It’s interesting watching the back and forth in social media over the election.

Here’s the thing, if you didn’t bother to vote on Tuesday and it wasn’t because a substantive physical impediment was placed in your path, no matter how much you protest otherwise, you’re just lazy.

And please, voter ID laws in various states are designed to put substantive barriers to voting in place. If you try to start an argument here that voter ID laws are needed to combat voter impersonation fraud you’re an idiot. Anyone who has worked a polling place on election day knows that the process in a polling location makes voter impersonation fraud a very risky enterprise for anyone who would attempt it. As if that risk is worth one vote in an election?

You were offended by all those mud slinging attack ads? They were designed to offend you so that you wouldn’t bother voting. The people who promote and use those ads want to encourage laziness. It’s all about suppressing voter turnout. If you want to make those ads stop get off your ass and vote. If everyone voted the very reason for the existence of those very, very expensive ads is gone. They people who pay for those ads may be cynical and vindictive, but they’re not stupid. They don’t waste money on things that don’t work. They’re expecting that voters are too lazy to figure that one out.

If you say you don’t like what either of the major parties stand for and say that’s why you don’t vote, you’re just lazy. Because if you weren’t lazy what you could do is go to your polling place on Election Day, pull a ballot, not mark it (that’s technically called an “undervote”), and turn it in.

Consider this – nationwide 38% of registered voters (not people eligible to register to vote – that’s a larger group) cast ballots in the election. The nationwide split of the vote cast for the two major parties was approximately 52%-48%. Do the math if you’re not lazy.

Spare me the “they just didn’t give me a reason to vote” excuse. You don’t need an excuse to vote, unless you’re lazy.

If close to 100% of registered voters pulled ballots and only 19% cast votes for the prevailing issue or candidate we’d laugh in their faces if anyone tried to claim that they “won” or they had a “mandate”.

If you didn’t pull a ballot on Tuesday and there was no physical impediment to your doing so, I don’t want to know you.

A while back:

Is Vicky Hartzler the Most Anti-Gay Candidate in America?

She’s hitting her Dem opponent-an architect of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell-for caving to the “extreme agenda” of the “gay movement.”

-By Nick Baumann

| Wed Oct. 20, 2010 4:30 PM EDT

….In 2004, Hartzler drew national and international attention for her work in the campaign for a constitutional amendment in Missouri to ban gay marriage. The amendment was the first of its kind and passed-by a huge margin-in August of that year. The Human Rights Campaign and other national gay rights groups had poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the state to campaign against the amendment. Hartzler was quoted in national and international media celebrating her victory for “traditional marriage….”

[….]

“….Since the Missouri amendment’s passage, Hartzler’s been a go-to quote machine whenever there is national news about gay marriage rights….”

[….]

Representative Vicky Hartzler’s comment on the issue via Twitter:

Nope, nothing there.

Representative Hartzler’s (r) comment on the issue via Facebook:

Nope, nothing there, either.

“….Since the Missouri amendment’s passage, Hartzler’s been a go-to quote machine whenever there is national news about gay marriage rights….”

Strange silence. Times have changed.

Update:

Well, there was a release from Representative Hartzler’s (r) congressional office the day before:

Congresswoman Hartzler comments on judge’s ruling regarding Missouri’s natural marriage Constitutional amendment

Nov 6, 2014

Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler (MO-4) has issued the following statement regarding a St. Louis Circuit Judge’s ruling that Missouri’s natural marriage amendment is unconstitutional:

“I am disappointed that a judge has overturned the will of the Missouri people by striking down the state’s natural marriage Constitutional amendment recognizing marriage as a union of one man and one woman. Missouri citizens overwhelmingly approved this amendment with 71 percent of our citizens supporting it. Now it is up to the Missouri Supreme Court to uphold the will of the people. I am hopeful the Court will respect the people’s Constitutional right to determine their public policy.”

[….]

Is it possible that public opinion has changed in the ensuing ten years? Just asking. But go ahead, and cling to whatever you wish.

