Ohio voters just took firm positions on abortion and reproductive rights and adult-use recreational marijuana Tuesday, but gerrymandered Ohio lawmakers are already planning to flout, ignore, challenge, and abuse the voters’ wishes. This is what gerrymandering brings. This is why it’s a fundamental poison in the lifeblood of our republic.
Mere hours after Ohio voters passed the Issue 1 reproductive rights amendment with 56.62%, according to unofficial results, and the Issue 2 recreational marijuana law with 57% (both getting nearly 2.2 million votes), Ohio Republican legislative leaders signaled they would not respect the will of the people.
Your options are vote or give up and let them do whatever they want. You can be apathetic if you want but I’m not giving up.
These are not the only options. If the representatives don’t respect results of democratic vote, organize and go to the streets, protest, don’t let them think you don’t care!
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Protesting without voting is just taking a loud walk. It’s easy for politicians to ignore you if you don’t ever show up at the polls. That would be like a bunch of people protesting outside a McDonald’s because the food is unhealthy and then eating at that McDonald’s for their lunch break. Definitely protest but back that protesting up with voting.
Yes, I never meant protesting without voting. In this case people DID vote. But their decision is being ignored. I don’t think the reasonable thing to do in such case is to wait peacefully for another election!
I must have misunderstood. I apologize
My dawg WE DID VOTE. I VOTED. I VOTED FOR BOTH OF THE ISSUES IN THIS POST AND THE PARTY IN POWER IS STILL SAYING FUCK YOU.
Sorry for the all caps but like, c’mon guy, do you think people aren’t voting? We fucking voted! We did it! We did the thing people have always told us to do and the Republicans are still getting their way! Just voting isn’t cutting it anymore! Stop telling people just to vote, and stop belitting other valid forms that the voting populace can use to enact change!
People vote once and a while. In the 2020 presidential election voter turn out spiked. The 2022 midterm though? 46%
You want to protest? Go for it.
You want to scream in all caps? Go for it
You want to say “fuck the fascists” or talk about what you’ll do to them? Go for it
Do whatever you want. As long as one of the things you do is vote.
It’s much easier if you ONLY show the at the polls and only for them no matter what.
That’s why you have to vote in the primary. AOC should have taught you that. Also, did you happen to see the last sentence in that previous comment?
The primary controlled by the very party actively fighting progressives. The party that argued in court that selecting the candidate themselves is within their rights? Yeah, that’s a fair contest for sure 🙄
You’re so incredibly pessimistic. Then how did Ocasio-Cortez beat Crowley in 2018? He had been in Congress for twenty years and was the chair of the House Democratic Caucus! If “the party” controlled the primary why would they “let” her win? The only way things can ever get better is by voting.
A rare and momentous triumph. That someone exceptional like AOC with an exceptional grassroots organisation behind her can do it once doesn’t mean that it’s easy or even, in most cases, possible for others.
Odd thing to keep repeating on a post about people betrayed by the very people you advocate voting for as “the only way” 🙄
Wait first it was:
Then it became:
Does “the party” determine the primary or do the voters? It’s one or the other.
I’m not the one being apathetic. This whole disaster has been allowed to happen because people like you support people unconditionally and then they do whatever the fuck they want in office.
When the bar is “better than the alternative” and they keep moving down with it every time Republicans dig down further, you never get the representation you need and deserve.
Your “vote blue no matter who and never criticize OUR leadership” obedience is why the Dems became complacent enough to allow fascism to gain a foothold while themselves veering further right than Reagan.
You misunderstand the suggestion. The time to drive Democratic Party policy is in the primary. Vote for the Lefties. Vote for the socialists. Vote for the anarcho-communists. Vote for the leftiest Lefty that ever leftied. Drive the party Left there, but in that General, you need to vote Blue. The alternative may well ensure you never vote again because they have a plan that involves the voting public being turned into serfs and slaves for their policies. The righties have known this for a goddamn fucking long time. They express it as “Vote for the Conservative in the Primary, and vote for the Republican in the General.” We need to steal that thinking and modify it to ‘vote for the Liberal in the primary and the Democrat in the General.’ There’s fucking more of us than there are of those shitheads, just like there were in Iran in the 1970s and in Germany in the 1930s. When you get on your fucking high horse and say ‘they aren’t liberal enough’, that’s how you get people like Hitler and the Ayatollah.
