Bad books and Red pens.

Hey, wanna know what a lot of people tend to forget about politicians? They're fucking people. Like yeah it's 100% fine to judge a politician for some hideous behavior (hi, I live in Ohio and one of my state's representatives is still actively trying to cover up years of sexual abuse of the students he coached).

But honest mistakes can be made and frequently people operate with incomplete information or simply have priorities that are different than your own. Sometimes your congressional representatives legitimately don't know what your concerns are because their day to day job deals almost entirely with raising funds to secure their next election or conferring with the other members of their party and caucus to try and secure enough votes to get agendas passed that they may hope is in the best interests of their district or state. Yeah a lot of them are effectively just cowards who toe the party line but almost no one gets into public office to purposefully be evil. Many of them, if you can actually get through to them (if you live in the states you can call the Congress switchboard at (202) 224-3121 btw) are actually pretty reasonable and hearing the voices of the people they actually represent tends to have legitimate impact on them.

There are exceptions of course. Like Mitch McConnell (who by the way is up for re-election and his opponent Amy McGrath is a wonderful woman that I've actually had the chance to talk with). This motherfucker literally called himself the Grim Reaper when he was talking about legislation. No lie. Hundreds of bills have been passed through the house and died in the Senate because he has the rest of the Republicans simply refuse to hold votes on them.

This is why I go on so much about the importance of Congress. Seriously the president can't just make up laws. And whatever a President *can* personally do can then be immediately undone by the next person in charge.

And guess what? This year 23 Republican Senators are going to have to defend their seats against challengers. Now I understand that some of those are from *very* red states (as in the number of registered Republicans outweighs the number of registered Democrats by as much as 30%) but here's the dirty secret about politics: there is *NO* seat that is too safe to flip.

I get that overcoming a 30% difference sounds like an impossibility, but that's just it, if you feel like it's impossible then you stay home which artificially inflates the numbers against you.

Literally in 2018 Ted Cruz almost lost his senate seat to a guy with practically no experience. Just now during the Texas primary someone from the Bush family lost their primary race.

In *EVERY* election for the last 70 years the largest voting demographic in the United States was "didn't vote". A lot is made about the fact that Hillary beat Trump by 6 million votes (thanks electoral college), but if the 90 million people who didn't vote had instead turned up and written in Guy Fieri instead we'd be living in the United States of Flavor Town right now.

If you want to stick around I promise there's more fun stuff coming eventually. Between the volunteering I've been doing, my own day job, my struggles with depression and anxiety and a particularly painful breakup I've been too burned out to get much creative work done. But that is slowly changing and I will continue to provide you the trans-dimensional coffee shop AUs that you may have come to me for in the first place, but when I'm ready and when I'm able to put out something decent.

If you need to unfollow me for a while I understand but I hope I won't lose you forever. And if I've lost you already then I hope you're doing well and that you've found that good good fic you've been looking for.

Listen up chucklefucks. If you're a Bernie supporter trying to say that Warren supporters who are "weighing their options" were never progressive or didn't actually care. THEN YOU'RE PART OF THE FUCKING PROBLEM!

Warren and Sanders had practically identical plans and progressive agendas. We *could* have just as easily supported your guy from the beginning but a lot of us had very legitimate concerns and I'm not talking about the worst of his supporters. Bernie's got a great agenda but has basically never been able to get an actual coalition together without someone more popular helping him out. He's a great senator and an important voice to have dragging Washington further to the left, but he has always and will always struggle to get *anything* passed through Congress regardless of the position he holds in government. Liz had the policy chops, the charisma, and the track record to prove that she could hold her own against the worst of Washington.

Yes I'm supporting him now because he was always my second choice but let me ask you this: do you have a second choice? Are you willing to grit your teeth and vote for Biden if Bernie doesn't get the nomination? Or was your second choice to scream in the faces of people who would otherwise be on your side that they're establishment shills or that the DNC and Mass Media stole it from him? Are you willing to work for his agenda and shift Congress or are you just going to yell at people online because your feelings got hurt.

I know my last few posts about politics have been furious and relentlessly negative, so I'm going to try and say at least one nice thing about each person who was running for president, past and present. Keep in mind I'm not going to mention bad things about these people, so yeah I know that guy supported awful things or that other guy has utterly toxic followers. That's not what this is about.

My feelings about Liz are well known so I'll just cry about the fact that we lost yet another absurdly talented female candidate, and one who had the power to fucking atomize a billionaire from 30 feet with only her death glare.

I'll actually start though with the people still in the race.

