Eliminating Voters

Generally when you take an action it should make something better, not worse.

So we see a concerted effort underway to invalidate voter registrations, primarily in states controlled by republicans who don't like people in democratic area voting.

Now, the actions generally involve invalidating voter registrations because someone did not respond to a mailing.

This might have had some validity at one time, but I know that snail mail I get has a good chance of being discarded unopened if it isn't clearly something important.

Putting Important on the envelope isn't enough, in fact it almost a flag that it isn't, at least to my way of thinking.

I have opted everywhere I can to get mail electronically, and this includes statements and bills, so what I get via snail mail is almost exclusively spam, including ironically, many exclusive offers.

Now I do get a certain amount of official correspondence from say the Department of Motor Vehicles and other government agencies, but I know who they are.

Without having received a letter questioning my existence from some state commission to eliminate voters, I don't know if I would recognize it.

It would sound like spam if I even opened it, asking me to verify personnel information, something that is generally discouraged nowadays.

It would likely warn me that failure to respond could result in loss of my privileges, a common spam tactic.

The question is eliminating some number of people who has died or moved and therefore weren't going to vote anyways doesn't justify eliminating actual voters who might vote for someone you don't like.

Unless of course that was your objective all along.

Lessons Learned, or Not.

While I hesitate to draw too many comparisons between different countries, the recent election in Great Britain may reveal some important issues.

Perhaps the most similar trend is that both countries are in a post industrial period.

The industrial period was notable for its need for seemingly infinite workers who engaged in a long struggle to gain status with the Unions as a main factor.  It had a lot to do with their well being and led to certain political alliances.

The current period is probably best referred to as the technological era where the need for manual labor has been greatly reduced leading to a significant decrease in that well being.

Those worker have been forced to accept positions that don't pay as much or get government assistance.

It has torn at traditional political alliances leading to new voting patterns, at least in the last election.

It also pointed out that being zealous is not an effective vote getting process.  Many of the policies embraced just didn't have broad popular appeal, although eagerly supported by relatively small groups.

If your platform is viewed as radical by moderates, you will almost certainly lose a general election.

Finally they had a very individually unpopular leader.  It amazes me how that happens but it is the result of certain party infighting.  Becoming your party's nominee is hardly the goal, winning the general election is.

How to pick a candidate that has broad public support in the modern age is the challenge.

Winning isn't Everything

We are now apparently fully engaged in the campaign for the next President.  It doesn't seem like the current one ever stopped.

We have a lot of contenders for the democratic nomination and I guess that's OK it will get sorted out over time.  Still the main issue that gets talked about is what is needed to win, not what the country needs.

One of the things that helped the current president emerge from the long list of Republican candidates was that he seemed different, taking positions unequivocally about certain things.

Most of his positions consisted of meaningless sound bites and after getting elected not much has changed.

Still the public wants to hear ideas about where the country is headed, not platitudes.

We do see a few candidates with ideas and the debates might clarify it more.

We need a leader to emerge, not a politician, who has real concern for all the people in this country, and a vision of the future which isn't a retreat into a past that is gone.

America has a greatness about it and part of that is inclusion and progress.

We need a President who can take us there.

Political?

There are some things that don't seem like they should be political, but they are.

Take climate change.

Its hard to imagine why anyone would object to reducing pollutants of any type except some businesses that it might add cost to.

Those types of things can be addressed by using regulations or taxes to level the field but we see people attacking the science, which is pretty irrefutable.

The solution is a cleaner world and less greenhouse gases, can't we work commonly towards that?

It isn't some conspiracy to hurt America, the facts and figures are available to all.

Similarly, I'm not familiar with anyone who thinks innocent people getting gunned down is a good thing.  Solutions to that problem don't require confiscating peoples guns but it might involve restricting the types of guns available without special background checks.

Once again the only ones who actually oppose these restrictions are the companies that profit by having unrestricted gun sales.

Profit is not an acceptable substitute for living and life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are also guaranteed.

What w don't protect is people's right to vote.  Some states have tried to do everything they can to suppress the wrong type of voter.

Of course the ones they consider wrong varies and the justification, usually related to voter fraud is unfounded.  Every citizen should be able to vote and they shouldn't be denied because they might vote for the wrong candidate.

We currently see attacks being made irresponsibly about recounts in some close elections.  Those recounts are observed by both parties and are not fraudulent or manipulated.

Count every vote is really not something we should be disagreeing about.

Its democracy.

Voting Thougts

As we enter our first ever lame duck ala orange period, it will be interesting what the approach is.

