the centre of the chamber.

You stare at him with intensity unknown to an individual outside of the Jedi Order. Memories flick through your vision, a slideshow of your frustrations at the Senate, frustration shared by the Jedi Council, by your father Plo, by the Clones that have welcomed you into their dysfunctional humongous family.

The Chancellor smiles.

The dinner after resembles a blur of colours too bright to be real.

You barely eat. The worry of poison and backstabbing are ever present, loom over your figure like a mountain. You prod at the force to give you readings of everyone around you, even if they are in your eyesight for a fraction of a second.

The auras are overwhelming. Despite diplomats being taught to never let emotion show on their face, the different hues bleed into their body language.

One can only hide their true nature for so long, you suppose.

You’re sitting at the head of the table for dinner, the centre of attention as usual. As the minutes tick by, it’s become more and more likely that this will not end well. The jabs and replies thrown at one another have a sickly-sweet tone, with oleander-filled honey dripping as they fly at their target.

Dogma and Jesse stand behind you, each on one side as your guards. No matter how many times you try to convince them to eat with you, they insist.

“The life of a senator isn’t for me, but I still want to keep you safe” has been the reply from Jesse each time. Fives is just glad you never asked him, letting him instead stay at your apartment for these drab meetings disguised as dinners.

And your sweet Dogma would follow you to the ends of the Galaxy.

“I suppose if the children had more contact with their parents after getting accepted into the order, they would be able to form healthy attachments, as opposed to having no attachments altogether,” you say to a Nautolan representative sitting half across the table.

She narrows her eyes and nods, pausing to eat a bite out of her meal. “A friend of mine lost her son to the Jedi three decades ago. She still wonders why he never contacted her.”

Dogma searches in his memory. The only nautolan jedi he has heard of is Kit Fisto. It would perhaps fit the description of a son lost thirty years ago. He stores it as something to ask you about.

A mikkian senator sitting to your left looks over at your plate. The longer the supper goes on, the more apparent it is that you are not touching your food. The senator, some generation or two older than you, looks you over a bit before lowering his voice, so that only you and (unintentionally) Dogma can make out his words.

“Deary, you have not touched your meal. I sure do hope this affair has not sullied your appetite.” He adds a smile at the end of his statement, as if to deepen the few wrinkles his face has to make himself the caring older relative.

Your attention snaps to his face briefly, enough to not notice one of his head-tendrils outside your field of vision to twitch in the general direction of your plate. Had Dogma not been inadvertently alerted to his figure, he wouldn’t have noticed the tiny amount of clear, water-like liquid that flew off the tip of his head-tendril and landed at the edge of your plate.

He reacts before his brain catches up to his eyes.

“Don’t eat that!”

His yell makes the entire table stop whatever they are doing to look at him.

“The food is poisoned!”

His aura flashes red with swirls of white. The mix of danger.

Jesse sweeps the room over in less than a millisecond and directs his gaze at your food. Nothing seems out of the ordinary, but he trusts his brother with your safety above all. He takes a half-step closer towards the table.

You strategically stand up slowly and turn to Dogma. “How do you know?”

“The mikkian senator flicked some liquid into it with his head-tendril.”

Out of the corner of your eye, you see the whole room shift. Colours turn muted and tinged with yellow, orange and black.

The aura of the person in question turns a stark black. Fear.

“Impossible! I have done no such thing, clone!” he barks out and gets to his feet abruptly, nearly throwing his chair back.

Jesse, who has so far been stone-cold, willing to not react unless necessary, calmly looks him boldly in his eyes, an act that would have had consequences if he was in the GAR.

“You should know that ambassador (Y/N) can tell if you’re lying,” his tone is even and calculated.

“Of course I know that! That’s because I’m not lying.”

The old man is adamant, even if his eyes widen a fraction.

Your eyes flick over the room and land on a tray in the corner, on a table reserved for decorational flowers.

The tray floats over as the uncomfortable silence settles over the room. Some of the dinner’s participants notice it and gasp, making the others stare in horror as the tray lands in front of you.

You vaguely feel the presence of three Coruscant Guards running down the hall. By the time you land a metal food cover over the plate, they slam the door of the dining room open.

