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[nenjin]

Once again, the number of Red States capable of pulling their heads out of their asses on Marijuana legalization grows....yet my backwards-ass state still won't budge.

[hector13]

Snap!

My state also has regressive abortion laws, I think illegal beyond six weeks.

[Lord Shonus]

Both abortion protections and marijuana legalization passed in Ohio yesterday by overwhelming margins.

Pretty big deal considering it’s a Republican-led state. Republicans have said they will explore their options, but it’s in the constitution now.

There's very little "option" available, because this is an amendment that goes word-for-word into the state Constitution. For reference, this is the text:

Article I, Section 22. The Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety

A. Every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions on: contraception; fertility treatment; continuing one’s own pregnancy; miscarriage care; and abortion.

B. The State shall not, directly or indirectly, burden, penalize, prohibit, interfere with, or discriminate against either: An individual's voluntary exercise of this right or; A person or entity that assists an individual exercising this right, unless the State demonstrates that it is using the least restrictive means to advance the individual's health in accordance with widely accepted and evidence-based standards of care.

However, abortion may be prohibited after fetal viability. But in no case may such an abortion be prohibited if in the professional judgment of the pregnant patient’s treating physician it is necessary to protect the pregnant patient’s life or health.

C. As used in this Section: “Fetal viability” means “the point in a pregnancy when, in the professional judgment of the pregnant patient's treating physician, the fetus has a significant likelihood of survival outside the uterus with reasonable measures. This is determined on a case-by-case basis.”

“State” includes any governmental entity and any political subdivision.

D. This Section is self-executing.

Black and white, clear as crystal.

[Frumple]

There's definitely some feels in state republicans chucking out nearly 30k voter registrations the day before the vote and then still losing on both issues by about half a million. Sadly not supermajority support, but a ~13 point margin is still pretty damn clear about the voters' general sentiment on the subjects, heh.

[hector13]

That seems to be the Republican raison d’etre: try to manipulate the electoral roll so they can get what they want done, not the people. They tried to change the rules before this happened to make it more difficult to change the state constitution.

[Maximum™]

Beshear winning, Virginia going Dem, Ohio pot/abortion wins, because outside a small cult of whackjobs nobody thinks broadly depriving people of bodily autonomy is actually a great idea.

They ran on it for years but they were only pretending to chase the bus, once they sunk their teeth in the bumper of the abortion bus it promptly bounced their stupid asses into the curb.

Now to convince people not to rehabilitate the moron forced birthers, just keep stomping them and kick them into the storm drains.

[Lord Shonus]

They ran on it for years but they were only pretending to chase the bus

That's not quite right - they genuinely thought it was a winning tactic, and had polls that looked to confirm that. There's at least three major reasons that they were wrong (and note that some of these apply equally well to some other major issues):

First, most people thought that Roe was far more permissive than it actually was. A huge number of people who supported getting rid of Roe and instituting tighter restrictions wanted rules that were much looser than Roe allowed.

Second, there's been pretty substantial shifting over time that wasn't fully reflected in the polls for various reasons. When Roe and Casey originally went through, they were massively unpopular, and it is very easy to miss that.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, there's a fuzzy effect that happens in polls. A portion of people answering the poll Really Care A Lot about the issue, but there's another portion that's a lot softer or more apathetic on it. There's no real way to reliably tell the difference between the two. This can come from unexamined thoughts, especially if you're convinced that nothing's going to be happening any time soon - the answer you give is genuine, but is one you formed long ago and never really thought about since.  The other place that this can come from is what I call the "Yeah, Whatever" people - if an issue doesn't affect you and you've never considered it at all, it is all too common to form a knee-jerk answer on the spot.


These, of course, are all interrelated. A lot of Yeah Whatevers and Unexamined thought the rules were far looser than reality, and a lot of Unexamined formed their opinions many years ago. More importantly, the nature of this issue put a lot more Yeah Whatevers and Unexamined on the "pro-life" side than on the "pro-choice" one. Then Dobbs came down and ultra-strict rules started coming down. Now the Yeah Whatevers are finding that the question is a lot more likely to affect them and theirs than once realized, so they consider it. The Unexamined have to finally actually look at their own opinions. In this case, a huge part of these groups did so and realized "This isn't what I wanted at all!". Which is how opinion polls that were as high as 60-40 pro-life shifted to as low as 30-70 the other way virtually overnight.

[Maximum™]

That's kinda what I meant: it's a great way to get ignorant biblethumpers to rile up the loose coalition of racists, godbotherers, pro-capitalists, rapists, Libertarians(but I repeat myself), and other such fuckers that vote republican to go vote.

Now that they actually achieved their "win" they've discovered it just tastes like bumper, not victory.

Same thing with immigration: "those" people shouldn't have come here "cuz dey took ar jerbs", but why is it so hard to get cheap labor to pick crops, cook burgers, or clean everything?

[hector13]

Fackin’ unions and bleeding heart liberals we need to go back to enslaving the poor.

[Bumber]

No deception, ballot doctoring, or anything of the sort involved, just (possibly) an end-run done around a state law built to make it harder to vote.

You're assuming, since it's still under investigation. The woman in the video is alleged to be Wanda Geter-Pataky, who apparently was working as a "greeter" at city hall (now placed on leave,) and seems to also be under investigation for doing the same thing for the same candidate in 2019.

If it turns out that she didn't have permission to fill out the ballots, or paid for permission, then it's very seriously more illegal than you're implying.

[hector13]

The same candidate was mayor in the early 00s and then in prison for corruption for 7 years before going back to being mayor afterward.

If Bridgeport want that as their leader, a little bit of electoral fraud isn’t going to swing it either way. I think it says more about Bridgeport than it does about the Democrats.

[The_Explorer]

You know who I'd vote for and actually be excited by

The Rock (Dwayne Johnson)

Yes please

No idea if he'd actually know anything about being president, but be such a better choice than all the others. Honestly don't think need to be a career politician to be president anyway, even though maybe it helps. But, he'd actually get young generations, multiple generations, excited by it.

I doubt it'll be next year though, kinda late to join. But be such a great candidate to excite everyone. Especially because (from what I read mind you) but multiple people have met him and say he is genuinely a good person, who cares about his fans and his family. Granted I dunno what all his ideals are or anything or what he'd campaign for, but based on him as a person I'd vote easily.

[Il Palazzo]

I think Terry Crews runs for president as Dwayne Camacho. Pretty close, imo.

[McTraveller]

I still wonder what would have happened if Mike Rowe didn't refuse all the people who told him he should run after Dirty Jobs and some of his TED Talks.

[nenjin]

I still wonder what would have happened if Mike Rowe didn't refuse all the people who told him he should run after Dirty Jobs and some of his TED Talks.

Last I recall, Rowe was trending toward MAGA viewpoints. Although I confess I haven’t researched it. I just remember along with some of his blue collar speeches he said some stuff that rubbed me the wrong way enough I stopped paying attention to him.