Americans, before you vote, please read this 1 essay by Andrew Sullivan - it's absolutely brilliant

“The idea of individual merit is racist.”

Says almost NOBODY. Although when whites start on 2nd base thinking they have hit a double and then keep trying to tell others that they are succeeding on merit some of us wonder whether self-delusion has no limit.

Who cares what you are interested in?

Reactionaries always lose in the long run.

History isn't going to care about your feelies.

My guy? I honestly couldn't have named the maryland GOP nominee for governor if you hadn't written this. I did know he was some guy that Trump liked and Hogan hated but don't think I knew his name.

Now, I just looked him up in Wikipedia. Says the Dems spent $1 million on him in the primary.

How dare you justify my identify. I've posted my voter registration card. You must accept my self-identity,

1) I'd MUCH rather have Trump in prison than the 2024 president (that being said, I don't like politically motivated justice. If i did the same stuff, would you be coming after me?) I actually liked many of the things he talked about (a country without a border isn't a country for me - don't call me racist, I had an Ethiopian journalist friend live rent-free with my family for 9 months) but I swear if he runs, I'm going to start a "DonaldTrumpisaloser.com" type website.

2) The capital gains 15% rate is absurd. Tax all income the same.

3) I think it's disgraceful that we pay billions of taxpayer dollars for MLB/NFL/NBA stadiums.

🤣voter suppression TA really won GA! Mass extinction on 11/8. DemoRATs are going home devastated.

lol...did you really just use "I have a black friend I can't be racist" as one of you 'progressive' viewpoints?

You failed miserably. You couldn't even pretend....halfway through point 2 you can't help but go off on some xenophobic nativist tangent.

You've become a parody of yourself at this point.

Maybe read this instead and vote Democrats:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/04/opinion/medicare-social-security-cuts-republicans.html

Rojo, as someone wrote in another thread, the following both can be true:

1.) You have a black friend.
2.) You are a racist.

Incredible shocking that a right winger want people to vote republican. How interesting is it to read a text that wants you to vote the party of Trump "to save democracy"? Have you been in a coma while Trump was president? How is that saving democracy? That conclusion invalidates the rest of the text. Lets vote for the party of those not enciting a lynch mob invading the capitol trying to kill politicians and hang your own vp. It is incredible this is even a discussion. Yes Biden sucks big time but come on. You really deserve another Trump precidency.

Such a terribly divided country. Be safe and may better days be in the future.

There’s no silver bullet unfortunately. What are the Republicans’ actual priorities and are they actually gonna solve anything?

National Abortion Ban- not something most people want

“Election Reform”- again unpopular and seemingly anti-democracy

More Tax Cuts for rich/corporations - because that always works

Conservative Judges

Now what are the policies that Rs will enact? Maybe some will have some good crime ideas but a lot of that is local leadership. Immigration? Dubious with the geniuses who rolled out Family Separations. Culture Wars? Does not impact my day-to-day. Mostly they’ll just make sure nothing happens over the next 2 years when we’ll have as dumb and ugly an election as possibly with Trump in good shape to claim he won again and maybe have the corruption to do it.

A far better article, that analyses the real crisis in the US, of which the facile piece promoted by Rojo is a symptom.

theguardian.com

‘These are conditions ripe for political violence’: how close is the US to civil war?

Guardian Staff

Nearly half of Americans fear their country will erupt within the next decade. Here, three experts analyse the depth of the crisis

Open link

I can't figure out if the Republican voters on this thread are naive, willfully ignorant or just dishonest. Claiming that they are voting Republican while at the same time saying they hate Trump and he is out of the picture makes no sense. If you vote Republican, Trump will be back. Trumpism takes over. You will be putting all if his sycophants in positions of power. Any last traces of the moderate GOP will be gone. (watch for Mitch to retire). You are also permitting the GOP to move full speed ahead with their plans on the state level (GOP Govs and Attorney Generals) to allow the GOP to determine which elections they want to certify and which they want to send "alternate electors" for. They are saying the quite part out loud now. Jan 6 investigation will cease and the GOP will try to flood the zone with investigations of Fauci, Hunter Biden, Impeaching Biden. All the oxygen of rational discourse of thought will be replaced with Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, Boebart insanity. How about Trump as speaker of the house? How about public campaigns to fire FBI director? How about insane attempts to impeach Garland? It will be a 24/7 revenge tour that Bannon has been promising.