Jesse and Dogma exchange a nod and Dogma nods. Jesse walks out to meet one of the troopers to exchange words. You barely hear the words they whisper, but “poison” and “food” must be at least a part of the conversation. Dogma stays right behind you with a hand on his blaster. You don’t even have to turn to feel his anxiousness.

On instinct, you reach out with the hand that isn’t holding the tray in the air to grip the senator by the wrist with the Force. You press harder and hear something drop to the floor, an item no longer held in an iron grip he had on it. The noises of protests fall upon your deaf ears.

A guard moves in to handcuff the old man, only to notice a blaster on the floor and feel resistance while he moves one of the wrists into the cuffs. The item he dropped.

Jesse, now returning to you, plucks the tray out of the air to bring it back to one of the clones.

You let go of the Force and feel a massive weight of exhaustion hit you. Tilting your hand back just a couple of centimetres is enough for Dogma to grip it tightly with the palm not on his weapon.

You look at the Coruscant Guard talking to Jesse. His aura is full of baby blue and camo green. Confusion and worry.

“Please, take the food with the plate for analysis. Don’t touch it or take it out of the cover unless you are in safe distance. I don’t know what it is,” you say slowly. The words coming out of you feel foreign and you have to push them out, too exhausted to expend any emotions into the tone.

Dogma squeezes your hand three times. An “I love you” for when you can’t speak.

When you leave the dinner behind and get into your personal speeder, you pass out from exhaustion.

Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

#star wars #star wars x reader #the clone wars #tcw dogma #dogma x reader #clone trooper dogma #clone wars x reader #clone x reader #clone x reader bingo

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worldburnrp · 2 months

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MARCH 2ND, 2024

A POLITICAL RENDEZVOUS at THE CLOISTERS

A New Yorkian get-together, political auction, and farewell to winter.

pol·i·tics /ˈpäləˌtiks/ noun. The governance of a country or other area, especially the debate or conflict among individuals hoping to achieve power.

On the afternoon of March 2nd, a casual event celebrates the weather finally putting the cutting cold to rest — with a 60 degree breeze and the sun even peaking through the clouds.

The Cloisters, located at Fort Tryon Park in Washington Heights, welcome New Yorkers for an afternoon of schmoozing with great food and even better wine. The event connects those seeking connections — be it business, personal, or political matters alike.

Some are here for the food, others for the booze, some for the opportunity to speak to current and future American leaders, or to try to influence the pendulum just a touch. Best not forget however, that such leaders are not only the ones of the Senate or the White House — a whole lot of politics happens in the underground, too.

Less than 10 months away from the 2024 elections, an auction takes place to raise funds for the parties in the run. Guests may offer items for auction and do the bidding, too — all proceeds directed to where their hearts desire. The race starts here.

OOC INFO

PART ONE.

IC, the event takes place on the afternoon of MARCH 2ND (Saturday). OOC, it starts March 1st, and the end date will be determined soon.

Members aren’t required to pause non-event threads during this period, BUT ARE HIGHLY ENCOURAGED TO PRIORITIZE THEM for fun, flowing interactions. While members can still respond to threads started previous to the event, they cannot start new threads outside of the event until it is wrapped.

If you choose to keep pre-event threads going, we ask that those are kept to a minimum as to not delay or confuse timelines and events. During this period, you should be expected to have more event threads on dash, than regular ones.

WE ENCOURAGE YOU TO PLOT with your fellow players what your characters will be up to during the event, as well as any plots and/or conflicts that may happen. For heavy conflicts, please do make sure to message the main about it first. <3

As always, should there be any questions or need of assistance with any plots, please feel free to contact the admins and we’ll be happy to help you!

CHALLENGE

OUTFIT CHALLENGE: Show us what your character’s outfit will be! Be as detailed as you’d like, and feel free to get creative. [ You will be awarded 100 points for completing this ] Dress code is business casual. No need for suits, tuxedos, or long dresses this time around, though characters may still want to put their best foot forward, especially if they're treating the date as a platform for their own personal goals. Likewise, your character can ditch the 'business' altogether if they're only there for a fun time.

OPEN STARTER: Write an open starter! [ You will be awarded 100 points for completing this ]

RESPOND TO AN OPEN STARTER: Respond to an open starter! [ You will be awarded 300 points for completing this ]

WRITE A MULTIPLE-CHARACTER THREAD: Write a thread where three or more characters are interacting together at once. [ Each character involved will be awarded 200 points for completing this ]

Important! Challenges are NOT mandatory, but all points you accumulate are going to your balance, which you can then use to 'purchase' you perks and advantages.