It would be interesting to read comments in response. Oh, wait…

Meanwhile, there’s the dissent this week in the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals (14a0275p.06 14-1341 2014/11/06 April DeBoer v. Richard Snyder [pdf] Eastern District of Michigan at Detroit):

MARTHA CRAIG DAUGHTREY, Circuit Judge, dissenting.

“The great tides and currents which engulf the rest of men do not turn aside in their course to pass the judges by.”

Benjamin Cardozo, The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921)

The author of the majority opinion has drafted what would make an engrossing TED Talk or, possibly, an introductory lecture in Political Philosophy. But as an appellate court decision, it wholly fails to grapple with the relevant constitutional question in this appeal: whether a state’s constitutional prohibition of same-sex marriage violates equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. Instead, the majority sets up a false premise-that the question before us is “who should decide?”-and leads us through a largely irrelevant discourse on democracy and federalism. In point of fact, the real issue before us concerns what is at stake in these six cases for the individual plaintiffs and their children, and what should be done about it. Because I reject the majority’s resolution of these questions based on its invocation of vox populi and its reverence for “proceeding with caution” (otherwise known as the “wait and see” approach), I dissent.

[….]

Today, my colleagues seem to have fallen prey to the misguided notion that the intent of the framers of the United States Constitution can be effectuated only by cleaving to the legislative will and ignoring and demonizing an independent judiciary. Of course, the framers presciently recognized that two of the three co-equal branches of government were representative in nature and necessarily would be guided by self-interest and the pull of popular opinion. To restrain those natural, human impulses, the framers crafted Article III to ensure that rights, liberties, and duties need not be held hostage by popular whims.

More than 20 years ago, when I took my oath of office to serve as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, I solemnly swore to “administer justice without respect to persons,” to “do equal right to the poor and to the rich,” and to “faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me . . . under the Constitution and laws of the United States.” See 28 U.S.C. § 453. If we in the judiciary do not have the authority, and indeed the responsibility, to right fundamental wrongs left excused by a majority of the electorate, our whole intricate, constitutional system of checks and balances, as well as the oaths to which we swore, prove to be nothing but shams.

“…I am hopeful the Court will respect the people’s Constitutional right to determine their public policy…”

“…If we in the judiciary do not have the authority, and indeed the responsibility, to right fundamental wrongs left excused by a majority of the electorate, our whole intricate, constitutional system of checks and balances, as well as the oaths to which we swore, prove to be nothing but shams.”

The vox populi in a low turnout August primary election ten years ago is not supposed to trump the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. At least not at this moment.

Not that they ever went away.

Today, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C121045 11/07/2014 TEACHGREAT.ORG Pelopidas 1034 S Brentwood Blvd Ste 1700 St Louis MO 63117 11/7/2014 $10,000.00

[emphasis added]

You think the assault on teacher tenure and public education is over? Think again.

Previously:

Campaign Finance: using a lot of money to beat up on teachers (March 28, 2012)

Campaign Finance: teachers are evil, except when they save kids from a tornado or a crazed gunman (May 24, 2013)

Campaign Finance: Bah, humbug! (December 25, 2013)

Campaign Finance: the almighty dollar (January 5, 2014)

Campaign Finance: how astroturf (the fake grassroots) works (August 1, 2013)

Campaign Finance: teachers are evil, except when they save kids from a tornado or a crazed gunman (May 24, 2013)

Campaign Finance: using a lot of money to beat up on teachers (May 28, 2012)

Campaign Finance: Bah, humbug! (December 25, 2013)

Campaign Finance: here’s $31,000.00, go beat up on public school teachers (February 26, 2014)

Campaign Finance: a contribution of only $20.00 is a stronger statement (April 25, 2014)

How “a broad based coalition” is now defined in Missouri and America (September 12, 2014)  

Michael Bersin ‏@MBersin

What are Missouri republicans going to do when Rex Sinquefield stops propping them up with his money? Just asking.