For the next seven weeks the republicans still control both houses of congress but traditionally, when we were more civil, the outgoing congress did not so things they know the incoming congress would oppose.

However we are not in an era of actual animosity where its more likely that common courtesy is a forgotten thing.

Maybe civility will actually return.

One of the things the last few elections showed us is that races can be lost before any voting takes place.

Looking at the 2016 election and the mid-terms certain races were decided by less votes than the votes suppressed by restrictive measures.

In North Dakota, they tried to suppress native American votes by requiring a street address, something many of them don't have, although in the election it probably didn't impact the outcome.

In many states, including Georgia and Florida, voter suppression efforts may have actually changed the election outcome.  It's hard to actually count those who don't vote because of these efforts, but when the elections are so close, you know every vote mattered.

It seems like the sort of thing we should be able to agree on, giving every citizen the ability to exercise the franchise, but for some that is a path to defeat and they will do what they can to avoid it.

We have two years to make sure the next election is more democratic, its important.

What Next?

Some of the votes are still being counted but the Democrats are now the majority in the House of Representatives while the Senate stays Republican, in fact they picked up some seats.

Politics is not horseshoes, you either win or lose, but, some losers get recognition despite losing.  It remains to be seen how two of the Democratic contenders who were viewed as future leaders fare after narrow defeats.

Still we sometimes lose sight of the fact that the objective of elections is to elect people who will represent the people of America and work together to move the country forward.

In some cases we may disagree about what "moving forward" means and that's OK, but we generally agree on most of the important issues.

Whether the new congress will be able to compromise on issues and get legislation passed is of course the question.  Some of the most radical attempts to gut the ACA or waste money on walls along the border should be over now.

The congress needs to take its oversight responsibility seriously and not engage if silly investigations that go no where and accomplish nothing except to provide fodder for the media.

More substance, less meaningless rhetoric.

Sane, honest responsible government, It would be refreshing.

Right To Vote

The one fundamental thing that defines a democracy is the right to vote.

This means everybody and while of course it means you don't always get the result you want the result you do get is democracy.

When you see one of the parties doing every thing it can to restrict voting by certain demographics to try to assure they can retain control it is not democracy it is dirty tricks.

The problem facing Republicans is that they are the party of certain demographics, rich white people and moderately educated white people.

The appeal to the first group is that they will protect their assets and increase them.

The appeal to the second group varies, it is based on some social issues and fear of change.

This demographic has been the one most hurt in many ways by the change in our economy as jobs they could perform were often eliminated for robots or cheap foreign labor.

Their are jobs for them but they just don't pay as well.  In addition, for many reasons, while they constituted the majority of voters in this country for much of its history, they are seeing new people, often non-white, replace them via immigration and birth rates.

Of course this is the same dynamic that has happened as different wave of immigration have come to this country throughout our history with similar reactions.

The Republicans are trying to restrict new voters, young or minority or even native Americans, who they feel will vote against them.  Its a long term losing battle but it can help in the short term. To the extent they suppressed even a small percentage of voters in the last election, it may have swung the election.

All Americans should defend the right to vote, it is our primary role in Democracy and if they restrict anyone they in some sense restrict us all.  Even those we don't agree with are entitled to vote. Many have sacrificed too much defending it to lose it.

Mid-terms

Most of the polls show the democrats picking up significant seats in the House and maybe even getting control of the Senate.

Of course polls aren't always accurate, however even when they are wrong they are usually closer than they get credit for.

Take 2016 where the polls showed Hillary with a lead of a few percent.  She actually won the popular vote by close to that amount but lost the electoral college because of a few states where the differences were extremely low.

Polls are statistical animals that survey a fairly small number of respondents and predict the overall results based on certain assumptions.  These assumptions rely on past behaviors and patterns that get factored into the ultimate number.

So in any election, a wildcard factor is difficult to account for accurately.  In 2016 the wild cards were all the allegations piled on Hillary and the dontard's ability to energize his base.

This led to an election surprise where a few hundred thousand votes in the right states would have changed the outcome.

So what about the upcoming mid-terms?  It seems that the wild cards are still how much the respective bases are energized.

You see the republicans still trying to find someone to attack and Nancy Pelosi is now a favorite target although they don't mind attacking Hillary, Obama or anyone else they think might work.

It doesn't seem like the base is as energized as it was when Trump was promising them a return to the glory days of the industrial revolution where coal mines were booming and factory jobs were aplenty.

We now have a loyal base but a base that is starting to pay for the poor economic decisions of the dontard as the trade wars start to impact farmers, workers and even miners.

