https://bsky.app/profile/erininthemorning.com/post/3mynwzsux7k2u
Josh Turek of Iowa, Democrat, comes out with one of the worst anti-trans ads yet.
Not only is it an anti-sports ad, it proposes a ban on federal funding for gender affirming care. That would hit all medicaid and medicare patients, and any ACA federally-subsidized plans as well.
Horrific.
They’ll still expect your votes, though.
One of their campaign ads is look how much I vote with Republicans
https://turek4iowa.com/news/new-josh-turek-for-iowa-releases-new-ad-prove-it/
“In the Senate, Josh will work with anyone to clean up corruption and secure the border, including President Trump,” the narrator says in the ad. “And he’s got 700 votes to prove it.”
We have to vote for them or it’s going to be so much worse
No. It’ll get much worse if you do vote for genocidal fucks like this, because they’ll make the rest of the Democrats more like them.
It’s two fold. When you elect a Democrat, you aren’t just sending a representative to the Legislature. You’re sending a party representative to the DNC, who will do their best to lobby the party itself to support what they were elected to do.
Then Democrats in other states look at candidates like this winning and think “I gotta adopt some of their policy ideas to appeal to right-leaning voters.” This, in turn, shifts the whole party structure to the right.
I’m in Iowa and I won’t vote for my own genocide.
The only thing more dangerous than an enemy is a traitor.
A transphobic republican will do what they can when their party is in power. A transphobic democrat will undermine the opposition to transphobia, and will make hurting trans people a bipartisan policy. That is much much worse.
I hate I have to say this, but iff you’re reading this, and there’s a race on your ballot where you have no choice but to vote for a transphobe, pick the republican. We need to keep these traitors out of office.
I hate I have to say this, but iff you’re reading this, and there’s a race on your ballot where you have no choice but to vote for a transphobe, pick the republican
I would suggest leaving it blank or writing someone in, to avoid sending a mixed signal (“people liked the Republican’s platform, so maybe we just need to move farther right”), however, I will admit that I’ll be cheering if Turek eats shit so I do understand where you’re coming from.
No you just don’t vote for that race. You don’t vote for the Republican cuz that just tells the Democrats that you support the Republican cause. That would make them chase Republican ideals even more.
If you find a Democratic candidate so completely abhorrent and you cannot vote for them, then vote for neither. Or vote third party if one of them exists on the ballot and it lines with your values cuz that’ll be much more helpful than anything else.
Now normally I wouldn’t council any of that mind you, but this does seem like it’s pretty dire in this case.
If you vote for the Republican they’ll just assume that Josh Turek didn’t go far enough to the right.
It’s better to write in the Dem runner up from the primary, which is what I’m doing.
Thats also a good option assuming you can do write ins there.
Iowa allows them, yeah. I think only three states restrict them.
Please get outta blahaj zone with ts 😭
Do not vote R under ANY circumstance I don’t care. Go vote third party at least, better a “thrown away” vote than one that helps republicans
There’s a reason I am only saying this in this very specific circumstance. Iff, with two fs is shorthand for if and only if. Obviously under no other circumstances should anyone vote republican.
First past the post is a terrible voting system where unfortunately the optimal choice is often voting against what you want to avoid, and this is one of those cases. A candidate who will make the opposition party turn against us is far more of a threat than a giving a single seat to the party that is already against us. A vote against him is the most effective way to keep him out of office.
I genuinely believe its safest for us in the very specific races where the only viable candidates are transphobes. A transphobic democrat is far more dangerous than a transophobic republican.
I’m not reading all that, sorry. I really don’t have the same level of care about this 😭
I already voted anyway lmao
You can’t manage three short paragraphs? Your attention span is that completely shot? If Tick Tock has warped your brain to that level perhaps you shouldn’t be giving voting advice to anybody.
Fuck off with that nonsense. There is absolutely no scenario where voting for a Republican is a better choice, unless you are an accelerationist or MAGA.
I am trans. This effects me. I care about my trans siblings and their safety. A vote for a republican in this specific race is the least harmful choice for my community.
Clean up your own party before insulting others.
Sure, because a Republican would be more-trans friendly. What fantasy world is this? A Republican candidate will be objectively worse for any category you can measure.
Have you seen the UK recently? Labor is doing more harm to trans people than their conservatives, because labor is the current government. That is what will happen if democrats become transphobic. Transphobia in the democrats needs to be stopped even at the cost of seats.
Things rarely get done in the federal government unless they are bipartisan. Making transphobia bipartisan is the worst possible outcome.
