It has been a long time where apathy should have ended … and most on this site are far from apathetic … but (securing any) hope for a decent future for the United States and, quite literally, humanity requires an end to apathy among any and all Americans not captured in the #CultOfTrump.
As Lowell Feld makes clear at Blue Virginia,
If Millions of Dems Hadn’t Sat Home in 2000, 2004, 2010, 2014, 2016, We Could Have Had an 8-1 Liberal SCOTUS for Decades
Certainly, if millions hadn’t sat on the sidelines across these elections, we wouldn’t have had the Iraq War, disastrous tax cuts, … and, well, the Supreme Court would be moderate / moderately liberal for decades to come rather than — almost certainly — soon to be majority reactionary extremists ready to enable the #CultOfTrump in the decimation of the American Republic and our democracy.
But, it wouldn’t have taken millions. We’re all aware of this, but …
- Under 1000 votes and President Al Gore …
- Amid the Brook Brothers Riot disrupting recounts and a partisan Supreme Court ruling for Bush (key vote: conservative Justice Kennedy!), Bush ‘won’ Florida by 537 votes.
- George W. Bush (Dick Cheney) appointed two justices: John Roberts and Samuel Alito.
- Under 100,00 (under 80,000) votes+ and President Hillary Clinton
- Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — with Russian interference and massive voter suppression (especially Wisconsin) — had a total of 79,646 votes counted* giving Trump the victory.
- The Trump regime has already put radical extremist Gorsuch into a stolen seat and, let’s be honest, almost certainly will seat a second radical extremist to SCOTUS. And, reminder, two key Justices are — well — well past retirement age: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 85 and Justice Stephen Breyer is 79. Thus, the Trump regime could potentially have several more shots at additional Justices.
Democratic constituencies simply didn’t show up in the passion and numbers and locations to win (to preempt Republican thefts of the White House). For whatever reason, people didn’t show up to vote. Yes, we should have easier (automatic registration) … easier voting (holiday/weekend/time off work) … equal voting access across communities/races/etc … Yes, we should.
However, consider for a moment, just one issue which we could call ‘personality concern trolling’. How many ‘purity trolls’ didn’t vote in 2000 and 2016 because Gore / Clinton weren't liberal enough? That Gore and Clinton were seen/portrayed as boring & stiff? (Note that this was driven, in no small part, by information warfare efforts from those seeking to have GOP occupation of the White House attacks on both of them.) That one angle, if non-engaged Ds had put substance over personality, would have won both elections by several percent more and given major electoral college victories.
With less than 100,000 votes changed or added to well over 200,000,000 counted we would have had President Gore and have President Clinton and ...
Perhaps even more important for the long run, a young liberal Supreme Court might have ruled on America for a generation.
As Lowell concluded
Just think about that the next time someone says “voting doesn’t matter,” “the parties are totally the same,” blah blah blah. … the main point:
it’s ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL for Democrats – and every person of good will in this country – to vote in EVERY SINGLE ELECTION …
NO EXCUSES!
Think about this in the months ahead.
Elections are ever more ‘get out the base’ rather than ‘persuade the middle’.
Ask yourself, every day, is there someone who I know who hasn’t voted or is likely not to vote … would they vote D if they were to vote … and, if so, what can I do to increase the odds that they will make it to the polls.
+ Actually, rather than ‘under 80,000 votes’, it would be ‘under 40,000 flipped votes’ as jqjacobs reminds in a comment and we’d be complaining (of course ...) about President Hillary Clinton’s inadequacies while celebrating (occasional) good moves.
* Too often, as per the Axios graphic included, people say that Trump won by “79,646 votes cast”. Amid the voter suppression, there were 100,000s (millions?) of provisional ballots cast that remained uncounted due to many reasons (such as voters not returning in time with required identification, etc, etc, etc …). Many (likely most) of these ended up ‘provisional’ due not to the voter but to administrative errors, deliberate (GOP) voter suppression efforts, and — never explored enough — quite potentially (Russian) hacking into voter registration records to cause this very sort of disruption that disproportionately impacted Democratic Party constituencies.