Today: Election Day: Please Vote

By dianeravitch

November 8, 2016 //

It’s over. Thank goodness.

Just one thing more is needed.

Go to the polls and vote. Knock on your neighbors’ doors and encourage them to vote. Offer them a ride.

Vote.

That is your duty as a citizen.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

Please vote.

Categories Accountability, Clinton, Democracy, Trump

18 Comments Post your own or leave a trackback: Trackback URL

Joe says:

November 8, 2016 at 9:32 am

I will most certainly be voting for Hillary. This is such a desperate situation that it has me praying to whatever great spirit (God, G-d, gods, goddesses, godlets) that Trump does not win.

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- Michael Paul Goldenberg says:
  
  November 8, 2016 at 9:49 am
  
  Honestly, Joe: I’ve never seen so many people who should know better so thoroughly convinced that it’s HRC v. the Anti-Christ (except for those who have it as Donald Trump vs. the Scarlet Woman of Babylon). No matter how I analyze it, I come out thinking that both sides are half-right. 🙂
  
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  - dianeravitch says:
    
    November 8, 2016 at 10:06 am
    
    MPG,
    
    Give it a rest. We will go back to education, thank God, and the election will be behind us.
  - Joe says:
    
    November 8, 2016 at 10:11 am
    
    Maybe all the sides are partially right, half right, including your side. I don’t think Trump is the devil or anti–Christ. Neither is Hillary. I listened to the man’s speeches and that clinched it for me, plus he is backed by a radical far right wing party with a very right wing VP. Bernie, Reich, Belafonte and Chomsky are not exactly chopped liver; I think they know better.
Michael Paul Goldenberg says:

November 8, 2016 at 9:37 am

Vote early and often (oh, wait a minute. . . )

I have an orthopedics appointment now, so I’m going to vote afterwards. For what it’s worth, my polling place (in the manufactured home community of 900 houses in which my house is situated), which I’ve never seen busy was packed at 8:30 this morning.

I had a vote-swapping offer from my best friend in upstate NY. One of my closest friends locally, no fan of HRC, pleaded with me to reconsider not voting for Hillary. Life was easier in 1960 when I knew that JFK was anointed and RMN was evil (my parents told me so). My dad passed in 2011. I have missed our usual arguments over politics. He wasn’t a strong believer in Obama, but voted for him in ’08. I’d have given a lot to have him to discuss this election with. That would have been fun.

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- Joel Herman says:
  
  November 8, 2016 at 10:04 am
  
  Michael Paul Goldenberg
  
  Not the anti Christ . And Donald is way more than half right on a number of issues . It is his solutions to those issues that should caution everyone that he has to be treated as the anti Christ.
  
  As Joe pointed out the other day . I eat my Wendy’s usually in my eight year old car. Not my private 757 jet. This no Roosevelt (either) coming to the rescue of the working class. This is a complete fraud who will do irreparable harm to working class Americans as Reagan did before him.
  
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- NYC public school parent says:
  
  November 9, 2016 at 1:23 am
  
  Michael Paul Goldenberg,
  
  As I see the results of the election, I realize that all that is needed for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing.
  
  I believed that Hillary had the potential to move this country to the left. Not as far as you might have liked, but in the right direction. Or perhaps she would have just kept the status quo, but I could live with that and fight for a better candidate next time.
  
  “No matter how I analyze it, I come out thinking that both sides are half-right.🙂”
  
  I surely hope your view of Trump prevails because you bought him. You own him.
  
  I hope you are principled enough not to whine “it wasn’t my fault I told you Hillary was a bad candidate”. You only have a right to say that if you voted for her anyway instead of doing you darn best to tell everyone how bad of a candidate she was so they could feel the same disgust about voting for her that you did. No doubt you changed a few minds and got some people to refrain from supporting her. You certainly did your best to convince readers here.
  
  Every election has imperfect candidates. As citizens we are obligated to make a choice. Not sit it out. Or sit it out if we choose, but that is ALSO a choice. A choice of saying “I don’t care enough whether one candidates wins or loses.”
  
  You worked hard to tell us it wasn’t a big deal if Trump won — the students you teach will be no worse off than if Clinton did. Especially the students who are Muslim or African-American or Latino. No doubt tomorrow you can console them by explaining that it would have been just as terrible if Clinton won.
  
  You told us that whether Trump won or Clinton won didn’t really matter. I guess we will all see if you are right. No doubt you are shrugging off this election as no big deal — next time Democrats will elect a “better candidate” that you can support. And as much as I have disagreed with almost everything you have been writing recently, in this case, I genuinely pray that you are right. I just wished I believed it. But I’m glad you do. After all, you’ve been telling us for weeks this is no big deal.
  
