Let’s Be Bold. We’re Going To Flip Wyoming Blue In 2020

Americans in populated states complain about the Electoral College and the Senate because it gives unequal representation to people who live in remote areas. It’s a system that makes votes worth far more if you happen to live in the middle of nowhere.

For anyone who lives in a city, it feels pretty unfair. There are many good ideas to address this, but it’s pretty clear none of them will happen any time soon.

What if we stop complaining and we literally move to these places?

In the 2018 Senate election in Wyoming, John Barrasso (R) defeated Gary Trauner (D) in a landslide. He won over 67% of the vote. But when you look at the raw numbers, it’s not nearly as impressive.

John Barrasso (R): 136,329 votes. 67.1%

Gary Trauner (D): 61,254 votes. 30.1%

That’s a difference of about 75,000 people.

On the same day Dianne Feinstein won re-election in California by around a half million votes. The candidate she was running against was also a Democrat who received nearly 3 million votes.

What a waste.

In Texas Beto O’Rourke became a national sensation and raised $70 million directly from individuals to fund his Senate campaign against Ted Cruz. He had a positive, compassionate message and inspired millions of Texans to show up and vote like they never have before. It ended up not being quite enough, but it’s very obvious people are fed up with the current state of affairs.

We want universal healthcare, affordable secondary education, legal cannabis, clean energy, an end to the militarization of our immigration system, and to begin treating all people like they have value. All people. People of every color and every religion. No matter what piece of this big rock you were born on. No matter who your parents were. No matter what.

There are millions of Americans now who have the ability to work remotely. They live all over the United States. Thousands of tech startups are running 100% remote and have no need for a physical office. From what I’ve seen the overwhelming majority of these people value the kinds of things that nearly helped get Ted Cruz off of my television and back to privately feasting on the souls of orphaned children.

There’s been a lot of fear-mongering about caravans and open borders in the news recently. You know where we already have open borders? Between every single state in the union.

No one really believed that anyone was actually afraid of a bunch of immigrants who were fleeing for their lives. But what if we made a caravan that actually scared the people in power?

How about this:

MOVE. PACK UP ALL YOUR STUFF, PUT IT IN A VAN LIKE LEWIS AND CLARK, AND MOVE YOUR ASS OUT TO WYOMING.

Do you really care about these values or are you all talk?

What if we raised another $70 million, bought a huge chunk of land, built a city, and literally just moved 75,000 people out to Wyoming?

I know what you’re thinking: “But who wants to live in Wyoming? It sucks. It’s flat (mountainy?) and cold in the winter and hot in the summer and there’s nothing to do and all of the people there are conservative and who even wants to deal with that?”

I mean, you’re probably right. I barely know. But I’m sure most of the people there are nice and I know Yellowstone is there. Which is definitely nice. I know, I have YouTube.

Looking at a map, there isn’t a ton there. Wyoming is basically a beginning stage Minecraft server. I’m sure this is one of the reasons the people there love it.

We could find a small city in a nice location and start building things. I’m sure there’s a town out that would welcome a large group of tech workers and other startups. I’d imagine there’s a friendly tax code already.

We could build bars that serve craft beer with names I’m too embarrassed to order, hipster coffee shops, stores that sell fancy quilted pillows for dogs, and all of our cakes will be gay cakes. All of the things that modern liberals want. I’m sure there’s a logical place to start, but I don’t know enough about Wyoming to be sure.

“Give me the Salmon Pants IPA. Also do you mind if my French Bulldog takes his pants off?“

“No problem sir. Of course you can have those things. You’re in Wyoming.”

If you know more positive things about Wyoming I would love to hear them in the comments below. Teach me about your great state.

Hey Beto, does it have to be Texas? Would you be interested in becoming a Senator for Wyoming? I’ll bet your strategy of going door to door and having individual conversations with people will be effective out there too. You won’t have to visit nearly as many people and we’ll bring a ton of people with us.

I’ll bet the majority of people in Wyoming already share the values that are underlying these ideas: treating people well and making sure that everyone has an opportunity to put in work to achieve personal and societal success. We might disagree on the best way to make our society reflect them, but that’s a hurdle that can be overcome.

When I bring up Beto I don’t mean any disrespect to Gary Trauner. He seems to have a platform that’s virtually identical to Beto’s and he’s already pretty popular there. I just don’t know much about him personally. Maybe they could work together. I bet they’d like each other.

I mean, look at him. He has a sweet denim shirt and everything. I don’t know if you can be more Wyoming than that.

Here’s Beto posing in front of a mountain too. It’s a match made in heaven.

I don’t know how to actually accomplish these things. I need help. A lot of help. We need people that know how to organize and people that know how to build things. My primary skills include writing software and snarky things on the internet. I’m not sure how valuable these will be to the cause. But I’m willing to try.

I want to be clear that this is only marginally related to the Democratic party. There have been plenty of times over the past 20 years where it didn’t feel like they represented these things either. But we can change that. So many of the young people we just elected in 2018 are far different from the Democrats that you’re used to. They’re people who care about their communities and are willing to put in the work to make them better. I’m sure Wyoming can appreciate that.

Beto: You’re already super organized. Last week I was at a campaign rally you held in Dallas and I could feel the change in the air. People want this. And we’re willing to do extraordinary things to accomplish it.

Let’s be bold. Let’s flip Wyoming blue in 2020.

We have two entire years to make this happen. That’s plenty of time. Americans have accomplished far more in less time before.

I mean, we went to the moon with less technology than is in a calculator built in 1995.

This is easy mode.

If Beto is too busy planning a 2020 Presidential campaign that would be fine too.

Once I figure out how Crowdpac or whatever works, I’ll update this with some more information about how we can start to make this happen. In the meantime if you could obnoxiously share this with all of the people you know, that would really help. I know you. This part is right in your wheelhouse.

Update: Some native Wyoming…ites? are chiming in with some good ideas.

“What’s with all this about Cheyenne? My hometown of Casper has a thriving hipster sub-culture, coffee shops, Pizza places, sushi, vape shops, you name it!

Not to mention there are tons of empty apartments and houses because of all the people moving away due to the oil bust.” Link

Update 2:

Update 3: I’m probably not actually going to move to Wyoming. Or anywhere for that matter. I’ve thought of a better way to solve this problem.

I’m going to solve it at the core: education.

But also if people really did go move to Wyoming it would help in so many different ways.

If you’re reading this and you’re not sure of a place you can go and have a big impact: the answer is Wyoming.

More details will come soon.