Last weekend, former Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello held his star-studded one-day Power To The People festival at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland. The whole event was framed as a left-wing political gathering, and Morello joined Bruce Springsteen for a set of protest songs. Before the show, Morello did a Rolling Stone…

Some people out there seem to be confused, but I always vote in every local and every national election for every office and every ballot initiative since I was 18 years old. Some of my greatest civil rights heroes have fought and died so that we can all vote and I honor their memory in the ballot box every single time. 

To some of us, especially those of us like myself who have been scheduling secretaries for US senators, it often seems like a morally reprehensible choice between compromised corporate Democrats and fascist-minded Republicans. Where I live in California, I have the luxury of voting my conscience for president for third-party candidates that better align with my ideas of justice and equality. 

But in any and every contested race, as my mom Mary Morello always said, we have to fight the fascist every which way we can, recognizing that even if there’s but an inch of difference between two candidates, there are a lot of vulnerable people who could be greatly harmed in that inch. So vote your ass off, but don’t just exercise your right to vote. Exercise your right to fight for, organize for, struggle for, and manifest the kind of world you’d like to really see without compromise and without apologies before, during, and after election day. And let’s stop the fascists every which way we can. Power the people.

  • ultranaut
    11·
    19 hours ago

    As I said, this is magical thinking. There is not a legal mechanism holding him in control if he loses the popular vote, and in no way did it reduce his power; he appointed three SCOTUS judges in his first term for fuck’s sake.

    The concept of a popular mandate is not magical thinking, and it doesn’t require a legal mechanism. You keep misrepresenting my point. Do you dispute that a more decisive victory provides more political capital to the winner? Do you dispute that winning both the popular vote and electoral college is a more decisive victory than winning the electoral college alone?

    Basic politics also says the person with the most votes wins an election, so toss it out if you’re trying to understand American politics. I’m also not sure you should be lecturing me about basic politics if you believe the checks on Trump are how many votes he got and not the other two branches of government

    I think you need to work on your reading comprehension, or read more carefully, or maybe you are not participating here in good faith, I don’t know. For the record, I do not believe that and never made that claim.

    If they “empowered him” by not voting blue in a state that went blue was always going to go blue, why can’t they disempower him by disapproving of him? Is it possibly because approval has nothing to do with what power a politician has, and that Congress and SCOTUS instead hold the reins to power and are simply letting it happen?

    No, it must be those dastardly people in blue states who simply didn’t vote hard enough!

    I am not sure if I follow this but yes, disapproving of Trump is to some extent inherently disempowering for Trump, of course. You can see how his capacity to enact his agenda has become increasingly challenged in certain regards due to the decline in his polling, for example. You have candidates he endorsed openly trying to distance themselves from him at this point. We are in a very different political environment now compared to last year. Are you suggesting that popularity doesn’t bring with it political capital?

    • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      2·
      18 hours ago

      Do you dispute that a more decisive victory provides more political capital to the winner? Do you dispute that winning both the popular vote and electoral college is a more decisive victory than winning the electoral college alone?

      I am asking you to specify what powers of Trump’s were limited by not winning the general vote. Because it wasn’t the ability to sign laws, appoint new SCOTUS justices, or stack the federal courts with judges. So far you have refused to elaborate beyond ‘it would have been worse in his first term’ which is untestable and unprovable. I am forced to conclude he didn’t actually have his powers restricted in any way by the vote, or by his approval ratings.

      But hey, who knows, if it drops to a new low for the nth month in a row maybe that will magically make it so that people aren’t getting put in camps. (Not magical thinking though)

      For the record, I do not believe that and never made that claim.

      Then why the hell are you pissing about the people who have a symbolic vote on the presidency once every 4 years and not the people whose literal job as laid out in the constitution is to balance and check the powers of the president?

      • ultranaut
        11·
        16 hours ago

        I am asking you to specify what powers of Trump’s were limited by not winning the general vote.

        This is a dumb question that you wouldn’t be asking if you had read and understood my previous comments.

        • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          2·
          16 hours ago

          No, you simply don’t like that I came to a different conclusion than you did. Feel free to link or quote which comment you believe has specific evidence of his approval rating or not winning the general election having actually impeded the use of his Constitutional powers in the term where he appointed 3 SCOTUS justices and nearly 300 federal judges.

          • ultranaut
            2·
            15 hours ago

            What I don’t like is that you continually come up with these strange strawmen instead of engaging with my actual points.