The outrage on the left seems to be growing so we have, at least right now, a strong likelihood that democrats will show up to vote and many republicans won't be motivated.

Can this change?  Of course it can, but considering the general disinterest the mid-terms elicit and the ability of the dontard to create controversy, we don't think it will.

Close One

The special election in Ohio is still too close to call officially, although it appears the Republican is likely to prevail, although not certain.

That was what everyone expected at the start but they didn't originally think it would even be close, but it ended in almost a dead heat.

Its even possible that the rally by the dontard got a few thousand extra votes which would be the margin of victory if it holds.

No matter, they get to do it again in November, along with all the other congressional races.

You can't really say what is going to happen until it actually happens, 2016 showed us that, but all the signs so far point to a Democratic resurgence.

There is almost always a gain in the midterm after a Presidential election by the losing party, the question is how much.  It looks like it might be very big indeed.

Considering the damage done by the dontard's policies to equality and decency, it is important that the message needs to be clear, Americans are not going into a shell and reversing the progress in human rights we have made in this country.

We recognize the right of everyone to enjoy the fundamental rights this country was founded on.

We need to reject the hate.

Long Range Consequences

There shouldn't be a lot of politics in the Supreme Court, its simply supposed to interpret the constitution and determine if it is being followed.

Clearly however it has approached that task differently over time and some of that is because of necessity.

The world of the founders was a very different place than America of today and a lot of issues are different in scope and impact.

Certainly if you consider something like the right to bear arms, its impossible to know how they would have felt about guns available today.  What was an essential item for someone on the frontier and almost everyone was on or near the frontier, is now a modern weapon with significant killing potential.  Further the need to hunt or protect against potential attacks is certainly different than it was in the 18th century.

The real problem is that over the years we have not updated the constitution often enough to keep it current.

Take the electoral college.  The need for that is doubtful and as constituted it serves to create an undemocratic outcome.

However because it has tended to allow for results like we saw in 2016, it is defended by certain interests who are more interested in power than democracy.

It is unlikely that we would have a rewrite which would require majorities that are simply not going to happen and even amending it is a slow and painful process, as intended since the founders did not want it to be subjected to mobs and whims.

So the Supreme Court has to some extent filled in the gaps that should be the job of the people of this country and we can see from the decisions and dissents that many of these issues are simply not clear.

We now see another opening which could lead to a change in many of our current positions, or it might not.

For many it is a lesson in how voting and participating in elections is so very important.

It can have consequences for a long time.

Choice?

One of the things almost all American agree on is that out Government is broken to at least some degree.

The fact that we get to elect the people running it doesn't seem to matter.

Elections for congress generally result in most incumbents getting re-elected if they run.

A lot of this has to do with name recognition.

Many American pay so little attention to who their representative is and who is running that if they vote and see a familiar name, they vote for it.

They probably know if he is a republican or democrat, but can they tell you about his/her voting record?

Odds are against it, although they may have gotten election campaign materials in the mail that talked about it.

We get the Government we do because most of the time we try to ignore it.

We don't like what we see on the news about its dysfunction, but we're not willing to take the time to fix it by electing better representatives.

Part of the problem is that the candidates we get to choose from are so often a choice between bad and worse.

Vote for the name you recognize is the easiest way to select.

With all the negative ads, its clearly a lose-lose proposition.

A Close One

It looks like the election in Pennsylvania for the vacated house seat is going to be won by the Democratic candidate.

Its still pretty close but at this point its looking likely.

Couple of points to be made here.

The democrat was a good candidate who ran on the strength of his message and not just on an anti-Trump platform.

His opponent didn't seem to have much going for him, and he still ran neck and neck.

Good candidates can win tough elections, and the message has to be one that resonates locally.

There are some issues that are good nationally but maybe not so good locally.

Its OK for the Democratic party to be diverse, but diverse is a two way street.

We need people who represent the working class people of middle America, the heartland who share the main principle of the Democratic party.

All people are deserving of respect and are entitled to have views.

Stall

The odds of much changing between now and the next deadline on the funding issue is probably slim to none.

What should be the strategy to get things the American people want while avoiding things they don't want.

We know that the last measure had an extension of CHIPS the childhood health program, so while some view what happened as a setback, the hint of any progress in the Washington environment is a positive thing.

I would argue that a series of short term funding bills that have some progressive bone thrown in might in fact be the best strategy.

A deal on a budget is going to be nearly impossible considering the things the conservative House members want and most people don't want.

Of course the priority is to protect the Dreamers but it might take a series of baby steps to get there.