AUCTION & AUCTION ITEMS

The auction will start once Part 2 is posted. Until then:

Join the fun and submit an item that your character is offering, where any proceeds will be donated to the party of their choosing!

We encourage you to get inspired by who your characters is and what would line up with them. For example, if your character is an artist, you can auction a painting by them. If they are famous, you may offer some sort of signed item. And if you think those patterns wouldn't fit, then we also encourage you to be as creative as you wish — have them auction a personal item, a date/hangout with them, a product or experience. If you're not sure what to offer, but want to participate, feel free to message the main page and the admins will help with suggestions.

All characters who offer up an item for auction will be awarded 300 points. If you have multiple characters and you submit multiple items, you'll be awarded 300 points for each item submitted. However, you can only submit one item per character you play.

To offer an auction item on behalf of your character, please SUBMIT to the main:

CHARACTER NAME is auctioning a ITEM NAME HERE. Proceeds will be donated to the REPUBLICAN PARTY / DEMOCRATIC PARTY (please choose the one that aligns with your character!). Any supporting images? (In case it's a specific item, please include a photo of such.)

For example:

PABLO PICASSO is auctioning an ORIGINAL PAINTING. Proceeds will be donated to the DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

Admin note:

Burnies! This event isn't just any event — it's our three year anniversary event! March 2nd marks three years since WB opened, and we're so so honored and happy to have all of you with us; your mastery with writing and character-building wows us every day. But what stands out to us most is your kindness and your friendship, offered to members old and new. Whether you've been here for three years, three months, or three days — all members are equally as appreciated and loved, and we're so lucky to have all of you be part of our wb fam. Happy 3 years, burnies! We adore you! <3

#crime rp #appless rp #mature rp #city rp #nyc rp #wb.event

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just-late-roman-republic-things · 10 months

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Clodius: Can you two approve this guy to adopt me? I really need to be a pleb

Pompey: Your “new dad” is younger than you are...

Caesar: Aren’t you the guy who dressed up as a woman, broke into my house and hit on my wife?

Clodius: Fully acquitted, babyyyy!

Pompey: Why do you even want to be a pleb anyway

Clodius: To stand for tribune, of course! Don’t you want someone to prosecute Cicero for the Catiline executions?

Caesar: That was four years ago though

Pompey: Yeah Cicero’s cool

Clodius: And I’ll ship Cato off to Cyprus for a year

Caesar: SOLD.

Pompey: Dude, I don’t know. This guy seems kinda...stabby?

Caesar: Didn’t you use your army to intimidate the Senate into giving you a consulship?

Pompey: I’m fun violent. This is scary violent.

Clodius: Please please please I promise I’ll be cool and pass ALL the laws you want and veto Bibulus’ stupid face

Caesar: C’mon, how much harm can he do?

Pompey: Yeah you’re right

Clodius gets legally adopted and reclassified as a pleb, gets elected as tribune, and...

#publius clodius pulcher #julius caesar #pompey #jlrrt scribbles #jlrrt speaks #ancient rome

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mariacallous · 1 year

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While there is no simple cure to the threats we face to our democracy, one small change could go a long way towards restoring trust: states should stop reporting incomplete vote totals on election night. This will provoke howls of protest from the news media which is, even now, preparing elaborate stages, fancy electronic maps and complex forecasting models in a race to be first to call the election—some even going so far as to put a “democracy desk” on their stage—in order to explain the chaos that is likely to happen.

But “election night” no longer exists and states can get rid of it. Today it’s more like election month. Early voting begins in some states in early October and continues into November and absentee voting has skyrocketed. Some of these trends are the direct result of COVID which shut the country down in 2020, leading election officials in many states to come up with ways to hold an election that didn’t involve standing in line inside a polling place and possibly contracting the virus. For the first time in history, only 30% of voters cast their ballots on Election Day in 2020.

The second reason election night no longer exists is that most states have laws which forbid counting the early votes before Election Day. That is understandable—imagine the unfair impact reporting an early vote winner might have on subsequent voters. So, most states forbid counting these early votes until Election Day itself. This was never much of a problem when the early vote counted for a small portion of the overall vote. But in 2020, in addition to the large increase in early voting, early voting itself became politicized. These two factors combined to make the Election Day vote a very poor predictor of the election outcome.

