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#like yeah we face a ton of systemic and institutional bullshit but it can all be chalked up to being trans rather than being men
cuyahogafalls-ohio · 2 years
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I saw a post about JK Rowling and how she's discriminatory towards trans men and nonbinary people too and it actually made a very good example of the problem i have with the "transmisandry is a thing" discourse
So JK Rowling wrote an essay about how trans men and afab nonbinary people, especially! those with autism! are like lost little lambs who are just following a trend and don't know what's best for themselves. How ironic! people decry. The terf is using misogynist arguments regarding the inability for afab people to stand up for themselves and their "inherently female" people-pleasing tendencies to argue against their self determination. Maybe the real misogynist was the terf all along. Etc
Who do you think that JK Rowling is BLAMING for this? Who do you think is the group JKR is implying is DOING the brainwashing?
To act like JKR is "also!" attacking trans men and nonbinary people because she has some kind of special hatred in her heart towards them and NOT because her transmisogyny is so deep that she believes the Evil Trans Women are brainwashing the Poor Innocent Female Children is disingenuous at best and transmisogynist at worst.
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polss · 4 years
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Political Swizzlestick: Tulsi Gabbard argues for election reform
It is funny. I was writing about election reform when I got this email from Tulsi Gabbard listing out steps that the DNC should take to fix the electoral system for voters who want to vote Democrat.
But she also has an ad out there demanding the resignation of Tom Perez, the public face of the DNC. While I admire her team’s constant embrace of jiu jitsu, In this instance turning someone who seems to be actively pushing down on the scales against them into a reason for people to vote for her, I’m going to deal more with the email part.
I’m going to share the points from the email here because conceptually I agree with almost all of it, and as somebody who likes cleverly run campaigns, I want to give Tulsi and her folks credit for running this. It is timely and resonates with a significant chunk of potential democratic voters.
I also am sharing it because I want to discuss it in terms of both practicality and long-term necessity.
“Join me in calling on the DNC to institute reforms — open primaries in every state, paper ballots, same-day registration, and more — that make Every Vote Count…
We need to fix and secure our elections
I’m asking you to join me today in working to put We, the People back in the driver’s seat of our democracy, and to join me in calling on the DNC to institute reforms that make Every Vote Count. These reforms include: Open Primaries
Transitioning to open primaries in every state, away from our broken and egregiously expensive caucus system, and getting rid of the influence of superdelegates
Same-day Registration
Allowing same-day registration so every person gets to vote, regardless of how they choose to affiliate that election cycle
Paper Ballots
Instituting a paper ballot system (or voter-verified paper backup) to keep our elections secure and free of foreign influence
Ranked-choice Voting
Introducing ranked choice voting at the national level, making sure no vote is ever wasted
Automatic Voter Registration
Ensuring automatic voter registration for every person who turns 18 because there should be very few barriers to participating in democracy
Make Election Day a Federal Holiday
We should reduce all barriers to performing one of our greatest civic duties”
Let me just start by admiring the fact that Tulsi and her people are so “no bullshit” about things that they don’t even follow the rules of grammar.
“Periods at the end of sentences?!?! I am a no-nonsense, ass-kicking Soldier. Who needs that crap?”
I applaud you, Tulsi. That is freedom! Wave that flag!
(Sadly my high school English teacher sometimes reads my stuff and I would feel like a total ass if I didn’t try my best to get the punctuation right. She spent so much time working on me, that I can’t disrespect her in that way. I’ve got too much love for that lady.)
Let’s get down to our breakdown of Tulsi’s points.
Open primaries instead of caucuses Eliminating superdelegates No mention of Any changes to the delegate system?
Caucuses are an incredible klusterfuk. A caucus takes place in an extremely narrow window of time So you are effectively limiting the number of people who can participate. This is the basic concept of a lot of things Republicans to prevent people from voting. It already fails Democratic principles and you haven’t even got into the most egregious part.
Take a look at what information we do have on the Iowa caucus. In terms of people coming in and saying X candidate is our first choice, Bernie won the state going away. But due to caucus rules forcing supporters of other candidates that the rules deem having “unviable” levels of support being forced against their wills to choose their second choice, Mayor Pete may end up winning Iowa. 
Joe Biden Andrew Yang, Elizabeth Warren, and Amy Klobuchar all got significant numbers of votes in Iowa, but next to none of them are going to get any delegates for all that hard work and money. This is the most egregious element of a caucus. It forces people to effectively vote against the candidate that they like.
In my previous article I talked about the problem with having delegates at all. Going to a Nationwide primary system where the candidate who got the most votes won the nomination represents democracy far far better then any system that has delegates, So I’m kind of disappointed that Tulsi stops at that point...but I get it. 
