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[Lord Shonus]

Ohio is interesting for a somewhat uncomfortable reason - it is one of the first (the first, as far as I know) times that the right has openly appropriated #MeToo to sling mud at a Democrat candidate.

A group called "Me Too Ohio", which investigation has revealed to be a subsidiary of a Super-PAC supporting the Republican Senate candidate, has revived old domestic violence claims aimed at incumbent Sherrod Brown.

Brown was involved in a nasty divorce around thirty years ago, in which his then-wife requested a restraining order. She has since stated repeatedly that there was no actual or threatened violence - the arguments had just gotten extremely heated on both sides. She states the claims against him are entirely fraudulent, and has been doing so since a few years after the divorce was finalized.

[Telgin]

I finished filling out my absentee ballot last night, which is for South Carolina.  There was one federal and one local representative up for election, if I remember right.

Filling out the ballot was a surprisingly frustrating experience, because I didn't want to vote straight party purely on a matter of principles, but it was very hard to find any useful information for half of the people on the ballot.

[Trekkin]

Ohio is interesting for a somewhat uncomfortable reason - it is one of the first (the first, as far as I know) times that the right has openly appropriated #MeToo to sling mud at a Democrat candidate.

It's probably worth noting that Brown is still polling 10-15 points ahead of Renacci, so any narrative that the parties try to spin out of his likely victory is probably overly optimistic.

[Lord Shonus]

Brown's pretty unlikely to lose - he's always been very popular.



It is the nature of the attacks against him that are important here.

[Trekkin]

Oh, I'm not disagreeing with that. I'm saying that those attacks are occurring in a context where he was likely to win regardless, so it'll be interesting to see how the parties spin that victory in analyzing the impact of those attacks, which will almost certainly factor into the Republican attitude toward #MeToo more generally. The attacks are important, yes, but so is how the apparatchiks react to new things not working (in the most unrealistic sense) when the narrative of the moment says Trump won so the conventional wisdom of politics is wrong now.

[nenjin]

I think it's just Republicans throwing what have traditionally been Liberal Democratic stables back in their faces where, as long as it sticks in the mind of the least critical thinking voter, it works. Is #MeToo a liberal thing? Call out a Liberal when it seems they're in violation of it. Going after the current Supreme Court justice for what he did in his past as it relates to women? Throw it in a Democrat's face when it's useful (and to the uncritical viewpoint which ignores what his ex-wife says, relevant.) Dems calling out Republicans on intolerance? They can make that shoe fit any day of the week now, when the ideas out there are so toxic that Liberal Democrats try to eject them from the discussion. Nevermind if someone calls an entire nation of people filthy raping criminals, what matters is that you don't think that should be part of the conversation, you racist you.

It toes the line between calling out hypocrisy (how people on the Right see it), and weaponizing movements for their own uses (how the Left sees it.) Or to put a fine point on it, if these things were important to the Right they would have brought them up by now prior to using them as weapons against their opponents. It sucks but it increasingly looks like it's effective. The substance of these claims get ignored when it's just this stupid "Us vs. Them" narrative that pretty much everyone has bought in to, whether they want to or not. It's an attempt to suck people in the middle in to either side of the struggle, by increasing their confusion as to what's legit and what's not until they cave and take a stand with one side or the other because they feel morally obligated to. If they go Right, great. If they go Left, it's just another "libtard" to hurl accusations at. And the same thing works on the other side. You're expected to take a strong stance on issues like #MeToo, Intolerance, etc.. on the Left. I remember that was the tone of the forum right around the election. I remember several left posters here saying "No half measures anymore, no compromises. No more trying to bring people to the table to talk, that hasn't worked. This is war. If you're not with us, you're part of the problem." That too is an effort to shove people on to either extreme of the spectrum. It's not enough just to say you don't support men abusing their power and privilege to get sex out of women, and getting away with it. You must be outraged as well. Anything less than that and your moderate viewpoint gets drowned out, or you get accused of essentially being a collaborator, regardless of whether you identify left or right.

Or just TLDR: this is what political radicalization looks like on a large scale.

[SalmonGod]

[spoiler=INDIANA]
Incumbent Senator Joe Donnelly (D) is in a fight for this political life. Donnelly, a centrist Democrat, won his seat in 2012 with just 50.04% of the vote in a state that could best be described as "light red with notes of meth and despair". His opponent Mike Braun (R) defeated two establishment Republicans in the primary and appears to be of the Tea Party variety.

*sigh*... this one's mine.

I finally verified I'm registered to vote yesterday (I thought my registration was fucked and wasn't going to happen), and had a look at the ballot.

