My district will not be unopposed even if I have to do it myself.
Eat a bag of dicks, McCrory.
In a surprise session, proposed and voted into being at the tail-end of an Emergency Session held to approve funding of Hurricane Matthew relief, North Carolina Republicans (who hold an unbreakable, unconstitutional, supermajority in our Legislature) have finally sprung their final trap of 2016.
Even though the state (barely) managed to elect Democrat Roy Cooper to the governorship, finally throwing out the spineless, hateful, I-hope-he-and-his-whole-fucking-family-die-of-ebola-tomorrow McCrory, the Legislature is set to hamstring the governor’s office, cutting out many of its key powers, while simultaneously piling on a raft of bills they’ve clearly been writing, in secret, for months now.
If the entire Republican delegation fell off a goddamned cliff tomorrow, I’d invest my (relatively insubstantial) life savings in having that cliff marked a National Heritage Site.
Insult to injury: the pitifully small, gerrymandered-into-nonexistence Democratic legislators tried to at least file a formal complaint against all this nonsense last night, but were ruled as out of order.
Which is more or less par for the course here: the Republicans have essentially zero need to consult with Democrats in a state that’s more or less evenly divided, 50/50, in terms of popular support for the two major parties.
Also, fuck North Carolina.
Goddamn, Armando, the North Carolina Caliphate sounds awful. And incredibly frustrating. At least in the Mormon Theocratic State of Deseret, the majority of our legislators conduct business clad in magic pajamas because the population heavily tilts that way.
I’ve built an amazing support system of loving, incredible friends here who help push through all the political bullshit, occasionally with a great deal of drinking and shouting.
Unfortunately, this same group of people will make it very difficult when/if I finally extract myself from NC and move elsewhere.
A Northern Virginia ex-pat who is living in Cary or thereabouts was complaining about this very same thing to me earlier in the day.
I will comfort you the same way that I comforted him: You’re not alone, Armando. With the GOP soon to control all three branches of the federal government, the entire country will soon be just as fucked as your little corner of it. Then we can all weep together.
Well, all I’m going to say is my district will not be unopposed next year.
Jesus. I thought living in Michigan was depressing (it was). You guys have my sympathies.
The Dems have to get out the urban/suburban vote next cycle because they have no chance of ever winning the rural votes in the state. NC has been blue in the past and will be again, I believe, but dammit – no more screwing around. I really hope the moral monday protests start up again in earnest after the holidays. The irony of all of this is that the rural conservatives consistently vote against their own self interests. What does it take to make them realize the harm they’re inflicting on themselves and the state?
From what I’ve been told by some of our legislators–Republican and Democrat alike–Moral Monday’s more or less seen as a laughable waste of time at best, or a petty, easy-to-ignore insult at worst. They really have no obligation to listen or reason to care if people march around the city all day long.
Basically as effective as any of the handful of Dems in the legislature trying to speak about an issue.
:(
Anyway, I’m pretty worried for the 2017 special election and midterms come 2018. Progressives don’t vote off Presidential years, and the Republicans are going to increase their stranglehold on government here to ensure that no matter what the census results say in 2020 or courts say ever (not that that will matter much after Trump gets his first SC appointee), they’ll never have to worry about losing power.
I guess I never felt that the moral monday protests were anything other than trying to create a wider voice/movement for progressives. The NCGA is a totally locked chamber at this point. Unless you create some noisy advocacy around why that’s a bad idea, then people who feel adrift without a way to get involved will just continue to sit on the sidelines. Maybe moral mondays give them a sense of where they can help or some direction towards community. Who knows.
Seems like a great way to try sticking criminal/arrest records onto a bunch of decent human beings (sorry I meant to write progressives but my fingers slipped). . .
. . .
Sorry, I’m a little bleak today. Lovely weather we’re having, right?
Even if you get all those votes- you still lose the GA.
That’s how gerrymandered it is.
Also, never say never- things always change eventually. It might take some real nastiness, but it will change.
Actually, we did get them out. And the “bathroom bill” to you HB2 to us was a great motivator. Hillary won the urban counties by around 7% more than Obama won them, and almost all had record turnout. I hear Hillary had almost no ground game. despite the press she did. But local anti-HB2 groups & NAACP had ammunition and hit the pavement. Record turnout and almost all for Dems wasn’t enough for Hillary. It did get Cooper, but he won because he got some voters in the western foothills that did not vote Hillary.
Turns out you can’t win with just the urban areas, even with stronger with record turnout and off set an 20/80 loss in the small towns, exurbs and rural areas. You can lose them 45/55 and be fine, but the numerical issue was not in the urban areas. There were things like a 10-15% drop in voters off the rolls as Democrats in the last 10 years in rural areas. The Koch/Pope machine had ground game and massive ad buys in the rural/exurb areas. Dems had nothing out there. Also there was about a 15% depression in the black vote in the eastern counties, who are usually Dems. Same in Lumbee (native american) SE areas. I can source some of that, if you need. Not all the groups have been standing around on Mondays only.
It was no where near enough vs the opposing ground game and coordinated PAC ads.
This lays out the specific aims of the coup much more clearly than any article I’ve come across, and the sum total of the piece is genuinely chilling:
The most horrifying thing is that there is literally nothing that can be done to stop them, except hope that a few Republican Legislators suddenly develop morals.
Which, for those of you playing along at home, is by definition impossible.
I’m out of here as soon as my youngest graduates from college in six years. It may be sooner since I’m not sure he’s the college type. I’m thinking northern CA / southern OR coast.
Fight the gerrymandering directly
http://endgerrymanderingnow.org/
And the Moral Monday groups are regularly active. There were hundreds of citizens who showed up to pack the gallery at the GA last night and again most of today. If you want to protest, get on some mailing lists or FB groups.
Just burn the fucking building to the ground. Playing by the rules doesn’t matter when one side ignores and rewrites them when the will of the people isn’t on their side.
An insurgent movement bent on overthrowing the government of the United States. That’s what the Republicans have been for a while and now they are getting their chance. Our institutions will not save us.