Similar to what the Republicans did with Obama's Supreme Court nominee, it might be in the best interest of the Democrats to simply make a long term deal impossible since short term funding bills continue the prior funding.

Is it the best way to run a Government?

Clearly no and the strategy requires the Democrats to win big in November so they can better control the agenda.

It is better than giving up.

2018 Mid Terms

Now that its 2018 the question becomes how do we elect people to promote progressive causes.

There are a million pundits out there who will talk about what needs to be done, but the first step is to make sure the country realizes that progressives are just as American as can be.

Most of the causes I'm talking about are actually supported by a majority of Americans, as evidenced
by the recent generic ballot.

Generic Ballot

This may seem surprising until you think a bit about what Americans thought they were voting for in the last election.

Despite the evidence all around them, certain media outlets had convinced them that the Government was a runaway train that was going to take away their guns, force co-ed bathrooms, send jobs overseas, and allow millions of immigrants to become citizens who entered illegally among other nefarious things.

Of course the exaggerations (lies) also included unfounded allegations about the Democratic candidate.

Finally, the election had a certain predicted inevitable outcome that turned out to be wrong, possibly because of that very prediction.  People who favored the Democrats felt they could stay home and it wouldn't matter, and those who wanted to register a protest had a candidate to vote for, one that had no real chance to win.

Meanwhile on most issues, the people felt that maybe we should slow down a bit but in general they are very much in favor of fair treatment for all, affordable health care, environmental awareness and global peace.

Regulation of Wall Street was extremely popular it was a reason progressives didn't fully support the democratic candidate.

So when the impossible happened most Americans felt that the system would control the wild card elected but surprise, it didn't.

In fact, he lied and exaggerated even more turning his popular vote loss into a perceived mandate.

There is an old adage, be careful what you ask for, you may get it.

Like a dog who catches a car, the only choice they have now is to pee on it and move on.

Elections

There are going to be elections in America this Tuesday whether we want them or not.

I know in some cases the races are important but some of the ads I see are about people I never heard of and who, per the opponent's ads should probably be in jail.

Of course that applies to all the candidates.

Negative ads are universally condemned but extremely effective.

I seem to have a choice between a District Attorney for my county who is either corrupt and a puppet or someone that seems to be trying to outtrump the dotard himself.

I should probably look into it more except I'm not even sure why I'm voting for a District Attorney.

Seems like it should be someone above politics.

We vote on a whole slate of people we have no real way to judge, like say judges.

Honestly I would like well qualified judges and attorneys and police chiefs/sheriffs.  Voting for the one who runs the best ads or who is a member of your party isn't guaranteed to accomplish that.

Of course they have to come from somewhere and I guess if they get appointed by corrupt politicians it wouldn't be any better.

Based on the political ads I see, we should probably arrest the whole batch and start over.

Minority Control

If you live in a country where the decisions on what to do are made by a group that composes about a third of the total population, it is hard to call that a true democracy more of a situation where you have one group dominate the majority.

Now it is of course possible that the ones controlling the Government are in agreement with the majority but its also very possible that they aren't.

Now of course in America we have a fairly apathetic electorate and because of Gerrymandering and voter suppression, the party in control is clearly not the majority.

They weren't even the majority of those who did vote, but because of the way we set up our results were able to win the Presidency, and both houses of the congress.  This will most likely let them dictate the composition of the Supreme Court for a period of decades.

So does the Government as constituted represent the people of the United States?  Well not all of them or even most of them if you can trust polls.  They represented enough voters for certain issues that as I just said they control the Government and it was all done legally.(ethics may be a different issue).

Part of the reason for this is that liberals, or progressives are less pragmatic than conservatives.

For example, evangelicals who probably washed their hands after every handshake with the Republican candidate still voted for him because he took their position on abortion if very little else.

Similarly many republicans looked past his glaring faults but voted for him because of his tax stance, ignoring the fact that they were in bed with the racists and xenophobes.

The statement that a large group of his supporters were in fact deplorable was used by many as a rallying cry, even though it was obvious to almost everyone that he had supporters that you wouldn't tolerate socially.

Now on the other side, every little flaw in the candidate, real or imagined was a reason to shun both her and the election because, well, they are idealists.

The fact that one candidate would clearly better promote liberal and progressive goals was overshadowed by the fact that she had made speeches to wall street firms and banks.

This list goes on and on and simply, until it changes we will live in a country where progressive ideals are ignored despite their popularity.

Sitting out an election because the candidate isn't perfect doesn't get you perfect representation, just he opposite.