What’s the difference between Hispanics voting for Trump and trans people voting for this guy? Aren’t they both doing the same thing? I mean this guy wants to exterminate trans people. Is a really fair to ask any trans person to vote for them? Don’t you feel that’s unreasonable? No matter what your other politics are you can’t expect people to respond to that argument.
Really who are you voting for and who do you think will win?
Do you think your life and those in Iowa, the US and around the world will be better or worse overall if he wins or his republican opponent does?
Do you honestly think the republican winning is better?
You can honestly say more lives will be ruined by him than his opponent?
The time to vote for a better dem was the primaries
Now you are stuck with bad and horrible options
I know my life will be worse if Josh Turek succeeds in pushing the rest of the Democrats to the right on trans rights; a vote for Josh Turek is a vote for Democrats to adopt anti-trans rhetoric and policies. The Party will be changed by his victory, but if he loses they’ll think twice about nominating someone like him and that has an effect in 2028. Better to lose one seat than to potentially elect even more anti-trans Democrats in the future by giving them more of a foothold in the party.
The Democrats you vote for are the Democratic Party you are voting for, and when you elect bad Democrats you get a bad party.
Oh, forgot to say who I’m voting for: I’m writing in Zach Wahls, the pro-trans runner up in this primary. That gets recorded by the Party, just like wins and losses do, and they take it into account for future campaigns when they try to figure out what went wrong.
You don’t think him losing to someone even further right won’t push the party more right chasing those voters? That’s how is played out for decades
You are okay with him losing? You didn’t answer my other questions
I see a whole bunch of DSA and DSA-adjacent candidates winning recently because of right-wing victories.
You honestly think having the republican win will be better for you?
Honestly now?
I get that they are a shit person to have to vote for, but the other option is even worse, and guess what, wants to hurt even more people.
Sadly your choices are terrible and instead of progress vs hatred you have hate and evil to vote for as your options.
But don’t let evil win. That’s 4 years of even worse treatment. Spend those 4 changing his mind about Trans rights instead of letting someone win who cares even less about your life or others.
Delusional ml user, who probably doesn’t even live in the US trying to convince people not to vote D (and even worse, says to vote R in Iowa). What complete nonsense.
Guess what? With more Democrats in the House and Senate, the majority leadership switches, and the more comfortable the lead, the more the DSA folks in Congress can push.
With more transphobic Democrats in the House and Senate they won’t work with the DSA to do fucking anything, they’ll reach across the isle to work with Republicans to kill me.
You think this guy is DSA?
deleted by creator
Where did I say that? He’s absolutely not DSA and his anti-trans rhetoric is terrible.
So you wish for another John Fetterman.
No, I wish we could just snap our fingers and do everything at once, it’s not how the world works though. You win battles, you lose them, but the war continues.
Votes with Democrats over 80% of the time. Yes, this is still better than a Republican.
Worse than what? Protesters being executed in the streets? People with melanin dying in filthy concentration camps? A kleptocracy robbing the public blind? An unelected technocracy surveiling and censoring literally everything and everyone?
A fucking MEASELS epidemic?
DNC be like: he’s someone who can reach across the aisle to get things done.
Just don’t ask what those things are.
That’s literally an ad he has on his site 🤮😭
Burn the DNC down, it needs to go
Still waiting for the dem supporters to realize that
does he also wish to ban testosterone for soldiers
No, and I’m sure it’s also a no for hair treatments or viagra (ie some of the most common treatments men get that are covered by insurance)
at this point all the democrats have to do is shut the fuck up and play the crazy ass bullshit Republicans are saying behind closed doors.
that’s it.
what the actual fuck…
As is tradition; Iowa, a shithole and a backwater.
They should just have to sit out a few election cycles.
BUT MY MODERATES
Won’t somebody think of the moderates!?
Love that this has been removed twice by the fediverses favorite mod in lw politics.
Can’t let people see what dems are doing in free think land
Lol has it!? That’s very amusing. 🙊🙉🙈
Both attempts removed by that wonderful mod.
And someone has it up on power tripping bastards 😂
Mmmm lemmy world is a blocked instance for me. Better instances than temu reddit.
The lemmy world politics mods and general staff who let those mods run rampant in their biased behavior are extraordinarily problematic and it is awful for the fediverse that they have such a manipulative control over it.
Yet defenders say it’s just overreacting/a conspiracy after what 4 rounds of admin cover for them?
Why do Democrats refuse to learn how elections are won? That getting out your base is the best way to win an election? That suppressing your base in an effort to steal their base is a stupid strategy? Cuz you’re not going to get them and you’re going to get yours to stay home. It’s just simply moronic.
