16.14 million handwritten letters going to swing state voters today!

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Saturday October 17, 2020 · 10:09 AM PDT

2020/10/17 · 10:09

More than 100 letters written at that very table, ready to hit the Post Office!

It’s Big Send day! I live in Washington, a state in which my vote is basically performative as far as the White House goes, so I was pretty desperate for something else to do to help, and I’m a grad student in the middle of a pandemic, so I don’t exactly have a ton of extra cash laying around. I phone banked for Obama, and also for Martha Coakley during the run up to the Affordable Care act, and I will do that in the coming days. But I wanted to see what the research said about what is the single best get-out-the-vote tactic available to volunteers. That’s how I and many others discovered VoteForward, a project of hand-writing letters to a specific set of people--swing state voters who are both likely Democrats and infrequent voters.

I joined a letter writing group and learned the process, then started a few letter writing groups of my own, sitting masked and six feet apart at tables in my house, writing letters, or gathering over Zoom. VoteForward’s initial goal was 10 million letters, and there have been about 10 million diaries about it, so you likely know that the target was hit easily in the first week of October. I wasn’t sure what to do, because I still had more letter writing groups planned with people who were hoping to get involved, but VoteForward ambitiously increased the target to 15 million, AND moved the target mailing date back 10 days to accommodate the vagaries of DeJoy’s sabotaged Post Office. Five million extra letters in just two weeks, given that it had taken all summer to get to 10 million, seemed like such a stretch goal I figured it didn’t matter if we didn’t hit it, because we’d already done so well.

Today is the day they all go in the mail, all 16.14 million of them. More than 16 million hand-written letters, asking our friends in personal and amiable terms to please get out and vote.

Even if slightly less than 2 percent more people vote than otherwise would have (studies show turn out increases of up to 3.4%, but turnout is already high this year), that’s 300,000 votes in swing states and potentially flippable states. I feel really good about what we’ve done. It means that there’s still a boost of energy possibly waiting to happen here in the final days, after the first flush of early voting. It also means we are pumped as hell on team blue.

Now to figure out a texting project!

Redstate righteous religious rant against Trump

SeattleProgressive

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Saturday October 15, 2016 · 9:04 PM PDT

2016/10/15 · 21:04

So I wandered over to Redstate to see what Redstaters are making of all the latest. To my surprise, a person might be forgiven for mistaking their landing page for one of ours, minus the orange font. It’s a swath of headlines trumpeting the various vilenesses of Trump. Nary a defense of the man in sight, at least the minute I checked in! Then this one, called Respectfully: Trump Prophecy Pushers, JUST STOP IT, caught my eye. I present it for your amusement. An excerpt:

If you want to pray for Donald Trump, I encourage it. I do it myself. While you’re on your knees and lifting up Trump, are you also praying for Hillary Clinton?

If you’re not, you’re a hypocrite.

Do you think God loves her less, because she’s a Democrat?

Then you have never met my God.

Donald Trump is an abusive, profane, vulgar man.

“But God can use him!”

He can. He can use Hillary Clinton, too.

Another morsel:

Trump has not repented of his words, or his deeds. He has, instead, doubled down, and further demeaned these women by insulting their looks, to adoring crowds, some claiming to be Christians.

“But that was in his past!”

Until he shows a truly repentant heart, it’s in his present.

Those who are as religio-phobic as I am may find its jargon a bit off-putting, but here’s a hard core charismatic Christian Republican making a pretty righteous argument about why Christians have no good reason to vote Trump. I actually enjoyed the thing. Maybe send the link to your bible-thumping aunt?

The Let Hitler Win diary made me donate

SeattleProgressive

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Sunday September 18, 2016 · 7:52 PM PDT

2016/09/18 · 19:52

Screen_Shot_2016-09-18_at_7.49.18_PM.png — So I parted with what I could afford. I suspect I will find I can afford more.

