Willie Nelson--Vote 'em Out from a Beto O'Rourke rally

I hate feeling useless and helpless.

I think I've mentioned this before, but I am someone who survived an abusive relationship. It was a classic situation. I was very young, too trusting, not confident in myself. My abuser liked 'em that way; it made us dependent on him and much less willing to fight back (and yes, there were others, hence the use of the plural). I bought into his gaslighting for a time; obviously, there was something wrong with me if I questioned his strange absences, the missing money from our bank account. It wasn't worth the screaming and insults he would hurl to look too closely. I could never be sure when the emotional abuse would turn into physical abuse.

And then it happened. Triggered by something, it turned very physical.

I left to stay with a friend of mine, one of my few male friends he let me keep because as a gay man, my friend wasn't a threat to him. And for the first time in years, I heard someone say, "You don't deserve this. You are not the problem. He is." I don't know why it took another person validating my point of view for me to grok that this was an abusive situation I had to get out of, but it did. I got out. I got therapy. I learned to trust that voice in my head again, to appreciate that I was stronger and smarter than the insecure man who treated me badly to make himself feel better. And I promised myself I would never let anyone gaslight me into not trusting my instincts.

That is why the entirety of the Trump presidency has been incredibly triggering to me (and from my conversations with other women, many others). It has been one relentless abusive relationship with reality. The baldfaced lies, the gaslighting, the diminishing, the threats are all very, very familiar.

But this time, I've seen it for what it's worth from the beginning. I won't let my voice be silenced by insults. I've spent this last week phone banking every day for Democratic candidates, even critical local and state races that too many Dems ignore at our peril. I've volunteered to spend Tuesday morning driving people to their polling place. I will not go down without a fight again.

If you have early voted, I implore you to join me in getting others to the polls. Let not let the bullies win.

ABC's "This Week" — Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.; Ronna McDaniel, Republican National Committee chairwoman; Rick Klein, ABC News political director; Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief. Panel: ABC’s Matthew Dowd, former Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., and Democratic strategist Donna Brazile.

NBC's "Meet the Press" — Van Hollen; Gov. Bill Haslam, R-Tenn.; Josh Hawley, Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri; Stacey Abrams, Democratic nominee for governor in Georgia. Panel: Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher; Tom Brokaw of NBC News; Savannah Guthrie, co-anchor of “Today"; radio host Hugh Hewitt; and Kasie Hunt of NBC News.

CBS' "Face the Nation" — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va.; McDaniel. Anthony Salvanto, CBS News elections & surveys director; Ed O’Keefe of CBS News. Panel: Shawna Thomas of Vice News; Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report; Nancy Cordes of CBS News; and Ben Domenech of The Federalist.

CNN's "State of the Union" — McDaniel; Tom Perez, Democratic National Committee chairman; Abrams. Panel: Van Jones and Mary Katharine Ham of CNN; former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa.; and former Gov. Jennifer Granholm, D-Mich.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" — James Fallows of The Atlantic; Anthony Scaramucci, former Trump White House communications director; and Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor & publisher of The Nation. David Miliband, president & CEO of the International Rescue Committee; Ravi Agrawal of Foreign Policy; and Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn.

CNN's "Reliable Sources" — Molly Ball of Time magazine; Nicole Carroll, editor in chief of USA Today; Eliana Johnson of Politico; and David Zurawik of The Baltimore Sun. Daniel Dale of Toronto Star; Marvin Kalb, author of “Enemy of the People”; Harry Enten of CNN Politics; Margie Omero, Democratic pollster and host of “The Pollsters” podcast; Patrick Gaspard, president of the Open Society Foundations; and Penny Abernathy, Knight chair in journalism & digital media economics, University of North Carolina.

"Fox News Sunday" — Pompeo; Sens. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and Van Hollen. Panel: Brit Hume, Juan Williams, Karl Rove and Marie Harf, former State Department spokesperson.

So what's catching your eye this morning?