They don’t want to win if it moves the country leftwards
God fucking damnit. looks like I’m leaving an empty spot on my ballot.
Don’t do that. The Republicans are worse. You are not getting a better result from withholding your vote, therefore it is a bad choice to withhold your vote. Get over the idea that your vote is an endorsement of every idea a politician has. Unless you have gone balls to the wall on election reform for the past few years all I’m hearing is “I’m a lazy and will continue to do nothing to stop my country from falling apart despite my self important bitching online”.
There is no worse than this for transgender people. If the Democrat is promising to do exactly what their Republican opponent wants to do, seriously reconsider your insane position of “vote blue no matter who,” because you’re asking people to vote for someone promising to strip their rights and remove their access to healthcare. That’s insane. It’s the level of self-own that Republicans regularly do.
Ok… So let’s play this out. What do you suppose happens if the Republicans get in and prevent a dem majority? You’re just going to pretend that is an ok situation and not demonstrably worse? Also, just want to add that your assertion that there is no worse than this is either deliberately exaggerated or unfortunately niave.
Ok… So let’s play this out
And what do you suppose happens when the Democrats see that when they adopt transphobic positions, people who support trans rights will still vote for them, and maybe they pick up a handful of transphobes? In that case, there is literally no downside in that situation (strategically speaking) to adopting transphobic positions all across the country. If on the other hand, people draw a red line on trans rights and stand by it, if every transphobic Dem eats shit, then there’s a clear strategic benefit to respecting that red line.
You are only considering the immediate effects, but the precedents that we set are far more important. If not getting a majority this time is the cost of stopping the party from shifting right on this, then the benefits outweigh the costs.
You are only considering the immediate effects
“Some of you may die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make”
Lol, imagine saying that about me while defending the guy who wants to strip healthcare from trans people. Pot, meet kettle.
The Democrats are the ones sacrificing people, and they have the power not to, but they think they can advance their careers and make a little bit more profit by sacrificing us. By contrast, I’m standing by everyone and demanding that no one be sacrificed and left behind, and using what little voice or influence I have to that end.
You seem to have everything completely backwards. You need to be convincing me that I need to be more willing to sacrifice people, specifically, trans people, if you want me to support someone like Turek. Good luck with that one!
Or perhaps I misunderstood your comment? Were you using quote marks for emphasis, perhaps, while voicing your own position?
We must hang together, or we will each hang separately. An offense against one is an offense against all. Solidarity must not be broken, “For what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one? But the union makes us strong!”
I’ll be honest, I don’t know who you are or anything about you besides your username. So not sure what that was about.
Two more years of a Republican-controlled Congress doesn’t sound like “setting precedent” to me though, it sounds like sacrificing vulnerable groups in the hope that this’ll finally be the one to jump start your idea of a leftist revolution.
A freshman Senator with virtually no political capital isn’t going to determine party policy for the Democrats, but Project 2025 has made it abundantly clear what the Republican party policy is. They explicitly do want us to hang together.
There is no worse than this for trans individuals. If you start restricting access to care, people are going to die. It doesn’t matter if a Republican or a Democrat does it, if trans people are going to directly die as a result of policy why the fuck would they vote for that person? Fix your own shitty party that is willing to kill trans people for votes before demanding people vote for someone willing to kill them.
Vote blue no matter who! At least the Dems are pro-trans! Wait…
sounds like a wishy washy person like platner was.
Do you expect people to vote Republican? The libertarian has zero chance of winning and if you vote for them 100% chance of helping the Republican
Edit: as you can see by the responses below, op is fighting hard against a simple truth: independents do not win elections, they help Republicans.
Why do you expect so little from your Democratic candidates? Ohio and Iowa are unsafe for trans people under either party now.
In Iowa, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand, Senate candidate Josh Turek and congressional candidates Lindsay James and Sarah Trone Garriott have all distanced themselves from progressive positions on transgender issues.
“I oppose letting men in women’s locker rooms and voted to let parents, not politicians, make decisions for their kids,” Trone Garriott said in a recent ad.
…
Gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand told Politico last month that “girls’ sports are for girls.” And his approach may be working, with polls, opens new tab showing him favored to become the first Democrat to win the governor’s race since 2006.
At a recent town hall he said “I tend to agree” with Republicans that transgender women and girls should be barred from female sports teams.
“Coward!” a man in the room shouted in protest.