This happened because President Trump decided, even before Election Day 2020, that absentee ballots would be the source of fraud against him (although he and the First Lady voted absentee). He convinced his supporters to vote in person while Democrats were urging their voters to vote early and/or by absentee ballot. The election night returns created what became known as “the red mirage”—the in-person votes were for Trump—the early and absentee ones for Biden. As more and more votes were counted the candidate in the lead changed, creating a fertile situation for conspiracy theorists. In Phoenix’s Maricopa County, election deniers believed that 40,000 ballots had been shipped in from China marked for Biden. They set about looking for bamboo fibers in the ballots—surely one of the crazier theories in an altogether crazy year.

The third reason to get rid of election night is the prospect of chaos or even violence at polling places on Election Day and the prospect of interrupted or chaotic vote counts. We aren’t even at Election Day and already a court in Arizona has had to step in to keep armed men from establishing a threatening presence around ballot drop-off boxes.

The move towards hand counting of ballots and the many possible instances of chaos in a close election makes it likely that in some instances the courts will have to step in and sort things out—a prospect that could take some time.

The combination of these factors plus many very close Senate races means that trying to call winners on election night—let alone control of the Senate—is a fool’s errand and one that is guaranteed to create even more confusion and suspicion as the votes are counted or the courts sort out issues. Below are multiple charts showing how many early votes and absentee votes were received as of the end of October in states where there is a key Senate race. Of the nine states with competitive Senate races, only three allow votes to be counted before Election Day. In the other six, vote counting could take a week or more. Early and absentee voting numbers are already breaking records, leading analysts to predict an even higher turnout than in 2018—which broke records for a midterm election. In many states, Republicans are also voting early—a sign that perhaps the convenience is outweighing the paranoia Trump spread in 2020. No matter how you look at it, election officials who cannot start counting votes until Election Day have a huge job before them, and they will need to do it accurately.

The bottom line? There is no reason that we need to know winners on election night especially when the race to call elections creates confusion and a fertile field for more conspiracy theories. States should resist the hyperventilating of the networks and announce winners when enough of the vote has been counted that the outstanding vote is trivial and cannot change the outcome.

EARLY VOTES CAST AS OF the END OF OCTOBER 2022 AND WHEN THEY CAN BE COUNTED

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cleoselene · 3 months

Note

I find it frustrating that you assume I’m seeking attention and refuse to earnestly engage with my feelings when I say I don’t wanna vote for the guy who is actively helping Israel commit genocide. Also, as a disabled person like me, why aren’t you mad at him for pretending the pandemic is over and removing all covid mitigations and making society unsafe for us?

if you're voting for Cornel West, you're voting for whoever Harlan Crow wants you to vote for. If you're voting for Jill Stein, you're voting for whoever Vladimir Putin wants you to vote for. Either way, it's nonsensical and useless. My first election was 2000, go read the wikipedia article about Florida and Ralph Nader, it's not my fucking job to educate you on the meaning of a third party candidate in an electoral system that is a Single Member District Plurality.

As a disabled person on Social Security and living in the bottom quintile of this economy, the Biden Administration has made my life MARKEDLY better. Medicare improvements alone have been a revelation. I now have so much more money in my pocket, no copays on my medications or any of my doctor visits ever, my food stamps have gone up. We are the only major economy in the west that is experiencing economy growth.

Biden has been dealing with a 50-50 Senate and has accomplished more than Obama did with a Supermajority in 8 years. I'm sorry that you probably learned about foreign policy three months ago, but if you think literally anyone else who has a snowball's chance in fucking hell will be better for Palestine, you are delulu as all fuck. Biden is not helping commit genocide, you are spouting internet catchphrases. Biden is not even on speaking terms with Netanyahu at the moment. Blinken has been repeatedly pressuring Israel to pause the fighting because Americans are being held hostage in Gaza. You speak like someone who learns literally all of their information from social media.

You're disabled like me, why are you giving away your country to fascism for one foreign policy issue you probably barely understand and literally no other viable candidate will be to the left of Biden on? Do you think Trump, who your vote will actively assist, will be any better? The guy who literally moved the American embassy in Israel to Palestine in a move designed to be deliberately provocative to Palestine? That Donald Trump?

