The Blue Dot’s shallow team politics are hurting Democrats in Statewide races — and nobody on Team Blue seems to care.

The conservative, middle class, right wing of the Nebraska Democratic Party is betting it all on The Blue Dot — and leaving the rest of the State out in the cold.

The couple who created the meaningless symbol were interviewed for the national news

George Orwell once wrote that “Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.” Today in Nebraska The Blue Dot is at war with the rest of Red Nebraska — and don’t you know, it always has been and always will be!

Democrats in Nebraska’s Congressional District 2 (CD-2) are excited about The Blue Dot; a viral yard sign about the one Electoral College vote in Nebraska that has voted “blue” in past presidential elections; for Obama in ’08 and for Biden in ‘20. The center-right middle-class base of the Nebraska Democratic Party is getting organized to turn out the vote to turn CD-2 Blue once again. Two local activists made their own signs, then neighbors asked for their own copies, and it spiraled from there. Republicans have even responded with their own signs representing the Winner-Take-All movement.

choose your fighter

The Blue Dot objectively doesn’t mean anything besides “vote”; there are no policy demands attached to it. Its creators briefly considered adding a message but quickly decided to leave the dot blank, and they have not added any policy discussions to the Blue Dot movement since then. I have not seen any variations of the original design. It is very simply about turning out the vote to “turn CD-2 blue” and send one Electoral College vote to Vice President Kamala Harris. The Blue Dot, and everyone who has one in their yard or window, is saying loudly and clearly that Harris has earned their vote — they will vote for her even if they personally disagree with something she is currently doing.

One of those current things Harris is doing is continuing to send bombs and ammunition and money to the apartheid State of Israel as it routinely slaughters Palestinians, and escalates the conflict to include carpet bombing Lebanon. Israel, with the support of the United States, is intentionally escalating a genocide into a regional war.

Democrats have allowed their team red vs. team blue politics to triangulate themselves into supporting a genocide. The party that once loudly protested the war in Iraq is now organizing to elect war criminals. There was a strong “Uncommitted” movement in other States during Joe Biden’s show-primary to pressure him for a ceasefire — maybe the Blue Dot could simply endorse the idea of a ceasefire? Couldn’t the Blue Dot sign say “Ceasefire Now”? There are ways to hold your own party and candidates accountable, even during election season. If you want to be harassed and condescended to by Omaha Democrats for not falling in line without question, you’re welcome to ask them. They’re too busy losing every other Statewide office in Nebraska to care:

A meme of the “Evergreen” genus, unfortunately

After canceling the 2024 Nebraska Primaries to protect party-favorite candidates Tony Vargas, Carol Blood, and Preston Love Jr., the Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb is ignoring the reality of statewide party failure: Preston Love Jr. is polling nearly twenty points behind absolute ghoul and oligarch Pete Ricketts. In CD-1, no one has bothered to do a poll because Carol Blood has less than a 1% chance of winning. The Democrat running for House in Western Nebraska’s CD-3 has reported raising and spending $0 for his campaign. Meanwhile independent Dan Osborn, who has purposefully distanced himself from the Democratic Party, is consistently polling ahead of GOP incumbent Deb Fischer.

Democrats could be winning every single one of these races, and Dan Osborn’s independent campaign for Senate is proof. Democrats are unwilling and unable to speak to rural voters about abortion, LGBT issues, cannabis reform, and global warming; and many Democrats view rural voters as irredeemably racist and ignorant. Osborn has been meeting voters where they are; he’s been willing to go across the State and face questions about drag queens and abortion restrictions and cannabis reform. His answers to these tough questions have earned him the votes of rural voters — more than Preston Love Jr. or Carol Blood — without compromising on these issues. Instead of doing the hard work of convincing voters to support their platform, Nebraska Democrats are retreating to Omaha where their numbers are stronger and where they won’t have to work to earn votes: homes with Blue Dot signs are already promising to “vote blue no matter who”. No need to knock on those doors.

Recent polls for both of Nebraska’s Senate elections

The philosophy and the logic of The Blue Dot is fundamentally anti-intellectual and repressive; it is the idea of Martin Luther King Jr’s “Negative Peace” manifested into symbol form. It demands silence instead of constructive criticism, it promotes the absence of tension instead of an earnest struggle for justice. Liberal Democrats who are not progressive have always used this strategy. It’s the same today as when King wrote “Letter From Birmingham Jail”; sweep today’s problems under the rug and hope things are better tomorrow; be quiet and don’t criticize Vice President Harris now, wait until after the election and maybe it will be better.

The logic of the negative peace reinforces Team Red vs Team Blue politics because it makes us feel safe on our own team, even if we lose. As long as we grasp for that age-old feeling of belonging to a cohesive social group, humans are good at allowing reason and common sense fall to the wayside. It doesn’t matter to Team Blue that Carol Blood, Preston Love Jr., and whoever is running in CD-3 are going to lose their elections, and it also doesn’t seem to matter that Team Blue’s leader is arming and funding a genocide: as long as we feel safe within The Blue Dot, everything else can be ignored and excused. The Blue Dot didn’t invent this situation, but it has solidified the problem.

The Blue Dot will now reappear every four years in Nebraska, encouraging everyone to circle the wagons behind whoever is running that year, instead of subjecting our own candidates to rigorous scrutiny and an open primary election. Just like the Democrats did for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and just like Jane Kleeb did for Tony Vargas, Carol Blood, and Preston Love Jr., they will try to suspend democracy and forgo primary elections, in the name of protecting status quo politics. They will insist that is is rude to question the candidate they have forced on us, that we are being unreasonable for wanting an open primary election, and that we will hurt “our” candidates chances because we have policy concerns. If we’re not allowed to ask questions when the subject is genocide, what makes us think they’ll ever let us ask questions about anything else?

George Orwell’s famous book “1984" ends with the protagonist drunk in a bar, looking up at a television screen. After being arrested and tortured for thinking, speaking, and acting freely, Winston Smith has completely given up resisting his government’s oppressive propaganda. He gives in and joins the rest of his countrymen; convincing himself that Big Brother is actually good, and that he doesn’t need to spend his time thinking critically about anything the government does, ever again.

Party officials choosing our candidates for us must stop. Blindly supporting candidates who did not have to go through a primary election must stop. Dividing voters into two unchanging camps that will always be the same and at war must stop. We cannot accept our government or a political party asking us to suspend our critical faculties until the current election is over. We cannot ever, no matter how good it feels, institute a state of things which requires us to sublimate our criticism and reason to the needs of a politician or political party.

The Blue Dot, because it is about nothing besides turning out the vote, is asking us to accept 1984-style us-vs-them team politics. It is a symbol which sees the metaphorical “bar” laying on the floor and gets upset with anyone who tries to raise it. Big Brother and their supporters would have us believe the bar is stuck where it is, when in reality they are standing on it. If Osborn is elected and these initiatives pass, it will be a stunning rebuke to the Blue Dot crowd who told us all that striving for better was impossible, and not to try.

Joyce Vondrasek