Bernie Sanders: Dude is a progressive powerhouse and has been consistently on the right side of history for decades. He's got energy, he's got plans, he's got a passionate following of young people who, if their candidate actually wins will almost assuredly lead the charge in a new progressive wave in politics. And I'm sure that many of them will be passionate enough to support progressive candidates and fight for real change even when their guy isn't on the ballot.

Joe Biden: This guy is a charisma powerhouse, and honestly even if he himself may be more moderate, with as charged up as the democratic voters are right now we could practically hand him a gift wrapped congress. It frankly doesn't matter that much if he's moderate if Congress keeps sending him progressive legislation to sign. Do you think he wouldn't jump at the chance to do M4A or climate change initiatives or even a green new deal if we just put a stack of paper on his desk to sign? He'd get to go down in history as one of the greatest presidents ever without having to do any of the hard work. And even if we can't take Congress for him, he *is* actually charismatic enough to negotiate deals across the aisle. I'll frankly take a small amount of progress over literally burning the planet down.

Tulsi Gabbard: Forgot she was still in this didn't you? Well that's the nice thing I'm saying, she's tenacious. If we can just get her to fight for the right things then she can be a real asset...

Alright now the people who have dropped out.

Pete Buttigieg: it's not nothing for someone to be openly gay and to have gotten as far as he did in American politics. Like yeah, he wasn't the guy to win but for a long time he was a frontrunner and whether you agree with him or not, every bit of representation matters.

Michael Bloomberg: (yes I'm going to say something nice about Bloomberg). Disregard his policies and track record for a moment. Also ignore the disastrous consequences of what it would have meant to allow someone to effectively buy the nomination of a major political party. If he *had* secured the nomination this guy had literally billions of his own personal wealth to throw at down ballot races. If he were president he would have wanted a cooperative Congress and he would have thrown as much money as he could at making that a reality. And while that probably wouldn't have addressed some very important issues, he probably would have at least addressed climate change which any reasonable person will agree is an existential threat to all mankind.

Amy Klobuchar: She was basically Hillary but with fewer scandals and meaner. And honestly the meaner part is kinda important in modern politics. We need someone who can basically turn Senate Republicans into scolded children on a daily basis.

Tom Steyer: He's been taking out ad space to tell us to impeach and remove Trump since January of 2017. Yeah, he's another billionaire but he's the only one I've heard openly talking about how billionaires need to be taxed more.

Andrew Yang: Yeah another billionaire but he got us to have a national conversation about UBI and that's not nothing. Plus I'll admit that he was pretty fun in a genuine way.

Corey Booker: look there's a reason a lot of people were talking about him back in 2018 like he was the next Obama. Smart, charismatic, well versed in policy and procedure but willing to break the rules when the rules were blatantly unfair. Also as a side note could you imagine First Lady Rosario Dawson? Could you imagine a White House wedding?! Between brilliant, talented, hilarious, literal film and theater star Rosario Dawson and President Corey Booker? It would be an event filled with actual class and glamor happening in Washington DC that would have nothing to do with politics that would rival a royal wedding for sheer opulence and spectacle.

Julian Castro: he endorsed Warren so he's automatically getting points for me, he was fairly progressive in his own right and as someone with a Latinx heritage it's pretty damn likely that we could at least start to undo some of the damage of the last few years.

Marianne Williamson: Not gonna lie, I'd be mildly terrified of what her presidency would actually look like, but you have to admit that seeing her campaign against Trump in the general would have been absurd and hilarious. Plus, let's face it she *would* hold cleansing rituals to purge the White House of evil and who knows, it might work.

Deval Patrick, Rob Delaney & Michael Bennett: I'm lumping them in together because I have the same thing to say about all 3 of them. They're boring without standout policy proposals. Remember back when we had boring presidents? No you don't because even the most boring President we've had in a generation (Carter) was still going out and building homes for Habitat for Humanity at the age of 90. But I'm just saying, if we get some bland, inoffensive white guy in office it's not the worst thing in the world so long as we can shift Congress to a more progressive stance.

So yeah. That's the takeaway from this. It's ok to be disappointed that your candidate didn't win. It's ok to not be enthusiastic about the choices you're left with. What it's not ok to do is to refuse to vote. We are literally up against a fascist regime who is hell bent on kicking everyone out of the government who doesn't agree with them and removing voting rights altogether.

In 2016 we underestimated how dangerous his administration would be and how many people in America would be fine with a failed Reality Show Dictator in office. Think of all the things he's been able to do in the last 3 years alone and realize that he keeps "joking" about running for a third term.