Assume Biden literally told Netanyahu to stop. Netanyahu would not stop. It would not happen. We have not approved any aid to Israel, even, because guess what: Congress hasn't approved anything whatsoever.

And that is more words than I have been willing to give to anyone who responds to this post because in 2016 I gave a lot of words to people who ended up being Russian psyops agents, and I am tired.

But hey, vote for Jill Stein. Women dying in Texas of miscarriages going septic clearly mean fucking nothing to you, as long as you can keep your Internet Moral Purity Fad Of The Moment.

edit: re Covid that was a global loss and it sucks and I have no Immune B cells and I don't go out anymore but that is hardly uniquely American. Everywhere is pretending it's over. no one cares about sick people anywhere. anyway grow up and realize the world is complicated and if you're a single issue voter like this you are cutting off your nose to spite your face

#christ why do i bother #i have compassion for the palestinians but guess what?#the political realities are what they are #and no joe biden isn't doing shit #except repeatedly pressuring Bibi to fucking cool it #i know this because I READ THE NEWS BEYOND SOCIAL FUCKING MEDIA

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robertreich · 2 years

Video

youtube

The Secret to the GOP’s Assault on Your Rights

Democracy is not just under attack in America. In some states, it’s being lost.

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once suggested that states could serve as laboratories of democracy, but these states are more like laboratories of autocracy.

Take Wisconsin. The GOP has so successfully rigged state elections through gerrymandering that even when Democrats get more votes, Republicans win more seats. In 2018, Republicans won just 45% of the vote statewide, but were awarded 64% of the seats.

******

Btw, if you’d like my daily analyses, commentary, and drawings, please subscribe to my free newsletter: robertreich.substack.com

******

Wisconsin is one of several states where an anti-democracy movement has taken hold.

But it wasn’t always this way. In fact, Wisconsin pioneered the progressive era of American politics at the start of the twentieth century — with policies that empowered workers, protected the environment, and took on corporate monopolies. State lawmakers established the nation’s first unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, and strict child labor laws.

Teddy Roosevelt called the state a “laboratory for wise … legislation aiming to secure the social and political betterment of the people as a whole.”

But for the last decade, Wisconsin has become a laboratory for legislation that does the exact opposite.

After Republicans took control in 2010, one of the first bills they passed gutted workers' rights by dismantling public-sector unions — which then decimated labor’s ability to support pro-worker candidates.

This move aligned with the interests of their corporate donors, who benefited from weaker unions and lower wages.

This new Wisconsin formula has been replicated elsewhere.

Republicans in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina won a minority of votes in 2018, but still won majorities in their state assemblies thanks to gerrymandering.

In Texas, Ohio, and Georgia, Republicans have crafted gerrymanders that are strong enough to create supermajorities capable of overturning a governor’s veto.

Even more alarming, hundreds of these Republican state legislators, “used the power of their office to discredit or try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election,” on behalf of Donald Trump.

How did this happen? Put simply: years of careful planning by corporate interest groups and their radical allies.

And the corporations enabling these takeovers aren't just influencing the law — their lobbyists are literally writing many of the bills that get passed.

This political alliance with corporate power has given these Republican legislatures free rein to pursue an extreme culture-war agenda — one that strips away rights that majorities of people support — while deflecting attention from their corporate patrons’ economic agendas.

Republicans are introducing bills that restrict or criminalize abortion. They’re banning teachers from discussing the history of racism in this country. They are making it harder to protest and easier to harm protestors. They are punishing trans people for receiving gender-affirming care and their doctors for providing it.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. There are still laboratories of democracy where true public servants are finding creative ways to defend the rights of us all.

Elected officials in Colorado and Vermont are codifying the right to abortion. California lawmakers have proposed making the state a refuge for transgender youth and their families. And workers across the country are reclaiming their right to organize, which is helping to rebuild an important counterweight to corporate power.

But winning will ultimately require a fifty state strategy — with a Democratic Senate willing to reform or end the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade, protect voting rights, and protect the right to organize nationwide.

America needs a national pro-democracy movement to stop the anti-democracy movement now underway — a pro-democracy movement committed to helping candidates everywhere, including in state-level races.

This is where you come in. Volunteer for pro-democracy candidates — and if you don't have time, contribute to their campaigns.