Simply put. You are voting for the end of free elections and the rule of law. It is not a left wing talking point. It is not hyperbole. Watch and see.

If any republican claims that the many investigations into Trump's corruption, racketeering, espionage, self dealing and national security risk are a symptom of a loss of democracy it is truly a reveal that they simply refuse to know who Trump really is. Either that or it is an admission that they are A-OK with such a person leading the country. Trump is without question the most corrupt and deceitful ruler this country has ever seen. 40 years of evidence is all in the public and readily available for you to read. Please don't claim that voting GOP is some type vote for democracy because you don't like this criminal being investigated and the voters need to decide his lawlessness

🙄🙄🙄Lol at a supporter of the “defund the police” party worried about the end of the rule of law.

The running content on this site is nice, but I also come here for lively discussion and debate on issues, and exquisite trolling.

Andrew Sullivan's essay is incredible. I think I've just made up my mind how to vote on Tuesday in this "nightmare scenario"

Being a registered Democrat doesn’t mean you vote Democrat in the general elections.

It just allows you to influence who the Democrats will choose in the primaries.

That’s exactly your point of Democrats supporting Cox in the Republican primary.
They knew he’d be easier to beat in the general election than a Hogan type of Republican.

Forget your voter registration card.
How do you typically vote in the general election?

I understand Sullivan's concerns, as someone who was also fairly right-wing and has moderated over time. I do think our nation is being cleaved in two (ideologically, not literally) and that we will soon be in a case of affairs where on one side of an invisible line you can see 6-foot 4-inch boys dominating a "girls" basketball game while on the other, a rape victim cannot get an abortion. Such is what people apparently want, so such is what they get.

But the problem for me with voting Republican to "send a message to the far left Democrats" is that the GOP thinks the same way the "woke" Dems do. The "woke" left says they are the only truly moral people, while dividing the population up between enlightened people with raised consciousness (themselves) and the idiot rabble who are ruining America (everyone else). Well, that's exactly why I left the GOP in the first place. During the Bush years, they said the same thing, only instead of being "woke," the path to being the enlightened one was to be some kind of vaguely protestant political-Christian. There was "real America" (themselves) and everybody else. The right still does this to some degree, which is why I haven't rejoined. Everything the "woke" left does strategically (as opposed to their positions and beliefs) reminds me so much of the 2000s GOP that it's a little frightening. The "woke" left is a political religion the same way the evangelical right is, and I'm not going to give the keys to power back to the one political religion just to teach a lesson to the other. The difference I see is that the "woke" left is only part of the Democratic tent, while the "real America" right is most of the GOP, even to this day.

The other problem I have with Sullivan's analysis is that it presumes that giving the GOP a majority won't just give them impetus to give the keys back to the far right -- he seems to think that voting Republican will moderate politics. Trump is still alive, and he has successors in guys like DeSantis. If you don't think the GOP will joyfully sprint to the far right as soon as they have power again, you're nuts. Their most recent platform (2020) was simply "keep letting Trump do whatever he wants." There is no moderate option in the GOP. That stinks, but its the truth. If anything, the Democrats could be that moderate option with a better, less senile leader, who was willing to push back on the more extreme "woke" policies. Biden has no brain left at this point, but after we saw how "woke" criminal policy failed in San Francisco, the not-senile mayor backtracked toward sensibility in the face of that failure. The GOP won't do that, because the GOP believes their ideology never fails, it can only be failed by unworthy vessels (politicians who lose elections). The "woke" left thinks the same thing about their ideology. The answer, to the extent one exists, is moderate Democrats, not anyone from the GOP.