Super Tuesday

I can't recall ever being less excited to vote in an election. My normal heuristic for primaries -- vote against every incumbent, according to the apocryphal Mark Twain quote that 'politicians like diapers should be changed frequently, and for the same reason' -- has been disabled by a lack of competition in seats with incumbents. Instead, the only competitive races in this year's Democratic Primary in North Carolina are to fill seats that will be empty.

Thus, a new heuristic for this primary election: always vote against the activist. For example: 

On Tuesday, voters will also choose between two Democrats seeking their party’s nomination for a seat on the state Supreme Court. Currently that seat is occupied by Justice Allison Riggs, a voting rights attorney who was appointed to fill a vacancy on the court by Gov. Roy Cooper in 2023. Riggs has said she is not just running her race, but campaigning to build a pipeline so Democrats can win back control of the high court in 2028. Riggs’ campaign received more than $80,000 in individual donations in the first quarter of 2024. She ended that reporting cycle with more than $178,000 in the bank.

Riggs’ opponent in the primary is Lora Cubbage, a former prosecutor who also worked in the Attorney General’s Office handling workers’ compensation claims before becoming a Superior Court judge. Cubbage received about $50,000 in individual donations. Among them: a $250 donation from Brent Barringer, husband of state Supreme Court Associate Justice Tamara Barringer, a Republican. She also received $250 from Robert Broadie, a Superior Court judge in Davidson and Davie counties. Cubbage had about $90,000 left in the bank as of mid-February.

The activists come in two varieties, both of them bad. The first variety is a party loyalist who is lying about having activist principles -- Republican voters will be very familiar with this type -- but merely wants to court large campaign donations from organizations outside the state. These people, in other words, are corrupt. America has a surplus of corrupt politicians already; no more are wanted.

The second variety is a true believer in the activism that has washed over the Democratic Party. These people are not corrupt, and indeed are well-meaning according to their lights. The problem is that the activist ideas are often barking mad; even when they are not, they are destructive to the foundations of our society. 

Too, North Carolina is politically quite divided. No activist politics is going to lead to sustainable progress on any issue. Even now the governor vetoes almost every bill the legislature passes, while the state Supreme Court reverses its predecessor and finds 'unconstitutional' things constitutional, while rethinking their predecessors' decisions on the constitutional to find those things unconstitutional. It is chaos and madness. The only effective politics the Democratic Party could engage in here is one focused on non-activist, traditional Democratic ideas about improving life for workers and supporting labor. What they want to do is chase Google Gemini's vision -- because, it should be said, Google and similar tech firms are now major donors to the Democratic Party.

Indeed the two parties support the same basic interest, which is the megacorporation(s?*) that own(s?*) everything. The Republican Party supports the Chamber of Commerce interest in lowering American wages and increasing competition by increasing immigration, which by coincidence also creates a labor base that has no legal status -- and thus no legal recourse when abused. The Democratic Party supports, well, the same thing. They used to be on the side of labor, which would hotly oppose being driven out of work and having their wages effectively lowered by being put into competition with illegal aliens; now they promise welfare leading to a 'universal basic income' for former workers, who will be replaced by the class of people lacking legal standing to seek redress for their grievances.

I don't know how much good can still be accomplished with elections. However, I shall do my duty as a citizen, and vote strategically as best as I can.

UPDATE: I voted "No Preference" for President, which is not strictly speaking true but was the only option given.

* The question intended by the "(s?)" has to do with whether or not there is an important separation between the megacorporations given that their stock is chiefly owned by each other. As a result they all share the same basic interests politically, and thus rather than being in competition often end up looking like the different branches of a monopoly. Legally they are different "persons," but actually they look a lot like a monolith. Can't vote your way out of that one, either.