This is not a battle of left vs. right. It is a battle between democracy and autocracy.

#roe v wade #roe #Supreme Court #states #Wisconsin #democracy #videos #video

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inquisitor-apologist · 1 year

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Padmé is such a disappointing character in general, but one of the biggest missed opportunities with her character was that they didn’t explore the idea of her being 14 years old and the Queen of an entire planet at all. Like, in our world, no sane town would democratically elect a 14 year old to any position of even moderate authority, let alone a global leader and representative . It’s just absolutely insane, and if they’d actually worked with that and how that would’ve affected her character, it could’ve been really interesting and would’ve really helped explain the whole Anidala situation.

Maybe it’s the norm on Naboo to start working really early, and they somehow recognized Padmé’s political talents when she was, like, a baby. So she’s been raised and trained for politics her whole life, and she’s good at it! She loves it, it’s what she’s meant to do, it’s her calling… but it’s also so much. She’s been a brilliant political mind since she was 5, she’s never had any kind of childhood, she just kept going up and up and up the political ladder so fast that she’s never been able to have anything for herself. It’s all for her people, for her planet, for the Republic, every day, every minute, she’s working for everyone else 24/7, and it’s exhausting.

She wants a family, she wants to be able to settle down and live on her planet instead of for her planet, but she knows she’ll never be able to. Senators don’t have families, Queens don’t get a quiet life, Naboo politicians like Palpatine are serving well into their 80s, this is her entire life and it always will be, and she hates that. She does love what she does, it very much is what she wants to do, but she wishes it wasn’t all she did.

And then comes Anakin Skywalker, who gets it. Anakin’s also prodigiously talented and has so much responsibility on him. Qui-Gon literally told him when he was 9 that he was The Chosen One, the only Chosen One, the one person who could bring balance to the Force. Anakin knows what it’s like to have the weight of the galaxy on his shoulders, he knows what it feels like to resent his purpose as much as he loves it. He understands this thing she’s repressed for so long, this quiet yearning for something else that she’s never told anyone.

She pushes him away at first—she’s scared of anyone knowing that about her. It’s one of her darkest secrets, and she feels so guilty about it. She thinks that if he sees that, he’ll think she’s just an ungrateful brat who doesn’t respect what she has, but Anakin doesn’t. He feels the exact same way, he understands her implicitly, and once they realize that they both want the same thing, there’s no going back. They fall fast and hard, and it’s perfect. The time she spends in hiding on Naboo with him is the happiest she’s been in years.

There’s the allure that they aren’t supposed to be doing this; Padmé can’t have a family for political reasons, and Anakin can’t for religious reasons. It feels like a quiet rebellion against the purposes that control their whole lives, this relationship that they’re not supposed to have or want, and it’s exhilarating. In that context, it’s super easy for her to put him on a pedestal—Anakin understands Padmé so easily, so effortlessly, he must agree with her, so of course he’s joking when he’s talking about dictatorship like it’s a good thing. He gets her, it’s fine.

Until it’s not. Until the Clovis arcs, where she suddenly realizes that he isn’t this perfect person who understands her completely, he’s human, and they disagree about a lot, actually. The last Clovis arc feels very much like an ‘oh shit’ moment for Padmé. This whole relationship was built on a fiction, and she’s just realizing it 3 years in. Then Padmé gets pregnant and she think it’ll save them—this is what they both wanted, a family for themselves, this’ll fix everything.

But it doesn’t. It just makes Anakin more possessive and afraid, and Padmé gets more and more frustrated, on and on until they snap. Anakin crosses lines for Padmé that she never wanted him to cross, he does everything for her and she doesn’t like it at all. By the end of Revenge of the Sith things have spiraled so much that they’re on a collision course, utterly incompatible. Anakin turns to the Dark Side and Padmé finally sees him for what he is and (ideally) goes to kill him. Anakin sees Padmé for what she is (not him), and kills her.

The tragedy is that they never loved each other, they loved themselves and how the other reflected them. Everything else was just pretend.