7:18 AM – 7 Nov 2014

Via the Missouri Ethics Commission, for 2014:

C101046 03/27/2014 MISSOURI CLUB FOR GROWTH POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE Rex Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Westphalia MO 65085 Retired 3/27/2014 $973,000.00

C141055 04/01/2014 HANAWAY FOR GOVERNOR Rex Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Westphalia MO 65085 Self Retired 3/31/2014 $50,000.00

C010265 04/25/2014 CHRISMER FOR GOOD GOVERNMENT Rex Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Westphalia MO 65085 retired 4/25/2014 $25,000.00

C121045 04/25/2014 TEACHGREAT.ORG Rex Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Westphalia MO 65085 Retired 4/24/2014 $750,000.00

C131097 05/15/2014 GROW MISSOURI Rex Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Westphalia MO 65085 Retired 5/13/2014 $1,500,000.00

C141179 06/06/2014 ASHCROFT FOR MISSOURI Rex Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Westphalia MO 65085 None Retired 6/6/2014 $25,000.00

C121488 07/02/2014 MISSOURIANS FOR EXCELLENCE IN GOVERNMENT Rex and Jeanne Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Westphalia MO 65085 retired 6/30/2014 $100,000.00

C071320 07/03/2014 SCHMITT FOR MISSOURI Rex Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Westphalia MO 65085 Retired 7/2/2014 $250,000.00

C131097 07/19/2014 GROW MISSOURI Rex Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Westphalia MO 65085 Retired 7/18/2014 $250,000.00

C010265 07/25/2014 CHRISMER FOR GOOD GOVERNMENT Rex Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Westphalia MO 65085 Retired 7/25/2014 $25,000.00

C061248 07/28/2014 FRIENDS OF RICK STREAM Rex Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Westphalia MO 65085 Retired 7/25/2014 $100,000.00

C121488 08/05/2014 MISSOURIANS FOR EXCELLENCE IN GOVERNMENT Rex and Jeanne Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Westphalia MO 65085 retired retired 8/5/2014 $250,000.00

C131097 09/12/2014 GROW MISSOURI Rex Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Westphalia MO 65085 Retired 9/11/2014 $2,500,000.00

C101046 09/14/2014 MISSOURI CLUB FOR GROWTH POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE Rex Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Westphalia MO 65085 Retired 9/12/2014 $1,200,000.00

C010265 10/10/2014 CHRISMER FOR GOOD GOVERNMENT Rex Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Westphalia MO 65085 Retired 10/10/2014 $25,000.00

C141055 10/15/2014 HANAWAY FOR GOVERNOR Rex Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Westphalia MO 65085 None Retired 10/13/2014 $750,000.00

C081145 10/15/2014 CITIZENS TO ELECT KURT SCHAEFER ATTORNEY GENERAL Rex Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Westphalia MO 65085 retired retired 10/15/2014 $250,000.00

C041029 10/16/2014 CITIZENS FOR WILL KRAUS Rex Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Westphalia MO 65085 Retire 10/15/2014 $100,000.00

C141374 10/16/2014 FRIENDS FOR JENNIFER FLORIDA Rex Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut St Louis MO 65085 retired 10/14/2014 $25,000.00

C141055 10/28/2014 HANAWAY FOR GOVERNOR Rex Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Westphalia MO 65085 None Retired 10/27/2014 $10,000.00

C141374 10/31/2014 FRIENDS FOR JENNIFER FLORIDA Rex Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Westphalia MO 65085 retired 10/30/2014 $15,000.00

C141055 11/04/2014 HANAWAY FOR GOVERNOR Rex Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Westphalia MO 65085 None Retired 11/3/2014 $10,000.00

[emphasis added]

Yeah, big deal, there’s an “independent” in the mix, too. And money’s gone to Democrats. Just check the amounts and the agendas – the question remains.