I'm not motivated to vote for Donnelly.  Described as the 2nd most conservative democrat.  There's a few cases of him being anti-progressive until called out on it, and nothing especially redeeming to make up for that which I can find.

My district has a Tobi Beck running for congress who seems alright.  A good local friend who I'm closely politically aligned with said he's met her personally.  He didn't say much, but he seemed content with her.  So there's one person I'm actually going to be voting for.

It's difficult to find any useful information out there about anything else.  It's a bunch of D's and R's with a couple L's thrown in.  And nothing else to go by.  So I'll be showing up just to vote against republicans.  Not to vote for actual representation.  With one exception.

Honestly, I feel like if Indiana had a "None of the above" option, it would win in a landslide.

This is very true.  Hoosiers are incredibly cynical and apathetic.  Generally buy into the "they're all corrupt, but Democrats moreso and at least Republicans aren't communist baby murderers" style narrative.  If "None" was an option, I bet most of them would go for it.  The highest aspiration of our mainstream culture here is to spend as much of life drunk as possible, and win arguments about sports.

Our leftist youth are actually far less cynical and apathetic.  But we're so very few, and we never see any genuine options.  The 2016 primary showed that we can be motivated.  Bernie won the primary here by a decent amount.  Give us someone worth voting for, and we will enthusiastically outvote the old fucks.  But 2018 is yet another election where it feels like a meaningless gesture to indicate that we'd prefer the slightly-less-horrible variety of status quo.

[Dunamisdeos]

I wish we'd gotten Bernie.

[Loud Whispers]

I wish we'd gotten Bernie.

It's a good thing the DNC rigged it so the unelectable candidate couldn't win
Nothing says unelectable like having to tilt the tables to win lmao

Also in some potential spicy news a GOP office got shot at over the weekend, no one was inside when the shooting happened so no injuries and the police are investigating it as vandalism unless they can confirm the shooters thought there were people inside

[Dunamisdeos]

Always a classy solution to political differences.

[SalmonGod]

I wish we'd gotten Bernie.

Yeah... but... I'm not sure a true progressive candidate has any hope of winning here.  If one gets past a primary, that will just motivate all the cranky apathetic drunks to come out in force and shut them down.

[Loud Whispers]

Always a classy solution to political differences.

American politics needs an exhaust pipe to remain chill. Without the Soviet Pipe to act as a suitable heat sink, American politics is starting to overheat, and could result in damage or mechanical failure

[Trekkin]

I'm pleasantly surprised by the lack of immediate "false flag" claims.

[Dunamisdeos]

Always a classy solution to political differences.

American politics needs an exhaust pipe to remain chill. Without the Soviet Pipe to act as a suitable heat sink, American politics is starting to overheat, and could result in damage or mechanical failure

Do not submerge American Politics in water. Consult your instructional manual for safe cleaning procedures. Do not use gun to perform maintenance on American Politics.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You're expected to take a strong stance on issues like #MeToo, Intolerance, etc.. on the Left. I remember that was the tone of the forum right around the election. I remember several left posters here saying "No half measures anymore, no compromises. No more trying to bring people to the table to talk, that hasn't worked. This is war. If you're not with us, you're part of the problem." That too is an effort to shove people on to either extreme of the spectrum. It's not enough just to say you don't support men abusing their power and privilege to get sex out of women, and getting away with it. You must be outraged as well. Anything less than that and your moderate viewpoint gets drowned out, or you get accused of essentially being a collaborator, regardless of whether you identify left or right.

Yesterday, the Brazilian presidency was claimed by a military officer who repeatedly and vocally stated his intention to massacre leftists, feminists, drug users, and queer people as well as clearcut the Amazon rainforest, and to launch a coup on the first day of his administration which is this January. The day before that, a Nazi fuck shot up a synagogue (taken alive by his cop buddies after the fact) and our President's response was that Democrats should have armed the rabbis, and that the press were enemies of the United States. This is followed by his declaration that the US military will be deployed to the border, on US soil, to halt migration by any means.

That thing with the rainforest could by itself prove the deaths of millions down the line. All this happened in less than a week.

So in case it's not yet clear, this is a fucking war, anybody who moderate-defaults to the Republican line was the enemy of any free people long before they decided that justice was so inconvenient they needed to support fascists, and the oh-so-enlightened center is not your friend or mine.

This country got away with sucking the world dry and never choosing any side but its own ruling class for three generations. But that's all over now. We can't all be kumbaya and we sure as shit can't reconcile Left, Right, or Center. Fuck, why would you even want to?

We're out of mulligans and deferments and wait-and-sees. It's long past time for everybody to pick a side.