Good plan in theory, but the party itself is in charge of the primaries and the leadership plays favorites.
I agree. I’m not saying to not vote blue, I’m saying to make the blue ones earn your vote and raise hell when they don’t.
No thanks. Neoliberalism is a center right to right wing ideology.
Holding your elected officials accountable for their actions is so far from a high horse that it’s a fucking pony.
No. The rise of the ayatollah was backlash to a US-sponsored coup and Hitler (and Mussolini, for that matter) was the liberals and conservatives in charge not doing enough to stop the rise of fascism, just like the neoliberal Dem leadership now.
I keep hearing this but what I’m not seeing is proof. It’s like Trump screaming the elections are rigged. Lots of sound and fury signifying nothing, but what I’m not seeing is actual fire. It sounds like you’re saying ‘don’t vote, it doesn’t matter’ with this, and that’s the exact bullshit I’m trying to stop, because the only people who benefit right now are the assholes on the Right who want us to stop voting so they can just steal it.
If you hold their asses accountable in the Primary like I’m telling you, then by all means, hold their asses to the fire. But Trump’s already said what he’s going to do in 2025 if he gets in office. I’ve not read the document yet, but there’s lots of talk about him jailing people like you and me, so maybe you’re going to want to vote the Mealy-Mouthed Democrat in 2024 so you aren’t jailed in 2025 by asshole authoritarians. That’s what I’m saying. You raise hell in the Primaries now, because the Republicans will jail you and murder all your gay and minority friends if we listen to what they say they want to do.
Again. The Republicans are telling us they’re going to jail Liberals when they take over in 2025. I’m not asking you to not hold the Neoliberal’s feet to the fire in 2025, 2026, 2027, and 2028. Hell, I’m not telling you to vote for the Neoliberal in 2024’s primaries. But if you vote third party or stay home on Election Day 2024 like so many of you did in 2016 (and 2000, and 2004…) and get my bisexual goth pagan black wife hurt or killed in the Project 2025 nonsense the Trumpers want to go, I’m going to be mighty fucking pissed at you because you let your fucking ideological purity get in the way of common fucking sense.
Here’s another colloquialism for you to quibble on: Whistling past the graveyard. There’s a whole crowd of fucking Nazi Frogs outside of it, if you can’t see it through your ideological tests.
Funny. I studied this shit in college. Yes, the Shah was bad. But what led the Ayatollah to rise rather than, say, a coalition of Leftists, Centrists, Academics, and Moderates of all stripes is the same ideological bullshit our little tiff here is exhibiting. While the Socialists, the Communists, the Academians, the mainstream Liberals, the Moderates, and the Business Owners fought over the best way to rule Iran, the Fundamentalists got busy stealing the reigns of power, and then outlawed the other groups and oppressed them much like the Shah had all of them. While you argue about the purity of your ideology, Trump and his merry band of fuckwits are dreaming of doing more than throwing us in the back of unmarked vans, beating us down with literal “secret” police clad head to foot in riot gear but with no indication of what service they were with or who they are, and drawing nasty political cartoons where Trump is Pepe the Frog in a Nazi Uniform pushing the button while various famous actors, politicians, and other people even remotely Left of Nazi Frog Trump get gassed in the next room over. I don’t want that to happen here!
But you have convinced me, buddy. You’ve convinced me that most hard-leftists would rather see the country burn than see Biden get another 4 years. I just hope my wife and I can get out of the oncoming Nazi Frog USA before it gets worse.
You’re putting a lot of words and opinions in my mouth and I’m just not going to touch on them because you, quite frankly, don’t know anything about me. But. If you think voting less will ever - ever make our society better than in my opinion you don’t have a clue.