I saw a diary today passionately arguing against this diary provocatively titled Fuck it...Let Hitler Win. I loved both diaries. The Fuck it one was powerful. It pretty much verbalized my growing horror over just how far this Trump thing has gone. It’s like a practical joke that is not a joke. It’s as if some temporary craze like the SARS panic metastasized into Armageddon territory, and this time everyone won’t get to tuck a bunch of surgical masks and Cipro bottles into the back of the closet and try to forget that they ever got so carried away.

I never thought the same country that elected Barack Obama to the White House twice could ever take this megalomaniacal idealess self-promoting Hindenberg of hate this seriously for this long. Some day, I believe to my marrow that his supporters will eventually disavow him and join the ranks of the abashed McCarthyites of the red scare years, but we are mere days from the opening of absentee balloting in some states and the zombie that will not die no matter how hard he shoots himself in the foot just keeps...on...marching.

So thank you diarists. This shit is getting real. I am a grad student, but I made a recurring gift to the Clinton campaign that’s good through the election.

Now it’s time to start talking and not shut up until game day. I encourage anyone to consider the spiral of silence theory; in short:

Spiral of silence is the term meant to refer to the tendency of people to remain silent when they feel that their views are in opposition to the majority view on a subject. The theory posits that they remain silent for a few reasons:

Fear of isolation when the group or public realizes that the individual has a divergent opinion from the status quo.

Fear of reprisal or more extreme isolation, in the sense that voicing said opinion might lead to a negative consequence beyond that of mere isolation (loss of a job, status, etc.)

The spiral is created or reinforced when someone in the perceived opinion majority speaks out confidently in support of the majority opinion, hence the minority begins to be more and more distanced from a place where they are comfortable to voice their opinion and begin to experience the aforementioned fears.

Let us NOT let this work against us. Let us rather harness it, and gently and unapologetically stand up in public and announce that we rebuke Trump and support Clinton. We all have something to lose. But we’ve got a lot more to lose if we don’t take a stand. So off to Facebook I go.

Thanks, diarists, for getting me in the game.

Top academics volunteer to take 100 lashes for Raif

SeattleProgressive

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Thursday January 22, 2015 · 2:20 PM PST

2015/01/22 · 14:20

In the latest of a number of incredibly inspiring efforts on behalf of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, (above) sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for his moderate and thoughtful essays ,
a group of top academics have offered to take his punishment in his place. Read More

Beta this SPU-related editorial

SeattleProgressive

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Sunday June 08, 2014 · 8:16 PM PDT

2014/06/08 · 20:16

I live in Seattle and as such am thinking heavily of the shooting at SPU.
I also write editorials.
Here's the one I'm writing on the topic, in which I express despair on any sort of success with gun control and call for increased spending for research on mental illness.
I am looking for your feedback to make it as good as it could be before it goes to print.

SeattleProgressive

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Monday October 14, 2013 · 4:09 PM PDT

2013/10/14 · 16:09

It's been a big week for the Washington state exchange.
It got off to an awful start on Oct. 1, when the site crashed over and over, and communication from the Exchange Board was frankly dreadful. Updates on their Facebook were allowed to get 15 hours old, and their Twitter account was mostly silent as tens of thousands of frustrated people tried to get on the site and local Tea Partiers crowed. There wasn't even a banner on the site to explain why it was not any different than it had been in the days before it opened.
I digress. It opened.
The first week I actually thought enrollment was sort of slow. But once the system got functional, enrollment went from a reasonable flow to a flood.
Enrollment tripled last week.

SeattleProgressive

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Friday September 27, 2013 · 2:27 PM PDT