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goldendiie · 4 months

Note

Is Americana still being updated?

woof, loaded question. the short answer: not really. i’m old and tired. and i don’t care. xoxo. but i DO think that owes some explanation, which you can find below the cut.

i started writing the third blink when i was around sixteen years old. all it was ever SUPPOSED to be was that twelve-chapter love story about the hippie and solider from the cars movies. i’d like to describe americana as “things getting out of hand.” everyone loved the third blink, so i wanted to give them more. now it would be fillmore and the vast expanse of sixties new left history. it had TOO MUCH nuance: his parents aren’t in the picture because he was disowned. he can explain away national politics during elections because his father was a senator. sarge became a vehicle to demonstrate how sixties conservatism was flawed, but not necessarily bad. together, they were a deep dive into midcentury identity politics, something rarely covered even in academic literature. it was an EXTREMELY ambitious project. you should see the mad scientist notes i have shoved between the pages of various books i used as sources.

yes, this all makes sense CONCEPTUALLY. it’s decent historical reasoning, and these are totally valid assumptions to make based on what we know about their characters (i.e. liberal vs conservative). but here i am, now twenty-one, writing this long winded and often nonsensical backstory about two characters who have maybe five total minutes of screen time together. americana is not only too far removed from its own beginnings in the third blink, but it’s also totally divorced from canon. that bothers me.

(and also— it’s a little grating to write dozens of breakups and constant fighting. a damaged relationship is a keystone of the third blink au. i was stuck writing angst after angst. it kind of sucked after a while.)

it’s no secret that i’ve been writing cars fanfic for an extremely long time. actually, it’ll be seven years on friday. that’s a literal third of my life. frankly, i’m tired of the same old concepts, characters, and ideas. the cars fandom will always feel like Home to me, and these movies will always have a special place in my heart. but too often i feel as though it’s time to hang up the old racing tires, so to speak.

AND, BEFORE YOU FREAK OUT: this is not a resignation letter. i’m not leaving the fandom. obviously, im still around. i wouldn’t rule that out the possibility of sporadic updates. i do LOVE the story that i’ve created, but not enough to distract from my disillusionment.

i hope this made any sense at all. tldr: i’ve been thinking about this au for five years. im old. i’m tired. i dont care anymore. xoxo.

#probably more than you expected. but i couldn’t say ‘not really’ without telling you WHY

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vague-humanoid · 1 year

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Fringe GOP candidates who are struggling in primaries are getting temporary aid from unusual allies. Democrats are spending tens of millions of dollars on ads in Republican primaries depicting the more radical contender as too conservative—which may be an effective attack in a general election but appeals to Republican voters in primaries.

The upside for Democrats is that it can lead the GOP to nominate candidates who are less attractive to swing voters in November.They’re using this strategy to meddle in the June 28 GOP primaries for governor of Illinois and for U.S. senator and governor in Colorado.

The Democrats had a plan: Fund the right-wing radicals. For the 2022 midterms, according to numbers compiled by the Washington Post, Democrats spent $19 million in support of far-right Republican primary candidates who denied or questioned the results of the 2020 election. Fringe-right candidates, they assumed, would be less palatable to voters in specific districts and states, during a general election.

It seems like it worked.

Most of the money went towards TV ad buys backing GOP candidates in 13 races across eight states. Six of these candidates won their primaries. And of those six candidates, almost all of them lost their midterm bids in the general election in 2022—with the exception of Kari Lake, whose Arizona governor race is still too close to call.

So, yeah, everything went well, right?

Well, no. Elections aren’t just elections, they’re a part of a permission structure. To win a primary election is in some ways to be deemed acceptable. These people aren’t just losers who are barred from ever running again. They have gained star power.

“Many of these candidates develop a much larger following, even if they lose the current race,” Mike Madrid, cofounder of the Lincoln Project told PBS, referring to fringe candidates who run for office. “What we have seen is, they come back and win for school board or state legislative race or for city councils because of this new awareness and this new recognition.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/12/democrats-interfere-republican-primaries/

Democrats have spent nearly $19 million across eight states in primaries this year amplifying far-right Republican candidates who have questioned or denied the validity of the 2020 election, according to a Washington Post analysis, interfering in GOP contests to elevate rivals they see as easier to defeat in November, even as those candidates have promoted false or baseless claims.

The practice by some campaigns and outside groups this year has divided Democrats, with some in the party complaining that such tactics are risky and could ultimately result in the election of candidates who pose serious threats to democracy.

this was the same strategy the Clinton campaign used in supporting trump, believing he would lose a general election. how did that work out?

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