I Pledge to Vote for the Democrat in 2020

Hopefully all visitors to this site will consider this as obvious as 'water is wet', or 'breathing is better than the alternative'.  The blog title is Things Everyone Knows, after all.

Then again, we're still more than 23 months out from election day, and already I'm seeing crap like this:

Since we're apparently going to start doing this now, I guess it's time to remind everyone of the simple formula for winning elections:

1. Find your favorite candidate.  If s/he is a Democrat, great.  If s/he is not a Democrat, and refuses to run as a Democrat, find someone else.
2. Do everything you can to help that candidate win the nomination.
3. Once the nomination has been decided, do everything you can to get the nominee elected --- even if that person is not the person you identified in step 1.

Easy, right?  And obvious, too.  But since it seems some people still don't get it, let's break it down a bit.

The rationale for step (3) is that any Democrat will be a better president than Trump.  And if this isn't self-evidently obvious to you, then clearly you aren't enduring first-hand the consequences of Trump's attacks on health care, his sympathizing with white supremacists, his ethnic cleansing policies, his assault on the environment, his unconcern for victims of natural disasters, his unnecessary tariffs, etc.  And apparently you aren't sufficiently concerned about the dangers of a Supreme Court with Neill Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

The rationale for step (1) should be even more obvious.  The only candidate capable of beating Trump in 2020 is the Democratic nominee.  So if there's some Johnny Unbeatable candidate who you think will make the best president ever, but he refuses to run as a Democrat, then to hell with him.  We really don't have time for third-party purity tests.

I'll provide one brief example, just because it happens to come from my own congressional district, MN-02.  First, I'll show you the result for our congressional race in 2016:

As you can see, a left-leaning independent candidate, who had no hope of winning the election, took 7% of the vote in an open-seat race in a historically red district, where the Republican candidate ended up winning with just under 47% of the vote.

Would the Democrat have won in a 2-way race?  Well, we can't re-run the 2016 election, but as it turns out, the independent candidate chose not to run in 2018 (she ran against Amy Klobuchar in her Senate race instead), so the 2018 race ended up as a 2-way race between the same Republican and Democratic candidates --- and guess what?

Yes, the dynamics of the race were different in 2018.  This was a Democratic wave election, and the Republican Lewis was now an incumbent who branded himself as an 'independent' Republican (while still very much a trumpian).  So it's not an exact comparison, but --- it appears that practically all of the independent candidate's vote went to the Democratic challenger, leading to the first election of a Democrat in this district in nearly 20 years.

There is really no argument in favor of a third-party lefty candidate which outweighs this result.

So I'm asking nicely, please, if you oppose Trump and support good things like the Constitution and the rule of law and human rights and affordable health care --- follow this simple formula.  There is far more at stake than any one person's opinion about the 'right' kind of Democrat/liberal/progressive.

The 2018 Election Isn't Over Yet

There are still two races where extra dollars might make a difference.

1. The race for Georgia Secretary of State is headed for a runoff, to be held on December 4.  Do you remember the (now former) Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, and his heavy-handed voter suppression?  Well, here's a chance to put someone in that office who will actually encourage and facilitate voting in the state of Georgia, which can only be good news for any Democrats running in the future (like for the U.S. Senate in 2020).  So please give what you can to the Democratic candidate, John Barrow.
2. This one is more aspirational than anything --- we're trying to elect a Democrat to the Senate in Mississippi.  In a 4-way race, Mike Espy and his main Republican opponent each totaled about 41% of the vote, and so a runoff election will be held there in about 2 weeks.  There's really no good reason to think that Espy has a chance at this, except that with the country's attention on Georgia and Florida, it doesn't seem like the national parties are focusing much on Mississippi.  Perhaps if we can really turn out the Democrats on November 27, we can pull of the upset!  It's worth a few bucks, anyway.  (Note: Espy's opponent recently made a lynching joke, which can't possibly help her).