The reason the delegates our Inn place is that it allows people who volunteer for the Democratic party to have the feeling that they have some power. It is strictly throwing a bone to the workers. But it isn’t democratic.
Same day registration
I questioned this from Tulsi in some ways. It is fair territory in political ads from one perspective in much the same way as it’s fine for political ads to say, “we need term limits. Or we need to end corruption.”
In terms of high Concepts and things that we should strive for few people disagree with that.
But it’s kind of b******* as well. Those kinds of statements are like me saying. “Yeah, I’m all for oxygen.”
Yes, we all need oxygen to breathe. And all of us in general are for having enough oxygen around.
But when you start taking a closer look at things. How quickly could something like this ever be implemented? Is this viable? Is it viable in some states and not others? Can the DNC make these types of decisions on their own?
I live in the state of Texas. As is the case in most republican-dominated States, We have a GOP Secretary of State who is all about controlling the ability to register voters.
I can remember a time 5-10 years ago When I could register to vote online in the state of Texas. Now the rules are you have to send in a paper registration like 30 days before.  Has there been a electromagnetic pulse that has wiped out computers in Texas where I can’t spend 60 seconds immediately adding my data to the registered voter database?  No, but our continuous stream of GOP secretary of States have realized the GOP odds of staying in power increase with restrictions added to the registration process.
I don’t think this is something that you can force red states to do for this election.
Now I do think it would be very very smart for a candidate to encourage every blue state to immediately pass a bill making same-day registration possible by time the early voting starts for the presidential election.
It would help the chances of defeating Donald Trump and it would create immense pressure on the red states to comply. It would be good policy today and tomorrow.
But that’s not what Tulsi and her people are saying here. They are playing at more like standard politicians. And saying, “I’m in favor of oxygen. Vote for me if you are too.”
That is an opportunity missed by Tulsi and her people in my opinion.
Paper ballots
This is a similar kind of argument. I love the idea of a voting paper trail. I worked for Verizon for 10 years and for internet service providers for about another 10 years prior to that. Doing things electronically without a paper trail is asking for corruption.
But Tulsi And her folks are again kind of playing lip service in a standard political game.
We are less than a month away from Super Tuesday where a ton of states are going to be voting. You can’t just say, “let’s do paper”. And have it roll out that quickly.
I love it conceptually, but given that reality. I have to take it as another. “Vote for oxygen, It’s important.”
Ranked-choice voting at the national level
I love ranked-choice voting at the national level. You may ask how can I like ranked-choice, voting and hate caucuses? Very easily In this regard because we’re talking about ranked-choice voting at the national level. IE in presidential votes.
In ranked-choice voting you are still casting a vote. You have the control whether or not you want to list 2nd or 3rd place candidates to move your votes behind.
It gives you an immense amount of control . You can vote for your pie-in-the-sky presidential candidate who you love and still list your preferred bland but safe second-choice candidate.
I love this as policy. I think it would be fairly easy to roll out in blue States and again would be something that Red State GOP would feel a little bit of pressure from to comply.
But again Tulsi’s people being very fuzzy here. People love ranked-choice voting conceptually But when you start applying it to specific types of races, there are certain instances where it seems non- ideal.
By generically throwing out ranked-choice vote and then shoehorning in “at the national level” , they’re attempting to have their cake and eat it too.
“ Vote for awesome oxygen! (but only because we breathe it.)”
Automatic voter registration
I don’t want to be a broken record here, but this is more of the same damn thing. You could vote to pass it and every blue leaning Democratic State and in several purple States And it would create pressure on red States to comply and would help the effort to vote out Donald Trump but this isn’t going to get implemented prior in most of our primary voting days.
It is another high-concept proposal. As long as you don’t get into the minutiae high-concept appeals appeal to a whole bunch of folks.
Make election day a federal holiday
This is a platform of Andrew Yang. I’m not going to bag on Tulsi about this because Tulsi and Yang seem to really like each other. One gets the feeling that if Yang wins the nomination, Tulsi would be the favourite to be his VP. And if Tulsi wins the nomination, Yang would be on her short list.
Tulsi runs on her own points and to borrow a minor Point like this from Andrew Yang is pretty insignificant. It is not like mayor Pete where Yang followers have famously created a video of Pete stealing point after point after point from Andrew Yang.
This is again a very high concept appeal. You would have to get Mitch McConnell To allow the GOP Senate to vote for this prior to the election. Such a move would almost certainly help the Democrats, so there is no way McConnell will ever approve it. 
So this is basically a high-concept appeal to voters sensibilities and nothing more until McConnell is no longer the voice of the dominant party in the Senate.
Overall, I would give Tulsi and her people a solid B to B+ for their work on this. There were points where they could have gone farther and really showed showed their candidate to be a thoughtful candidate, but they did enough to earn the support of “the common man” voter here.
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