Yesterday, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C071320 11/06/2014 SCHMITT FOR MISSOURI William S Thompson Jr 610 Newport Center Dr, Suite 1220 Newport Beach CA 92660 Retired 11/4/2014 $10,000.00

[emphasis added]

It’s the republican way:

C071320: Schmitt For Missouri

Po Box 220722 Committee Type: Candidate

Kirkwood Mo 63122 Party Affiliation: Republican

[….] Established Date: 10/12/2007

  Termination Date:

Information Reported On: 2014 – 8 Day Before General Election-11/4/2014

Beginning Money on Hand $1,587,620.27

Monetary Receipts + $39,175.00

Monetary Expenditures – $218.74

Contributions Made – $13,000.00

Other Disbursements – $0.00

Subtotal     $25,956.26

Ending Money On Hand   $1,613,576.53

Previously:

Campaign Finance: there are friends, and then there are “friends” (July 4, 2014)

Campaign Finance: it’s just not the same when it’s only four or five figures (July 8, 2014)

Campaign Finance: somebody’s favorite (August 12, 2014)

This week Democrats got trounced in Missouri. A bloodbath and we all feel really bad, although, as Duane Graham observes in his blog, The Erstwhile Conservative, “Democrats who live where I live expect our candidates to lose each and every election.” Graham is speaking about Southwest Missouri, but the experience is similar if not quite so dire for the rest of us. Even when Democrats win, there are some cases where it’s no cause for celebration. Democratic turncoat Keith English, for instance, won his race. Another Democrat, Linda Black, left the party, turned Republican, the day after winning her race as a Democrat, because of, you know, the gay. With Democrats like these … well, you know the rest.

On a related note, over at Occasional Planet, a “Guest Writer” notes that a local Democratic Club declined to list Arthur Lieber, the Democratic candidate running against Ann Wagner in the 2nd district in a GOTV email designed to help Democratic candidates. The reason given to the Guest Writer when he/she pursued the matter?:

“We talked about him and decided not to include him, because he’s not a serious candidate. He can’t win, and he probably won’t even get 20 percent of the vote,” he said. “He’s not raising money. He’s in a district completely gerrymandered for the Republican. I don’t know why he’s even running: The only reason to file for office in this district is to draw resources away from your opponent-to make her spend time and money opposing you. He hasn’t accomplished that. Also, we never heard from him: He didn’t contact us to make an appearance at our meetings.”

I’ll say nothing about the specifics* of this response since, the Guest Writer ably punctures the half-baked effort at strategic thinking. Instead, I’ll offer some Missouri election statistics I came across in the same Graham post I referenced above:

Most of Missouri’s eight U.S. House districts produce pretty lopsided election results, six of them going for Republicans and only two for Democrats. That’s the way the Republican-dominated legislature designed these districts. They are heavily partisan with predictable results.

But there is a fact that stuns the soul of every democracy-loving Missourian, or at least it should. Democrats got 41.8% of all votes cast in Missouri’s eight U.S. House races in 2012, when turnout was 65.7%, yet it was only possible for them to end up with 25% of the seats, which were essentially capped at two. Republicans got 54.6% of all votes in House races across the state in 2012 but ended up with 75% of the seats. Some of us don’t think that is very democratic, but that’s the way it is.

This year turnout in Missouri was a paltry 35.2%. Think about that. A little more than half of the registered voters in this state who voted in the presidential election two years ago bothered to vote in this one. That amounts to 608,119 fewer Democrats and 627,051 fewer Republicans who didn’t vote, all things being equal. Those numbers look like they might be an advantage for Democrats, since more Republicans bugged out this year than Democrats. But it is a matter of percentages.

In 2012, as I mentioned, Democrats got 41.8% of House votes and Republicans got 54.6%. But in 2014, with the dropout of voters, Democrats only got 35.9% of House votes and Republicans got 58.8%. The lesson: voter apathy hurts Democrats in states like Missouri much more than it hurts Republicans.

See any possible relationship between these two narrative strains? Do you think worthless Democrats and a weak-kneed Democratic aparatus might have something to do with Democratic apathy?

