Why we must work to get out the vote this year

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We still live in a democracy – where the person who gets the most votes, the person who wins the election, is the person who takes office.  That could change if Republicans take control this year. 

Democracy is on the ballot. Along with abortion rights, climate change, and racism. 

But I’m not writing today about the awfulness of what will happen if we lose the House and Senate this year. Rather, I want to talk about what we can do about it. 

But first, I want to give some context, for it’s not just liberals like me who are making these claims.   

The quotes below are from a recent Washington Post interview with well-known conservative elite Bill Kristol, once the Chief of Staff to Republican Vice President Dan Quayle, then founder of the political magazine The Weekly Standard.  He is now chair of the Republican Accountability Project.  

Here’s the headline for this interview:  

“A longtime conservative insider warns: The GOP can’t be saved”

 Referring to the Republican Party, Kristol calls Trump “the infection that makes the underlying medical issue inoperable.... (but) Trump himself departing the scene by no means guarantees the de-Trumpification of the Republican Party...”  Kristol goes on to say, “The fact is, I have not voted for a Republican since Trump became president.

“It would be foolish to watch Trump take over the Republican Party – to watch so many conservative elites rationalize and acquiesce and enable Trump – and then say, ‘Conservatism is totally healthy.’  You can’t say that with a straight face.”

Interviewer: “It sounds like you don’t think the Republican Party can be saved.”

Kristol: “At least not in the short term. And if we don’t have two reasonably healthy parties, the unhealthy party has to be defeated.”

Yes, that’s what this longtime neo-conservative who was instrumental in defeating the Clinton Health Care Plan of 1993 said: “The unhealthy party has to be defeated.”  

Now of course, there’s always a counterargument. In a recent conversation of my own, it was suggested that this kind of talk could lead to Civil War, for in fact, there is a segment of the Republican Party that is threatening violence if the elections don’t go their way. But is that reason to cooperate with them, and reach across the aisle in friendship? Do we really need to unite under threat? Or, do we need to recognize the unhealthiness in a group of leaders and voters who value power over character and honesty. As I said in a previous column, if you are subjected to abuse in a marriage, you don’t kiss and make up. You get divorced. 

But therein lies another of our problems. We only have two viable parties at this point, so Republicans who want to leave their party have nowhere to go except to the “enemy” side. Of course, I do recognize that we have the Libertarians, and the Independent, Green and Legal Marijuana parties, but until we get ranked choice voting approved statewide, those parties only serve as spoilers.  

If ranked choice voting was the law of the land, then respectable, non-election-denying Republicans could go to a party like the Libertarians and Independents and have hope that their vote would not be wasted. But in order for that to happen, we in Minnesota will first have to vote in a Democratic State House and Democratic State Senate, for it is Republican opposition that stands in the way of us adopting that method of voting that eliminates the spoiler affect and that leads to election results where a true majority is represented.  

Which gets us to the action point: getting out the vote.

For many of us (and by us, I mean the privileged), the personal issue that moves us most is a moral one. We vote for Justice. We vote not for lower taxes, but for peace, and fairness, and for the environment. We can’t understand how you could vote Republican in these times... But we do understand why people don’t vote at all. 

Many of the underprivileged, the poor and disenfranchised, have little faith in government, so that group is hard to mobilize. Also hard to mobilize is what I call “the preoccupied middle,” those who don’t understand that inflation won’t matter if we don’t have a democracy, and who still don’t recognize that in fact our democracy is at stake.  

So it becomes our job to educate them, and to get out the vote – because that is what will preserve the freedoms and rights that so many of us take for granted.  

And here’s the good news:  You actually can do things that will directly affect the vote. You can Team Up for Good with other do-gooders by volunteering two hours to walk a precinct and door-knock for a good candidate. You don’t need special skills for this, just a commitment to do good. You can also send money, of course.  But while that may be all you can do at this point to help Senator Warnock defeat Herschel Walker, door-knocking affects the Minnesota State House and Senate. 

We have superb State Legislative Representation in Frank Hornstein and Jamie Long, and they, along with our Congressional District Chair Scott Graham, spearhead a Get-Out-The-Vote effort that spreads deep into the purple suburbs.  All you need to do to join the effort is go directly to Frank or Jamie’s websites:  www.jamielong.com and www.frankhornstein.org. They are personally leading many of these walks, and they are inspiring to be with. You can also visit www.dfl.org and click on the “Volunteer” button. That will take you to the “Mobilize Us” Page – and there you can pick the most convenient time and place to help out.   

Do it. We will win. 

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