An Election Eve Plea

 

     Tomorrow night, I'll be busy, very busy, as I am on every election night. This is, after all, a political blog.

     I never considered this my real job, my legacy as I'm a novelist at heart and something as topical as politics has a very brief shelf life. I have a busy life outside of this. I'm trying to publicize a new audiobook and get two, maybe three other audiobook projects off the ground. I'm grinding away at a new Scott Carson novel and am several days behind on my typing. I'm caring full time for someone near and dear who's in an advanced stage of dementia. And, in the midst of that long goodbye, I have to almost constantly deal with bureaucrats, nurses and social workers to get her the services she requires.

     But election day's tomorrow. Ordinarily, midterms were some ho hum formality and the stakes weren't quite as high as they were before the 2018 midterms because in midterms, the president's not on the ballot. And I don't know what I'm going to say here so I'll just wing it and do the Virginia Woolf/Mrs. Dalloway stream of consciousness thing.

     Now, it used to be a truism in political science that the closer we get to an election, the more accurate the polls get. But in 2016, all that changed. Hillary Clinton can tell you all about that. So I don't listen to the polls, ever, not even tonight because one has to assume the methodology behind them is also tainted with political bias like virtually everything else these days.

     Instead, I take comfort in early voting and absentee voting numbers. 40,000,000 registered voters have already cast ballots and those types of voters generally skew Democratic. They've voted early and through absentee ballots and in record numbers, far exceeding even the numbers from the last election. 2020 boasted the highest voter turnout in 120 years and that didn't bode well for Republicans. Georgia alone has seen about a million early and absentee voters and Georgia has a population of just under seven million.

     But in the run-up to these midterms, the corporate mainstream media that's owned entirely by right wingers have been begun beating the war drums for the GOP. Early this year, last year, even, the MSM were telling us the Republicans were going to retake the House and Senate, that it was a question of when not if. Then they retreated from that for a few weeks when the SCOTUS shot down Roe v Wade. They had to at least pay lip service to the female outrage and fury from the left and the numbers of new female voters registering.

     But eventually, they fell back into their comfortable narrative that it'll be a red wave this year, Biden will be impeached, blah blah.

     Just wait for the numbers, people. I will. And trust in the process.

     But if you're one of those who have yet to cast a ballot, I'm making a plea to you-

     Do not vote for the Dark Side of the Force. You know who I'm talking about. Bloated with arrogance, ignorant optimism and hot air, we've been hearing the threats being bellowed on the right side of the aisle. Jim Jordan sent a letter to the DOJ saying he's thinking of investigating them in case, God forbid, he gets the chairmanship of the House Judiciary Committee. Kevin McCarthy straps on his artificial spine and promises an impeachment of Biden for... something. MTG is threatening a shut down of the government.

     They're trying to play the populist game again and, as usual, fail miserably at it. They're already screaming bloody murder about voter fraud even before the polls open, the president's going to be impeached, we'll investigate the whole government once we get subpoena power again.

     They don't want you to remember that they have nothing left in the tank, that they have nothing fueling their toxic omnibus but hatred, resentment, vengeance and sociopathic mean-spiritedness. I wouldn't even put it past these sociopathic jackals to even take another five or six dozen runs at dismantling Obamacare.

     Now, I'm all too painfully aware of the limits of my reach and influence. I couldn't sway the results of a single Town Council race in my small town. But I'd be remiss in my responsibilities as a progressive political pundit if I didn't warn you, or at least try to warn you, that the bridge is out up ahead and that you seriously need to hit the brakes.

     Just in case any of those polls aren't pure bullshit and you're about to make the biggest fucking mistake of your life if you hand control of Congress or even just the House to the neonazis that comprise the majority of the Republican Party.

     They don't care about you, unless you make seven figures a year. They don't care about you if you're not a well-moneyed lobbyist. They don't care about you if you lost your job because their policies enabled your employer to pocket huge tax breaks before shipping your job overseas. They don't care if you lost your house because their policies allowed rapacious banks to steal it whether or not they owned the mortgage. They don't care if you're permanently underwater in onerous student loan debt, credit card debt or any other form of debt because their policies allowed it to happen. If you're in a position in which you have to choose between making your rent or buying medicine or putting food on the table or fill up your gas tank so you can get to that shitty, dead-end job, don't look to them for help. Do not vote with your gas tank. The president is not responsible for what you pay at the pumps.

     They don't give a fuck about you and they care even less than that if you're a person of color or a college student or a soldier overseas or a veteran who tried to make a small difference. And if you vote Democrat, they'll care about you even less than that.

     They only care about losing their job and that nice house in Georgetown their Congressional salaries and perks made possible. Republicans are sociopaths, they're Nazis and their bellowing about vengeance all but proves it. Whatever few Republicans who were marginally worth keeping have either retired or lost their primaries and won't be back after January 3rd.

     Aside from stuffing the judiciary with right wing ideologues from the Supreme Court on down, Trump's most efficacious and lasting legacy was in succeeding in pushing out all the Republicans who were insufficiently loyal. And the GOP will be forever poorer for it.

     Trump was even taking swipes at DeSantis in Pennsylvania the other night, Ron DeSantis, who always looks as if he's wearing a Gestapo uniform under his suit. If Trump's going after DeSantis, who, of course, hasn't announced a run, imagine how little he thinks of you.

     And that goes for the right wing lickspittles who are desperately clinging to his tattered coat tails.

     So, if you live in Youngstown or Allentown or Detroit or Flint or Bethlehem or any other formerly great city that offshored your job overseas because of Republican policies, don't count on them to get your jobs back. If you're forced to move out of your house because your mortgage mysteriously doubled or because it was sold to some hedge fund scumbags on Wall Street or because some random bank swooped in out of nowhere and said, "Hey, that's mine!" when they don't hold the mortgage, don't hold your breath waiting for them to help you get that house back even if you live in their districts, even if you campaigned for them, even if you volunteered for them, even if you gave them money, even if you voted for them.

     Because they don't give a fuck about you. And that, my friends, is not liberal political bias. That is a cold-blooded, analytical, objective look at how the world really works. They want your free time, they want your money, they want your vote. Then, once the ballots are counted, win or lose, they leave you to twist in the wind.

     And these jackals who have ice water in their veins are about to get their grubby, grasping little hands on the levers of power again? Why in God's name would you do that?

     For God's sake, think before you pull your own lever tomorrow. If you can't vote for a Democrat, then at least deny it to the Republican on the ballot.