Democrats are never going to win in this state unless they play it like they mean it. That means forgetting the zero-sum, cost benefit strategies that dedicate resources to a few sure-thing, right-now wins, while neglecting the long-term. That, in turn, means putting up  good candidates, capable of making a strong case for progressive values, and supporting them – if for no other reason than to establish a presence, grow a stronger base and defeat the “learned helplessness” that characterizes our apathetic Democrats, and that, when we do win, produces timid candidates who willingly promulgate Republican narratives (remind you of anybody you know – Claire McCaskill, or, perhaps, Jay Nixon?).

The crucial ingredient, though, is individuals who are willing to put themselves out there, make those very likely hopeless runs for office, pit themselves against the GOP noise machine and the big money boys who are pulling the strings in Missouri. And make no mistake about it, though the odds are long, most of our losing candidates have the hearts of thoroughbreds, they’re running to do more than just place.

In my area, heroes like Susan Cunningham, candidate for state Representative in the 119th district, or Arthur Lieber who stood up against the Daddy Warbucks’ candidate for the 2nd district federal House seat, Ann Wagner – who, incidentally, hid  herself from her constituents during the campaign – did more than just give us a choice when we marked our ballots; they insured that the progressive argument had a voice even though neither won. Out-state, candidates like Jim Evans who ran against Rep. Billy Long – he of the gargantuan restaurant bills – in the 7th district, are among the people who are trying to help us build the foundation we’ll need for 2016 and later. Sadly, in Missouri there are lots more among the fallen. We all congratulate the Democrats who won and we know they have a hard road ahead as a nearly helpless minority in Jefferson City, but the ones who lost, most of whom stood up to what they knew were nearly impossible odds, deserve just as much praise. Nor, if you’ll forgive a dose of grandiosity, did they fall in vain.

As unpleasant as military metaphors may be to some more gentle souls, politics is like war, elections are battles, except that it’s not who lives and who dies that is at issue, but how we’re all going to live our lives. In order to win this war for the good life, progressive Democrats have got to begin to really start thinking strategically, many moves ahead, rather than doing short-term cost-benefit analyses. The people who stood for the Democratic party in the 2014 midterm election were our footsoldiers, the winners and the losers will help crack open the increasingly solid Republican door in Missouri; their example will continue to allow us to widen the opening bit-by-bit if we can only begin to do the right things. Right now the GOP is talking about a “100 year majority” – any resemblance to another group of losers who planned for a 1000 year empire is, I’m sure, purely incidental. But if we’re able to send this group of empire-builders to the same “dust-heap of history” as that earlier, even more unpleasant group, people like our Democratic contenders will be the ones who take us forward.

* I just have to set the record straight on one point, though. Arthur Lieber, who did minimal fundraising, had little media presence (apart from a surprise endorsement from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch), managed to harness about 33% of the vote. Do you wonder what would that percentage have looked like if he’d had full party support?

It looks like I took to Twitter too soon:

Michael Bersin ‏@MBersin

To make the astroturf PAC mailings and TV ads stop. Plus, I want to ground the blimp. #WhyImVoting

5:22 AM – 4 Nov 2014

The first proposed initiative petition for the 2016 election cycle is:

2016-001

Submitted by:

Dan Viets

Show-Me Cannabis Regulation

15 N. 10th Street

Columbia, MO 65201

[….]

Be it resolved by the people of the state of Missouri that the Constitution be amended:

One new section is adopted to be known as Article I, section 36 and to read as follows:

35(a) 1. Citizens over the age of twenty-one years shall have the right to engage in the production, sale, distribution, and consumption of marijuana and the manufacture of goods from hemp….

[….]

The Rex Sinquefield funded PAC Grow Missouri’s moving billboard at

the University of Central Missouri’s Skyhaven Airport near Warrensburg [file photo].

Bring back the blimp!  

Today, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C000960 11/06/2014 MO DEMOCRATIC STATE COMMITTEE Claire McCaskill 1941 Spring House Dr St Louis MO 63122 United States Senate 11/6/2014 $50,000.00

[emphasis added]

Or finishing up the last one.