Excellent point. I’m no political expert, but I can see that what we’re doing right now isn’t working. No matter how much we point out how awful the Right is, we aren’t winning voters because they aren’t really seeing it. For the person who thinks an immigrant took his job and is why he’s not getting ahead today, hearing that a bunch of them got loaded on a plane and taken to an El Salvadorian gulag isn’t a bad thing. It’s a good thing, because that’s fewer undesirables polluting the country and ‘taking our jerbs’. It also doesn’t affect them. Who cares if some brown dad from Maryland got sent to the gulag by accident. That’s somebody else’s problem. The people we’re trying to reach don’t care about that. If sending the Browns to a labour camp brings the price of eggs down, then well, too bad so sad, send 'em all off so Ah can get muh eggs ‘n’ gas for cheapah! Murica fuck yeah!

Let’s get real. All our bloviating about how dumb the GQP is and how evil they are serves once purpose – preaching to the choir. We keep insulting their intelligence, insisting they have no plan, saying we’re smarter than they are, and accusing their voters of being morons barely able to breathe on their own, but we keep losing elections to these supposed morons. Our leadership and our pundits have forgotten the most important role for leaders and pundits – convincing people that we’re right and the other side is wrong. Meanwhile, the GQP has cornered the information space, sent us reeling, gotten enough people to stay home, vote third party, or actually vote for their shitheads, and basically shock and awe us in 2016 AND 2024. Really, if you stop and look at how well we got outplayed, you gotta question who the real morons are. Doubly so now that they’re in power, and rather than stepping back and pointing out the resulting shitshow is 100% on Team Red, we’re helping them fuck the country over, repeatedly. That really fits us for the dunce cap in my book.

I hope that AOC and Sanders’ message sticks. I think it’s a good one. As billionaires get tax cuts while we pay more and more for essentials, the message that we’re being fucked by the moneyed class should stick harder. While it wasn’t enough to win us those two Florida seats (an awful lot of awful people still vote in Florida), it DID seem to reverse our fortunes in Wisconsin, and we managed to keep the courts liberal over there. But even this has its flaws. I think a lot of people have the idea that Democrats are just a party of talking, not of action. And that idea isn’t wholly unearned. Democrats do have a habit of throwing their hands up and giving up when the going gets tough. What they need to do is fire up Billy Ocean and rise to the occasion, fighting for all our rights and convincing through both words and actions that they are the better chance. We’ll never pick off the hard-core Q-Anon nutcases, but if we can convince some of the 7 million that didn’t vote for Trump in 2020 but did in 2024 to stay home or vote third party, if not vote for us, and we can get some of the 90m that stayed home in 2024 to turn out now for the Democrats, that’s good. Here’s hoping that Democrats put actions to the words we’re seeing right now, otherwise this will be short-lived. And all we’ll have is the ability to shake our fists at the evil, stupid Republicans.

For now

I need to go rewatch the Martin show before I completely forget the 90s

Huh! No idea it was a cover. Til, thanks!

It’s real. We live in the dumbest timeline.

Why would you need to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles for an ID though?

Well, now you’re seeing the issue. You go to the DMV because that’s the only place allowed to give out state IDs. This is not an accident.

If (nearly) everyone has an ID, it cannot be used as means for voter disenfranchisment.

You’re forgetting that the entire point is to be disenfranchising. Yes, this is 100% fixable, and Republicans will fight to make sure it doesn’t get fixed.

Your solution is to just spend an entire day at the DMV and hope you get seen so you don’t have to do it again the next day? In what world does that sound reasonable?

The DMV (or secretary of state offices) I know won’t see you without an appointment.

I could not renew online (not sure why it wouldn’t let me). You need an appointment in my state now. Before this change, it was an all-day affair. I.e. get there before it opens, stand in an extremely long line that wraps around all 3 sides of the building, and stand in line for most the day (in the extreme heat, in the summer).

And if you don’t have a home address then you don’t deserve to vote?

Remember when we decided to not let just land owners vote?

I am quite sure. I was out with a friend and he got fined for not carrying ID. The legal requirement starts at 16.

Yeah that struck me, too. Sounds very weird to an American. Realistically, having an ID on your happens most of the time, but if I didn’t have to drive, I’d leave my wallet home and just carry my phone all the time.

It is! Some countries use a “permanent” ink to prevent voting twice, but yes, just let people vote.

Let’s imagine one person one vote, but without voter ID. Now, one person can be 10 people…IF that one person wants to set the record for “easiest voter fraud conviction ever.”

In-person election fraud isn’t a thing that statistically happens.

However, requiring an ID does SUPPRESS turnout in countries that are deporting so quickly they sometimes accidently deport their own citizens and can’t get them back (true story bro).

So you fixed a problem that doesn’t exist, but hurt poor and marginalized people. Sounds like a shitty idea.

In my country i just get my vote-note in the mail. In America you now have to own a passport which most doesn’t, be a member of a party, which 90mil eligible voters aren’t, and hope that your boss has the same political views as you, so he lets you off work to go vote.

I’m pretty sure you can answer that one for yourself.

The fact that Trump is saying out loud that voter ID laws would “allow them to win all future elections” should give you a clue as to why not.

Voter ID laws, at face value, are not the problem. The problem is that Republicans have made getting a valid ID damn near difficult in typically blue areas.

Not only that, there are simply no cases of voter fraud in the US where a voter ID would have stopped said fraud. Voter Fraud, as it happens, is so rare that the only really effective way to commit fraud is by ballot stuffing which, surprise surprise, Republicans have consistently been caught doing.

I think my comment was very clear.

There’s a shit ton of information on Voter ID laws, most of it from like a decade ago when Republicans themselves were openly admitting that they were pushing it in order to disenfranchise “certain groups”.

It’s just so fucking dumb that, in 2025, people are pretending to not know the purpose of these laws.