…
Republican Derek Merrin, running to represent the 9th congressional district, released a September 10 ad saying that Democratic incumbent Marcy Kaptur had “voted to let biological men compete against girls in their sports.”
Kaptur, who faces an uphill race in her recently redrawn district, countered a week later with an ad saying she had “voted with Republicans to keep transgender ideology out of our schools because parents know what’s best for their kids … and boys should not play in girls’ sports.”
If this is what bipartisan democratic outcomes look like, if this is what you uphold as democracy, then I guess you can count me out. There is zero reason to take up the Republican position on this issue unless you are doing it for the love of the game.
The United States is also a one-party state, but with typical American extravagance, they have two of them. ~Julius Nyerere
What you are doing is distracting from my point. It’s not an unfair expectation to expect people to be realistic and pragmatic. That’s just called being remotely reasonable
Sorry, is highlighting the Democrats transphobia disttracting? Oh right, the Democrats can never fail the voters, but the voters always fail the Democrats. The reason Democrats are running transphobes is because of this notion of “pragmatism”. This pragmatism is what allows for Republicans to run as Democrats. Liberals are so worried about the DSA taking root in the party that they won’t even bother seeing the fox slip into the hen house.
You’re pretending not to get it. I’m out.
You want people to vote for the “lesser evil” instead of the transphobes at Republican Inc. And that lesser evil is… checks notes The transphobes at Democrats Inc. Seems like a false choice to me. Especially when the person were talking about is in support of a ban on federal funding for gender affirming care.
You want them to vote for the same “Democrat” who is a former registered Republican and voted for George W. Bush. Who explicitly campaigns on his willingness to work with Republicans and even with President Trump. Who calls himself a “common-sense moderate” and “common-sense prairie populist”. · The same “Democrat” that has represented a Republican-leaning district in Iowa since 2022. Who is described as “one of Iowa’s most bipartisan” legislators. And in one of his campaign ads reportedly highlights that he has “700 votes” working with Republicans.
Yeah, I guess I don’t fucking get it.
Just so you know, I’m not engaging with the pretense that we can protest vote our way anywhere. That’s clearly never worked before and there’s no indication it ever would.
And what you are advocating for has lead us to this exact slate of candidates. You assume I’m suggesting a protest vote. I’m simply pointing out a contradiction that you seem to not recognize.
This is the problem - I’d bet donuts to dollars that his opponent thinks all trans folk are pedos that should be locked up, or worse. Why are our choices always between “willing to throw the most vulnerable people under the bus to get elected” and “evil clown whose terrible god says whole groups should be slaughtered or enslaved”. Why can’t the former be the worst alternative, and the other a decent human being?
We can have those choices, but we have to fight for them
Agreed
Agreed.
So you wish for another John Fetterman in the government. A blue MAGA.
What is John’s voting record? Oh ya 90-96% in party line with Dems, only recently dropping to 81-88%. Yes he’s shitty, but still 90% better than a republican. People need to stop parroting every shitty opinion they read online.
Yes just whatever lies you want to make up. Because anyone who doesn’t believe in the absurd practice of protest votes is guilty of literally any lie you want to spout.
Wait so democrats want taxpayers to pay for elective cosmetic surgeries?
I am against plastic surgery, other than repairing from accident or something.
People are too superficial today and it’s just gotten worse with social media.
So if a cis woman “needed” to have larger breasts to feel more like a “real” woman, then tax money should go to give it to her? No? But if she was a cis man then it’s different?
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The science is clear that gender dysphoria is a real thing which has devastating mental health consequences if not treated.
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The government is only paying for treatment for people who get healthcare through the government, like veterans and government employees.
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The amount of money being spent on this is trivially small and you should be far more concerned about the trillion dollars spent every year (more than the next nine countries combined) on bombs to kill random Middle Easterner schoolchildren for no reason, which Trump and the Republicans want to increase to the even more insane $1,500,000,000,000, every single year. If you have a bigger problem with a tiny amount of money being used to help people than you do with a literally inconceivable amount of money being used to hurt people, I don’t know what to tell you.
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Are you against trans people getting top surgery?
I don’t have anything against someone wanting to buy themselves something
Do you think hair restoration, viagra or any other hormonal treatments should be covered?
Those are all examples of gender affirming care.
Are they needed?
Hair is not needed
I wouldn’t expect anyone to buy me viagra
If the person had low hormones and needed it
Yet all covered while they rip care away from those transitioning
That’s what you call a red herring
Nope
So if a cis woman “needed” to have larger breasts to feel more like a “real” woman, then tax money should go to give it to her?
Sure why the hell not
