Went to town
A-riding on a pony
He stuck a feather in his hat
And called it macaroni
Yankee Doodle, keep it up
Yankee Doodle dandy
Mind the music
and the step
and with the girls
be handy!
Well, not sure about being handy with the girls (especially in these times) but let's be "handy" with the Republicans, shall we?
This is a crucial mid-term election, especially here in Florida, and especially here in my congressional district. You see, there's been some shenanigans goin' on!
Since I moved to this very red county here in rural "Trump Country" Florida, this cringy looking dude's been my rep.
Greg Steube, super MAGA head, as you can obviously tell just by looking at him. He's so far up Trump's ass it's pathetic. But then they started doing this redistricting to give Republicans more power even though they already control the full state legislature, the majority of US representatives, both US senators and, of course, our notorious governor Ron DeSantis. The bigger city metros like Jacksonville, Miami-Ft. Lauderdale-West Palm, Tampa-St. Pete and Orlando have way too many liberal Democrats for their tastes. So now Greg here accepted a shrinking of his district and it left this guy, another Republican in the current district that holds sway over my area without, I believe, ever having been voted on once by anyone in my county. But that's okay by most in my heavily Republican county since he's like a carbon copy of Greg.
But with the coming election, the map has undergone a really big change.
They shrunk Scott above down to a little district servicing another red county, Polk County in order to stretch District 9, which comprised primarily Orange and Osceola counties (Orlando and Kissimmee) filled with Black, Latino, working-class, and other immigrant communities, plus a more citified and usually more educated population. So basically, a largely Democratic area, who voted in, of course, a Democrat as their US Representative, this guy, Darren Soto.
The dudes who did the redistricting hope that in filling the voter base of the newly-defined district with thousands of rural citizens of counties to the south of the Orlando metro area, like where I am, that the red votes will overwhelm the blue, bypass purple altogether and flip the district red, ousting Darren and putting this guy, Dan Green in.
So as you can see, I'm casting my vote for Darren Soto, but, unfortunately, by all accounts, most analysts agree that Danny will likely win and the Republican gerrymandering will succeed, at least in this case.
But march on Yankee Doodle. Florida is only one state. The whole country is at stake. And we have to turn the tide. We have to stick a feather in our hat and call it macaroni, dammit! And with the Republicans, shall we be handy? Oh yeah... we're going to be "handy" alright!
EDIT: A week later now and I checked the county website to see if they got my ballot... yes they did:
And here's the other vote-by-mail ballots so far (Oct. 16) for our county:
And here's a breakdown of the demographics of the registered voters of this county:
