Period. Full stop. because we can’t make the same mistakes of 2016 all over again in 2020. I don’t wanna hear about Bernie Bro’s, or Kamala’s Kids, or Pete’s Posse, or any of those other stupid, dismissive nicknames that people will come up for referencing other candidates supporters. Schoolyard shit is Trump’s stock in trade, we have more important fish to fry.
Because, if I’m still above ground and taking nourishment on November 4, 2020, and I’m reading that Trump won reelection in the electoral college again, I’ll still sit down at the laptop keyboard that day, but what I’ll be typing is the obituary for democracy. It won’t matter if Biden, or O’Rourke, or Castro, or Klobuchar wins 9 million more popular votes. Democracy can’t survive four more years of The Pampers President.
It doesn’t matter if the Democrats increase their stranglehold on the House. And it won’t matter if the Democrats retake the Senate. The only branch of government that is holding up to the pressure rught now is the judiciary, and that tortoise shelled traitor Mitch McConnell is hell bent for leather to pack that with Trump Troglodytes. And if McConnell finishes that task, it’s game over for a generation. It won’t matter if Democrats are back in control, because a far right judiciary will simply roll back whatever they please in the courts.
Every 2020 Democratic presidential candidate has to know that their signing the pledge is a requirement for success in the primaries. Hell, the DNC could make it a condition for a place on the debate stage. We’re already more than halfway there, and for the life of me, I can’t see any reason why we shouldn’t be at 100% by Friday. And I’m not just talking about the candidates either. There’s a pledge for supporters and activists to sign too, and anybody who’s serious about ending this national nightmare needs to put pen to paper.
Because, at its core, it has to be about winning this time. Nothing else matters. Medicare for all may be the greatest medical advance since penicillin, but you won’t get it from a President Trump. And The Green New Deal may save the planet, but Trump is only interested in saving his tax returns from scrutiny. And personally, I don’t believe that there’s a candidate out there right now who can’t win the general election if they rise to the top in the primaries. If, that is, everybody out there gets behind the eventual nominee, and works their asses off as hard as we all did in 2018.Don’t get me wrong. Sometime after the third debate, I’m going to have my day of soul searching, pick a candidate, and support them throughout the primaries, for as long as they’re in the race. But if they’re out, then they’re out, and whomever is in at the finish line has my full throated support. Because that’s the way it has to be this time around, no more fuck ups. I’ve already signed the grassroots pledge, and if you’d like to commit to it as well, you can do it HERE.
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No. This was never mentioned before one candidate got in the race; suddenly these “pledges”are everywhere. I don’t believe in litmus test “pledges,” anyway, but I will say my bottom line for uniting around a candidate after the primaries is that they should not have ANY prominent voices in their campaign who have openly admitted to not supporting our 2016 nominee in the general election. That’s trying to bully others into doing something your own supporters were unwilling to do, when defeating Trump was arguably MORE important. Now the damage is done. I have no stomach for such “pledges.”
Amen Anastasia…An the other thing that will help with uniting the party after the primaries is the candidates not only themselves refraining from trashing their opponents, but forbidding their staff and surrogates from doing it…The reason the pledge is important is that it doesn’t just promise unity, it promises a common purpose of working together to get whomever wins the primary elected in 2020…Phone banks, activism, neighborhood canvassing, all of the grunt work that made all of the difference in 2018…
You can’t ask of others what your own campaign staff failed to do. One of them likes to say her vote for Stein didn’t matter because her state wasn’t competitive — but to admit you did not vote for the 2016 nominee is making a statement about disunity and who knows really which state will be competitive (living in Idiohio, which is such a swing state, I don’t have that luxury).
Signed it Tuesday. Have been advocating for it since last November (well, actually since 2016, but vocally since last November.) Because this killed us in the past (not JUST in 2016) and could kill us again, and if it does, it will be too late. Others have been advocating for it too since 2016. The only thing that’s new is putting details onto a compact pledge.
Murf doesn’t quote the pledges, so, in order to know what’s in them, one must read them. It should not kill anyone to READ the pledges. His link is to the grassroots one, and the one for candidates is not that different, and reading either or both takes very little time.
As I just told Anastasia above, the pledge is more important than just promising to support the primary winner with lip service…It’s the act of committing towards getting your OWN supporters out there, canvassing neighborhoods, phone banking, all of thoe things that made the difference in 2018…
It’s a complicated issue, and it will make me blabber about ethics, and no one likes ethics blabber in this environment, ha. But I’ll do it anyway.
Voting ethics demand that when we cast a vote, we choose the option in any given race that we as the vote caster deems to be the one that will produce the best outcome for the constituency of that vote. We are tasked with considering the people those votes will affect, to try to judge which selection will have either the most desirable or least damaging effects, then to vote accordingly.
That’s the pledge that I would make – to vote in accordance with thousands of years of voting ethics as first laid down by the ancient Greeks. I will vote for the best possible candidate in my estimation in the primary…then I’ll vote for the best possible candidate in the general. I can also pledge to vote if I’m capable of doing so.
I would not personally pledge that I will vote for a party…or that I would vote against a specific individual…and that would be my vote no matter what. While I cannot see any scenario where any Democrat on the face of the planet could get the nomination and be a worse choice than Donald Trump…I still wouldn’t go so far as to pledge my vote to an unknown person, based solely on their partisan affiliation. I think it’s enough to say that I can’t see any reasonable scenario where the Republicans offer a superior candidate, and I can’t even think of unreasonable, fantastical scenarios where Trump is that superior candidate.
Many would argue that if someone sees no route to Trump ever being superior to any viable Dem, then one might as well take the pledge. I disagree. I think the pledge is an ethical slippery slope. Because this divisive tribalism isn’t going to end here – Trump isn’t gong to be the last bad Republican running for office, and this won’t be the last “most important election of our lives.” If I take the pledge today, then why not next time when it’s Mitt Romney running? He’s pretty awful. Or how about Colin Powell? At what point are we merely using the pledge to justify our partisan affiliation without framing an actual argument justifying it? At what point are we violating the very voting ethics we say we stand for, by not voting for the best choice, but the partisan choice? Isn’t that kind of how the GOP ended up with Trump in the first place?
I get the thinking behind the pledge. Some people need it…in many ways, the world needs it. I just…don’t. There are higher ethics that I adhere to, and I don’t really need a low rent pedestrian loyalty oath to help me make good choices.