Vote. Vote, dammit. Vote.
Election winners like to talk about something called “the will of the people,” but what we’re really talking about here is “the will of the people who actually showed up to vote that day.” And since there are more of us than there are of them, it should be our will that is expressed today… that is, if we all actually bother to vote.
Let’s be clear: study after study shows that Democrats almost always benefit from high turnout while Republicans benefit from low turnout. They don’t want you to vote; that has always been their strategy. Don’t let it be a winning strategy.
If Democrats turn out in equal or greater strength than Republicans today, Gov. Gregoire and Darcy Burner will cruise to victory. If we stay home, the Republicans will win. It’s as simple as that.
And at the presidential level, don’t be fooled into complacency by Barack Obama’s imminent victory, for the battle to discredit his administration has already begun. Obama is going to need a huge electoral mandate if he’s to have a hope of turning our nation around, and so every vote counts… even those here in a West Coast state he will surely win, and hours after the East Coast declares him the presumptive president-elect.
So vote, dammit, vote. Or shut up and deal with the consequences.
FIND YOUR POLLING PLACE: KING | PIERCE
WA STATE PROGRESSIVE VOTERS GUIDE
NOTE:
The Pierce County polling place finder has been down intermittently. You can find a list of polling places here.
Remember to vote tomorrow polls open at 7am. Today, go to work and get a good night sleep.
It looks like Obama will be your next President. Will secret elections be allowed after that or will union thugs go to every home in the USA and demand the householder sign a “check-off” card in front of them?
Governor Rossi will fight against that. Gregoire? Not at all.
It’s pouring outside, and it’s in the bag already.
http://www.barackobama.com
Has a poll finder.
@2, you’re silly.
@2 And what country are you from, or are you planning to leave the USA tomorrow? (“your” president)
I hear that if Rossi becomes governor he’ll reduce the deficit by selling King County to the Chinese.
After the past eight years in which we have seen lies and torture and illegal wars become policy; and the evisceration of our constitutional rights-first amendment and fourth amendment in particular, the loss of habeus corpus and wholesale government spying on American citizens-to vote Republican is to commit an act of treason.
6 You mean…someone hasn’t already…??
See comments 1&2
Don’t forget to vote yes on I-1029
CitizenSteve @6
If we only could.
John425 @ #2: Actually, it was the Republicans bringing suit in Chelan County in 2004 which demanded that disputed voters get on the stand, under oath, and declare for whom they had voted. Apparantly the sanctity of the secret ballot doesn’t hold as much value to them as the prospect of winning an election challenge.
I voted.
Always encouraging to see that the sore losermanship from the Republicans has already started.
Two centuries ago Tom Jefferson served as President of this country, a cuntry thyat a century later gave my grandparents an opportunity to escape the bigotry of Christian Europe. Those of us who stayed behinf died in camps. I could not be more proud or more greatful to the USA.
For the last few weeks my wife has canvassed and recanvassed our precinct. I have make a lot ofcvalls from the Obama site to Florida, Ohio and Georgia. My daughter and I have given out hundreds of Obama bucks. My son, Hillel, has trudged for days through New Hampshire and mannede phones in Cambridge.
Tonight, it all comes together!
I am in awe.
Twodogs @ #5 asks if I will leave the country after Obama cheats his way into the Presidency. No- I’ll stay and fight harder to elect people who actually love and respect the USA. That of course means the exclusion of the Obamanamadingdong.
Proud Jew at #14 tells us his family fled the pogroms of Europe. Too bad he doesn’t get the fact that electing Obama will usher in a new open season on Jews. First, he’ll sell out Israel and then require new tattoos on Jewish-Americans.
15;
Dude, the drugs are wearing off. See your doctor.
Your emotional outburst is uncalled for and reveals your immaturity and lack of a grasp as to how this system works.
Good luck in your treatment.
I can’t help but notice how desperate the wingnuts have become as they face the end of their current run. They were giddy as hell for the last 8 years. They had total control and they FUCKED IT UP. Now the people have had enough and they can’t/won’t/refuse to see their mistakes that brought them to this point.
Sad. But it means they will have trouble fixing what is wrong with their party. Sucks for them.
John425 @ 16: Gee, you really do like to make things up entirely from whole cloth as you go along, don’t you? Getting pretty desperate, are we?
2 j425
Governor Rossi or Governor Gregoire won’t have shit to say about union card signing once it is federal law.
My official prediction has been that Obama will win by 50+ electoral votes, but it appears likely to me now that it will be more like 200+.
