The Human Rights Campaign’s tweet yesterday was the best. Concerning the critical upcoming midterm elections next Tuesday, it showed a GIF from the Harry Potter movies with the text, “We’re all gifted a special power and it is not magic…it’s our vote.”

Yes, it is like magic, though. If you feel besieged by a particularly gross boogeyman, you can simply vote, and *poof* … gone! This is especially true in this year’s midterm election next Tuesday, when the power of the gross boogeyman in the White House can be short-circuited by, yes, your *vote!*

The vote this time, of course, is not for president, per se. But if enough Americans who believe, not in magic, but in democracy and fairness and truth over lies, then the U.S. Congress can place huge roadblocks in the way of this president as he tries to continue his dissembling and hate-filled juggernaut.

The biggest problem facing the nation, as it turns out, is not Donald Trump himself, but the wholesale support of the Republican Party for him. This has been the real news of the last two years.

The day Trump came into office in January 2017, he choked a horribly egregious lie down the throats of the American people. It was such an outrageous lie that it was downright laughable. He had his press spokesman come out to announce that the Inaugural events had millions more participants than the actual photographic evidence showed. Do you remember that?

It has gone from bad to worse since. Trump’s entire administration is grounded in lies, lies and more lies. In order to keep it up, he’s gone after anyone who would expose the lies and tell the truth, including the media, that he’s called “the enemy of the people,” and his Democratic rivals.
We find ourselves in the “1984”-style situation (referring to the cautionary novel by George Orwell) where there is only one truth and it is a big lie. This president has been force-feeding humble pie to everyone of us by compelling us to nod in favor of an entire worldview that is nothing but a tissue of lies. So far, many of us have not yet drunk the Kool Aid, metaphorically speaking, but the president has his hand on the back our necks and is pushing us toward that cup.

It’s this horror, much more frightening than any Halloween slasher movie, that the Republican Party has endorsed and embraced, top to bottom.
That’s why every Republican elected official on the ballot this Tuesday needs to be resoundingly defeated! Forget any differentiations between conservatives and moderates, they’re all in lock step to back the Trump agenda.

In Falls Church, go vote for our top drawer incumbent Democrats Tim Kaine for the U.S. Senate and Don Beyer for the U.S. House.
So come on, kids of all ages, wave your magic wands, then put them in a drawer and get to the polls.