Liza's of the opinion that we progressive blogger types shouldn't vote for Democrats just because they're Democrats, we should only vote for the good ones. And in an ideal world, she'd be completely correct in that.

But if this was an ideal world, Yoko would have jumped in front. And this is anything *but* an ideal election season. I'm usually of the same opinion that Liza is, but this year things are different.

How? Because the non-Republicans are on the brink of wresting control of the House and even the Senate away from the greedhead Neandercons that have so wrecked and ruined our country during their decades-long reign.

It's going to be a very close margin this time no matter what, thanks to gerrymandering and vote-stealing and all those other deshpickabul things that the Reposeurs are so good at. What the non-Rethugs need to do next week -- and if you're reading this, you probably are one -- is to widen that margin by as much as possible, to claim as many seats by as many votes as they possibly can so as to hold onto their electoral beachheads in every significant race.

Sure, some Demo candidates are morons. Of course they are, they're professional politicians. But the most important thing right now is to knock the Repolitburu apparatchiks out of every possible seat of power, from local dogcatcher on up to the top.

And, unfortunate as some of us may think it to be sometimes, the only non-Rethugs that have a snowball's chance of taking over America in our lifetimes are the Democrats.

There'll be plenty of time to weed out the wiffleballs after the Demos take the field. But for right here, right now, all of us progressives and liberals and independents and anarachists and one-legged lesbian treehuggers of mixed parentage can agree on one goal: we gotta get them Repo skanks out of office right away, period. Paragraph. Page.

And that is why, this year at least, yr hmbl otr crspndnt is going to vote Democratic by default. Unless the Demo candidate in a particular race is so damn stinky that he out sleazeweassels his/er Rethug opponent -- and so far, I have yet to find even one race in which that is the case -- then I'm going to go for the Demo every time.

And so should you. Even if you have to hold your nose to do it.

Why? Because what we're up against here is a socio-cultural phenomenon known as "Broken-Glass Republicans."

Broken-Glass Republicans are the conservative equivalent of Yellow Dog Democrats. The yellow who what? you may be asking -- well, quoting Wikipedia here:

"In the late 19th century and throughout the 20th century, Yellow Dog Democrats were voters in the U.S. Southern states who consistently voted for Democratic candidates -— simply because of lingering resentment against Republicans during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods. The term arose from an apocryphal remark that a Southerner would vote for a yellow dog before he'd vote for a Republican.

"The term gained national prominence during the 1928 presidential campaign when many Southern voters disliked several items on Democratic candidate Al Smith's platform (as well as his Catholicism) but voted for him regardless."

The parallel term Broken-Glass Republicans doesn't seem to have anything like that kind of historical pedigree, though. As far as I could glean from using The Google to do a quick scan of The Internets on the subject, it only became current in the last few election cycles and seems to be used most by hard-core freeperii types (and by a handful of similarly-minded conservative MSM pundits like Kathleen Parker and Peggy Noonan).

In a nutshell, the reason they're called Broken-Glass Republicans is that "they would crawl over broken glass if they had to in order to go out and vote against a Democrat."

And the only way that RoveCo can pull off a last-minute save against the looming Democratic turnaround 8 short days from now -- well, other than blatantly rigging the elections again in 2006, which thanks to the efforts of good Americans everywhere will be less easy to accomplish than they think this time -- is if the reich-wingers can motivate their crucial core of Broken-Glass Republicans to show up at the polls on November 7.

That's what they're counting on. It's worked for them before, and they're pulling out all the stops to make it work for them again. They've got what it takes to make it happen, too -- the money to spend, the manipulation techniques, the well-oiled neokonzertruppe machine in which to roll right over the gigantic cracks in their socio-political facade.

How can Democrats stand up against such a battle-tested blitzkrieg brigade on November 7? What weapons do they have with which to resist such an electoral onslaught this time? What tools do they have to use? What armies have they got on their side?

The answer is as simple as it is powerful:

You.

Yes, you.

You, your hearts, your minds, your mouths, your ears... your fingers on the keys, your boots on the ground... and, most crucially, your hands on the levers in election booths everywhere across America.

Yours, and those of everyone you know and everyone you can reach out to in these final critical days.

Don't let the Broken-Glass Republicans tip the scales on election day this year. Channel your inner Yellow Dog Democrats instead.

Gather up everyone you know, bring them with you to the polls, and make sure they know what's at stake this year. Make sure they understand that a vote for a Republican is a vote against their own futures, and the futures of their children, and of their grandkids yet to come.

Whatever happens between now and then, don’t give up and don’t give in. Do not falter, do not fail. Get out there and vote for Democrats on November 7... even if you have to crawl over broken glass to do it.

Vote smart. Vote true.

Vote Blue.

climbing back down off my soapbox now,
Otter