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  - dianeravitch says:
    
    November 9, 2016 at 1:33 am
    
    NYC PSP,
    
    I did my best to persuade the Bernie or bust readers that Trump was a clear and present danger.
    But this was bigger than them. They didn’t elect Trump.
    She stood up bravely to 25 years of bullying.
    I admire her.
    All the mud slinging.
    She never crumbled.
    God help us all.
  - NYC public school parent says:
    
    November 9, 2016 at 7:38 am
    
    Everyone that chose not to vote for Hillary voted for Trump. Their vote said “there was no difference”. They knew exactly what they were voting for.
    
    Furthermore, in an election this close, the constant meme of evil Hillary filtered down. It needed to be reinforced by the Hillary haters on the left to really take hold. After all, the deplorables have been saying evil Obama for 8 years and his approval ratings are over 50%. But Hillary haters on the left got entirely played by the right. When undecideds keep hearing “there is no difference”, they start to believe it.
    
    If you didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton, you own the result. You told us that she was so terrible that it didn’t really matter if she lost. You couldn’t find a single reason to vote for her, and you told us that over and over again. You own this. Let’s see if you are right.
artseagal says:

November 8, 2016 at 9:48 am

And as I vote, I have hope that Bernie Sanders and an increasing number of Sanders followers will be an ever – CONSTANT buzz in Clinton’s ear because democracy has been so harmed in these past few decades by politicians allowing corporate take overs and losing sight of “We the People” as they (with self interest) gain powerful influence and loads of money. Sanders for me was the “real deal” and thankfully he has no plans of giving up his fight. Robert Reich has written an excellent on point piece

http://robertreich.org/post/152833813580

So today I vote with hope…

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- Joel Herman says:
  
  November 8, 2016 at 10:38 am
  
  artseagal
  
  The bruising battle that Clinton has gone through from the primaries on , may have set off alarm bells . Unfortunately as much as we are all tired of this election. The country is not too partisan it is not partisan enough. A bold vision has to be laid out by those Democrats that Reich is talking about. It has to be pushed to form the coalition that should exist .
  
  The “White, Black and Hispanic working class ” So who is that working class . It is far more expansive than blue collar non college educated workers . It includes : a 50 year old lawyer I know, currently working as a defense lawyer on the appellate level seeking a job with the Prosecutor for the pension. Teachers most University professors (adjuncts) all of those miss classified contract workers who think they are professionals who have nowhere near the security or salary of a common laborer a few years back..
  
  If that bold vision is not endlessly pushed we will revisit Trumpism
  
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  - artseagal says:
    
    November 8, 2016 at 4:45 pm
    
    I SO SO hope Joel H that Bernie’s vision prevails and that things start to change so that those disgruntled Trump-o-philes start to have more of a positive outlook in the world and stop all the hate-mongering. Sadly, what should be sounds utopian nowadays.
Joe says:

November 8, 2016 at 2:36 pm

Done, accomplished. Voted for Hillary. It was just about an 8 minute wait, just 3 people ahead of me. There was only one voting machine, the other one broke down. I was told that there were more people earlier, around 10:00 AM, I voted around 1:30 PM. There were 3 different socialist parties on the ballot: Socialist Workers Party, Workers World Party and Socialism and Liberation Party. It was a temptation to vote for one of those parties but I felt that this was not the time to play around. Not to mention that I didn’t know that much about these 3 parties.

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John Ogozalek says:

November 8, 2016 at 5:20 pm

Voted for Hillary. Got my sticker, “I voted”.

It just happened that my government class lesson for today was about the topic of who have been our great presidents….who have been the worst? (We discuss the verdicts of historians, political scientists….) It was a total coincidence that the lesson landed on Election Day when I did the planning weeks ago…..

Do we have great presidents only when our country faces tremendous challenges?

If so, we sure have some mighty big problems to resolve right now. Can either of the major party candidates rise to the occasion? And, will the current political conditions in our society allow any one person to meet those challenges? (See Diane’s post on the brave new world of “fake news” above, for example.)

I will say voting today was wonderful. I love the people who work at the polls. Always have. They are one of the many things that make this country great, as I see it. Their seriousness of purpose and goodwill ennoble us all. What a stark contrast to the campaign mud bath we’ve had to endure for the past 10 months.

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Ms. Cartwheel ... Librarian says:

November 8, 2016 at 6:31 pm

It is my fervent hope that all of the painful work that has gone into this election comes to a peaceful and historic resolution: Hillary Clinton is elected president and Donald Trump quietly concedes and rides off into the sunset.

Well, I can hope…

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- Duane Swacker says:
  
  November 8, 2016 at 6:39 pm
  
  In the spirit of reconciliation if/when Clinton wins she should offer the Trump a cabinet position.
  
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  - Ms. Cartwheel ... Librarian says:
    
    November 8, 2016 at 8:17 pm
    
    Hahahahahahahahaha
    
    Secretary of Anger Management?
Secondary_Math_Teacher says:

November 9, 2016 at 12:09 am

The term “failed state” is being thrown around. This is wholly appropriate.

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