2013/09/27 · 14:27

I'm a reporter in WA and working on a preview of the rollout of the exchange here and I just got off the phone with customer service and am feeling considerably dismayed. I asked if a person was eligible for insurance through their spouse's employer, how affordability was calculated.
She told me that if insurance was considered affordable for the employee, then regardless of what it costs to add a spouse, that spouse is ineligible for subsidies through the exchanges. In other words, your spouse can get an exchange policy, but will pay full price for it. Now I've seen full price for them; Washington has a rate sheet up already, and for people in their 50s and up, or people who don't earn a ton, those policies still aren't affordable.
I, for example, have insurance through my company that costs me $26 a month. It's pretty good insurance, too. I am planning to get married but may reconsider. My fiancee is a small business owner and currently uninsured. He qualifies for Medicaid at this point. If we marry, he won't qualify, because my insurance is affordable to me. Never mind that adding him will cost us far more than we can afford.
If you file separately on your taxes, you can qualify separately for exchange plans, but again, you don't get the subsidies. It's the subsidies that make these plans affordable.
Does anyone know something I don't, or see something I'm missing? Because I'm horrified. We just legalized gay marriage up here. A lot of joyful friends got married. Are they going to regret it? Should I not marry? Should married people divorce?

Koster, Preserve Marriage Washington letters to supporters

SeattleProgressive

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Thursday November 08, 2012 · 10:19 PM PST

2012/11/08 · 22:19

In my work in Washington State, I get press releases a lot. These are the press releases from John "the rape thing" Koster and Preserve Marriage Washington, trying to get their heads around what just happened. The shock (and bitterness) is palpable. Read below the fold (boldface is mine):

SeattleProgressive

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Wednesday February 01, 2012 · 8:26 PM PST

2012/02/01 · 20:26

Washington state residents have reason to be crying tears of pride and joy this hour, as the Washington state senate has voted 28-21 in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage.

The house is expected to vote as early as Feb. 8, and is expected to easily pass the legislation.

Our governor, Christine Gregoire, blessings on her house, has said she will sign it.

Folks, we are on the brink of becoming the seventh state to grant the right to marry to all.

SeattleProgressive

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Tuesday December 21, 2010 · 9:55 PM PST

2010/12/21 · 21:55

I live in Seattle. I love Seattle. I've been all over the United States and Seattle is home. It's blue as the sea that surrounds it, it has good coffee. 'Nuff said.

I am in Charleston, South Carolina today. It is my first visit to the deep South.

Last night, my first night here, a secession ball was held in town. Today, as I visited this stunningly beautiful city, seeing for the first time the Spanish moss and palmettos that I've read of in Pat Conroy and Margaret Mitchell, I also see civil war statues everywhere.

SeattleProgressive

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Saturday October 23, 2010 · 6:45 PM PDT

2010/10/23 · 18:45

I am a long-time Seattle resident and Dan Savage reader. I have been grabbing the Stranger, one of Seattle's two big alt-weeklies, for more than 10 years just to read his column "Savage Love," in which he sanely dispenses advice on mind-bending topics like copraphagia, diaper fetishes and more. I've read his advice on rimming (antibacterial soap, and go for it), three-ways, and how to know if you have gone One Kink Too Far. There is nothing Savage won't touch, and that outspoken and brilliant gay man is one of my damn heroes.

I never thought I'd see the day that a United States President got involved extremely publicly with one of his projects, but today, with tears in my eyes, I'm delighted to report that it happened.

SeattleProgressive

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Thursday October 21, 2010 · 4:14 PM PDT

2010/10/21 · 16:14

Nearly 11,000 people crammed themselves into an arena built for 10,000, and 3,000 more sat in Husky Stadium nearby to watch the jumbotron as a who's who of state Democrats warmed up the crowd for the arrival of Patty Murray and Barack Obama this morning.

I was early and am with the press, so I got a plum seat at the front of the press area and watched with amusement as a sea of red Patty Murray signs made a ruffle that swept around and around the arena, accompanied by a roar.

The mostly student crowd was there for more than than the novelty of it all, it soon became clear, because they knew who Jay Inslee was, and roared like a volcano when he took the podium.

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16.14 million handwritten letters going to swing state voters today!

Redstate righteous religious rant against Trump

The Let Hitler Win diary made me donate

Top academics volunteer to take 100 lashes for Raif

Beta this SPU-related editorial

62,000 apply on Exchange in WA

MASSIVE flaw in ACA?

Koster, Preserve Marriage Washington letters to supporters

Breaking/Updated WA senate approves same sex marriage

South Carolina?

Beyond Awesome: Obama makes "It Gets Better" clip

No enthusiasm gap at UW today