enbyhulk:

enbyhulk:

so like.

i’m jazzed as hell about some of the diverse democratic candidates that got elected on tuesday, of course.

but i’m mostly sad about christine hallquist, first openly transgender candidate from a major party for governor in my beloved home state of vermont, whose campaign received so many death threats that she had to decide not to publicize any of her appearances, essentially meaning that she couldn’t campaign effectively since she had to base her campaign strategy around not being murdered, which is being cited as one reason she lost the election to phil “but do we really need to fund education?” scott.

and this wasn’t publicized. to the degree that i, a human who tries to stay abreast of at least local news, knew nothing about it until my father mentioned it over dinner today.

so like. it would be cool if we spread that information around too maybe.

#so we really need to ask ourselves what is happening in Vermont that they gladly elect Bernie#but are violently hostile to this woman?#this honestly needs to be investigated

oh, I can absolutely answer that for you. this isn’t a secret, it’s just not something that tends to draw much attention, because we’re a tiny state that isn’t overly important very often, politically speaking. here’s the breakdown:

1) so like, plain old every day transmisogyny is no doubt a big part of it, to the tune of “did you also know that christine could barely raise enough money to run a tv ad?” so that’s for sure an aspect here. BUT…

2) vermont really likes electing republican governors. like, historically, in gubernatorial elections, we were a solidly red state for a long time, and now it pretty much flip-flops, BECAUSE…

3) vermont tends to be very…personal? i guess? about politics? so if, say, democratic governor peter shumlin, circa 2016, has been left holding the bag on a broken healthcare marketplace that iirc wasn’t done right by the contractors the state hired?? to the tune of like several hundred million dollars of fixing required? people are going to 100% be feeling like the entire party is responsible for all the evil in the world because there are only a little more than half a million people in this tiny, tiny state and we’re all petty assholes. even those of us who vote reliably democrat. so the state as a whole was pretty primed to vote republican. and ALSO…

4) this republican in general is a cunning man. he’s distanced himself from the tangerine menace. he focuses on local issues. he’s left-leaning on things like gun control and LGBTQ+ rights. many of these things appeal to a broad swathe of vermonters, even the otherwise liberal ones. but he’s also your classic fiscal conservative, and taxes here are real damn high. so basically his policies are broadly appealing on paper, even though he’s actively the worst. so that’s how we ended up with phil motherfucking scott in the first place, and THEN…

5) vermont almost never votes out an incumbent governor. for a value of “almost never” that is equivalent to “the last time we voted out an incumbent was in the 1960s.” so now that we’ve gotten ourselves stuck in this mess, we’re pretty well stuck.