It also appears much more likely now that both Darcy Burner and Chris Gregoire will win their respective races.
I have high hopes for Peter Goldmark, but I don’t think Ladenburg is going to make it.
I just returned from my polling place in the 43rd: strong steady turnout. At 9am, the absentee ballot slot on the AccuVote machine was already at capacity.
19 Whole cloth? More like he’s using second-hand toilet paper.
The repub moderates are leaving, and what will be left behind will be the worst of the worst. They will shift even further to the right. They may never see how they got to this point. You could see it coming when they started realizing they were losing. It was like backing a dog into a corner, they got really vicious.
But this what happens in America when one party is in control and they stinkup a whole country. THEY GET VOTED OUT!
Losers whine and cry foul, it’s a shame, but expected …basicly, it’s already started.
If you are reading this and you have not voted…Please step away from the screen and go cast your vote.
So where is the place to watch election returns tonight?
I mean I could stay at home and watch CNN, but after the last 8 years I think I need a good bender dammit.
26 Chris
Schwartz Brother Restaurants (Daniel’s Broiler et. al.) are keeping their Happy Hours all night, from 3:30 on to closing. But I’ll bet the Montlake Alehouse will be rockin’.
I had a conversation a couple weeks ago with a professor from Seattle U. He was talking about the “dumbing down of America” as evidenced by two things. One was a survey of students taking the SAT which showed that quite a few who did really badly thought they’d “aced” it until they actually learned their scores. The other is his own dealings with some students who he’d talk with after they’d screwed up miserably on tests. Often one of these kids would be really offended by a bad score, and then when the professor started walking through each problem and explained where the student went wrong, the student would protest, “But I really know the material”…and the argument would go on, point by point, giving up only after being meticulously walked through what should have been some really obvious points.
My friend says he can’t help but see some connection between this sort of cognitive dissonance and that in which seemingly sane people continue to vote for and defend politicians who are systematically ripping them off.
Nobody who’s a progressive should vote for Sound Transit’s Prop. 1 – it would be the largest REGRESSIVE tax package on people in this state’s history. And that fact is in no way ameliorated by how some of the money would be used to buy trains.
ArtFart @ 28:
Education is a BIG problem in America. A lot of our economic advantage in the early and mid-20th century was due to the advent of near-universal education in the U.S. at taxpayer expense.
But other nations learned that trick, too. Japan and Korea, and now China and India, have learned that investing in education is a cheap way to jump ahead in the global economy.
Lots of people, including quite a few educators, are stuck in believing that the U.S. still has the finest education system in the world, and all other nations only educate a few “elite” which explains any test results tot he contrary. But that explanation is no longer true, and hasn’t been true for decades. International companies know that they can hire workers with better educations overseas.
One of the big problems we face is a combination of (a) fear of memorization, and (b) diminished expectations.
The former is due to the near cult-like adhearance among education professionals to a belief that memorization drills kill a student’s love of learning, and are to be avoided at all costs. Other countries who still require students to gain a good foundation early in math, science, foreign language, history, and geography require students to exercise their memorization skills. As a consequence most of their 8th graders would have little trouble with the math/science portion of our SAT’s.
As for diminished expectations, we simply don’t expect our students to obey and work hard in school. Even private schools, which have the ability to pick and choose which students will attend, have tended to expect less and less of their students. Currently, educators dream that most of their students could eventually graduate with the same level of knowledge and skills which were expected of a 1955 high school graduate. We can, and desperately need, to do much better than that.
On the plus side, the one thing our schools are very good at is teaching creativity.
But creativity, without an underlying foundation of knowledge, creates some rather distorted results. I’ve often corresponded on history comment boards with young people that insisted that their version of history was just as valid as that of recognized authorities who have researched the subject, and should be given the same level of respect, irregardless of actual facts. To me, this is something akin to building a fine computer but only throwing in a little data, and telling the computer to find it’s own data thereafter. The results can be quite misleading. I worry that potential destructive ideologies, like the Nazi party in the 1930’s, could arise from such fertile ground.
Of course, this is just one of the fundamental problems in the U.S. which need to be addressed by the Obama administration. He’s really got so much work to do, I’m a bit worried by the enormity of the task. He doesn’t just have to do a minor course correction, he has to re-build everything from scratch.
I will not get upset with people who do not vote. The important thing is that they are allowed to vote fairly. If they do not vote, that is their choice.
I am perplexed by all the people standing in lines to vote for 6+ hours and then giving up. Why do people not vote absentee? It counts the same and eases congestion at antiquated polling places.