It may surprise you to learn that I’m not a regular reader of progressive news outlets focused on St Louis but, until yesterday, I didn’t even know the Riverfront Times existed. It turns out that they, and writer Jamie Lees in particular, are pretty worried about Democrat Senator Claire McCaskill’s reelection campaign. After 12 years holding the seat, she’s currently neck-in-neck with Republican challenger (and Missouri’s current Attorney General) Josh Hawley.

So, Lees took to the digital pages of Riverfront Times imploring progressives not to vote their conscience, but to vote McCaskill instead in her piece entitled “Vote for Claire McCaskill, You Liberal Dipsh**s” Her title wasn’t censored (apply that to everything bleeped in the rest of this piece as well).

Here’s how the piece opens:

Listen up, hippies: November 6 is not the primary. This is a real-ass election day. You can whine about how you’d like more choices or a viable third party or whatever, but if you are any type of lefty and you aren’t voting for Claire McCaskill, you are also a raging moron. Your vote here matters. It carries real, heavy, possibly irreversible consequences. But yeah, you like to vote with your little bleeding heart, don’t you? Well, don’t worry, wimp! The good news is that you should totally be “voting your conscience” this time because your stupid conscience should be saying this to you: “Good gravy, Josh Hawley must not win! Anyone but Josh Hawley!” And that means that your only real option is Claire McCaskill.

Wow. Lees goes on to list things that McCaskill has done which she finds unacceptable, but says liberals must vote for her anyway. Why?

Why does she keep doing this sh*t? It’s because she naively thinks she’s going to win over some Republicans — but it’s useless, they have their little twerp all picked out already. The only thing she’s doing is making it harder for liberals to vote for her. But still, vote for McCaskill we must. It’s called LEV, or Lesser Evil Voting, and if it’s good enough for Noam Fucking Chomsky then it’s good enough for you.

She then goes full hyperbolic on Hawley.

Because guess what? If Josh Hawley wins this election, this state (and maybe even this nation) is screwed. Do you know what Hawley is up to? He’s in favor of eliminating the separation of church and state, for one. And he’d just love to outlaw abortion. He seems to be tight with people who hate gays and the bootlicker also sides with Donald Trump on literally everything. He will also jump on the first opportunity to take away your health insurance. Yes, yours. Josh Hawley must be stopped now before they send his puny ass to Washington and groom him as the younger, more weaselly version of Mike Pence.

Now she’s getting wound up:

If Hawley’s plan for America sounds like something you don’t want, there is really only one way to vote. Remember when a whole group of high-horse-riding fu**ers refused to vote for Hillary Clinton? Now we have to deal with this complete nightmare of an administration. This is the 2018 version of that. You can cry about it if you must, but how you vote in the election next week could well determine the fate of the U.S. Senate.

And wraps up the piece by going completely off the rails:

What’s that you say? Yes, it sure would be dreamy to vote for somebody instead of always just voting against somebody, wouldn’t it? But that’s not how the world works, does it, sugar plum? It’s truly adorable that you’ve somehow grown to become a full adult in the United States and yet you’re still concerned with childish concepts like what is “fair” or what “should” happen in government. If you feel that you simply must express yourself, go paint a painting right after you check your fu**in’ privilege, you precious little freethinker. The voting booth is not the place to try to make a grand gesture or pat yourself on the back or assert your moral superiority over the system: It’s the place where we go to hold off evil for as long as we can. Being a good voter is about being a responsible American who does what’s best for all of the people, not just what feeds your own self-righteous ego. So vote for Claire McCaskill. And grow the f**k up.

Well, I guess that’s one way to get out the vote. For which side, I can’t say.