Y’all, I wish McGrath wasn’t such a nightmare candidate, I’d join in.

It’s not just that this Kavanaugh thing might drive a Democratic victory in midterms, it’s much worse than that. If this doesn’t drive a Democratic victory in the midterms, that’s it for the Democratic Party. It’s not a even two-party system at that point. It’s a system with one party and a whole bunch of independents.

(and I’ll remind you one Democrat voted for Kavanaugh and all the Independents voted against him).

I can’t support McGrath and I can’t ask you to either. I’ve met and interacted closely with every single candidate in the 2018 House of Reps race, including all six Democrats, both Republicans, the Libertarian, and the Independent. McGrath is the only one who is morally….repulsive. She’s done things that aren’t just bad practice or bad politics but complete ethical failures, terrible things that no human being should do, flagrantly anti-democratic as well. Killing people and using their deaths as a campaign ad is just wrong, y’all.

It’s sick.

You want to talk about sending the wrong message to Washington, you got the living incarnation of the wrong message right there. She’s actively hostile to democracy, and that’s not even slightly an exaggeration. She’s having protesters physically dragged away from her speeches and she’s not even elected yet.

If you’re voting straight ticket Democrat around here you’re voting for a war criminal and as an added bonus you’re voting for different, awful candidate, a literal convicted pedophile, and that’s a fact. I can’t ask you to do that. I understand as well as anyone the urgent need to replace the Democratic Party, and I like to think I’m working harder than most on this impossible task. The complete intellectual and ethical bankruptcy of the Democratic Party at every level has placed us all in this situation. They can’t be trusted, they can’t be depended upon, they can’t be fixed and they can’t be saved.

But I wanted their cover for a little bit longer, because we just plain aren’t ready. We’ve had two years to build new systems on the left, and we need more time.

I really, really want a good number of Democratic candidates to win in November. I want more independents to win, I want more libertarians to win, I want anybody who will slow the Republicans down to win, and that (usually) includes Democrats. I want the Republicans to pay at the ballot box for what they just did. Not just because it’s right, not just because it’ll feel good. But because if they don’t, the Democrats are nothing. It’s game over for their party.

As an independent supporting independent candidates, sure, that’s great for me in 2020. That’s great for America. But I’m scared.

The Republican Party will inevitably swell to enormous size, then fragment into warring factions. That’s great for independents, that’s great for America too.

It’s just scary.

if you vote for independents, you’re doing more. You’re helping to build the new structure that we desperately need. Every vote for an independent in 2018 means that politicians scrambling to build new coalitions in 2019 will look at us. We become worth bribing. We become worth pandering to. We gain a voice.

But I got to admit it’s scary right now.

I’m going to vote for a fair number of Democrats in November. Besides Trey Alexander’s write-in campaign, I’m not aware of many decent independents running for Kentucky State Legislature. People like Denise Gray and Pat Banks are 100% a-okay candidates and I’ll vote for them all day long, people like Josh Hicks are awful and I’ll call it out even though he’s a Democrat. I’d rather vote for Greens, Independents, Democratic Socialists and Libertarians, but they didn’t put up any candidates so I can’t. So I’m enthusiastically voting for Adrian Wallace for City Council at Large, even though I have it on reliable authority he’s a Democrat.

McGrath….I just can’t do it. It’s wrong. It’s wrong on every level. Andy Barr’s done a lot of things, and his party’s done a lot more, but he never personally killed people and used their deaths as campaign ads. He may be supported by rich jerks, but they’re the rich jerks from around here, and McGrath is openly trying to buy our Representative seat so the military can have it. Barr is corrupt and his party is deeply disrespectful. McGrath is the face of naked war. I’ve been to protests where some of my friends shouted the direst shit you ever heard at Barr and anybody standing near him. Nothing happened; we all got bored and went home. These exact same friends are silent now that McGrath is literally having protesters literally thrown out of her events — and she isn’t even elected yet.

(and I’ll point out that I haven’t misused “literally” once this entire post. If I say “literal,” I mean, “it happened and there’s a public record of it and you can go look at it.”)

As to policy, we already know there are Democrats who are Republicans and she’s gonna be one of those, kids. There won’t be a defense appropriation she won’t sign, one war she won’t support, one piece of environmental legislation she’ll support or criminalization of protest that she won’t. Look me in the eye and tell me Amy McGrath would vote against the F-35. Anyway, I digress.

I would love it if the Republicans paid at the ballot box for what they did. If the Democrats are not capable of making that happen, that’s it for them. I wish more independents had run, I’d be supporting them right now. I wish people had paid more attention in the primary, we’d have better candidates right now. I’m voting mostly Democrat, but I’m not voting for the war criminal and I’m not voting for the convicted pedophile and I hope you don’t either. I hope you never vote straight party ticket ever again. I hope you vote for Rikka Wallin or, failing that, Frank Harris for Representative. I know that probably neither of them will win, but if you vote for them now, we’re all in a better position in 2020.

I want to get mad, I want to get even, I want to send a message. But McGrath is a horrific message, and I can’t do it, and I can’t ask anybody else to either. This is the Democratic Party’s fault for giving us a shitty candidate, and it’s too late to change that. Much, much too late.

The only thing to do is the same thing we’ve had to do every day since they stole the primary from us in 2016. Take the hit and keep on working. There’s no short cut out of this. We just have to keep going. If we’re going through hell, keep going.