salon

The science it out: It is about race

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Thanks to this concise tweet by Salon‘s Amanda Marcotte

For alerting me to the piece by her fellow Salon writers Sean McElwee and Jason McDaniel on how it truly has been racism, and not economic angst as so many believe, that has fueled the rise of Donald Trump.

The American National Election Studies 2016 Pilot Study, a presidential primary extension of a long-running election survey, asked 1,200 eligible voters about the election, and their views on race, from Jan. 22 – 28, 2016. The poll had a number of questions designed to measure racial animus.

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They want it to be a jungle out there for voters

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

jungle

The year is new and, of course, the Top Two, AKA Jungle Primary people are very busy peddling their harebrained idea to gullible pundits. The latest to take the bait is Arizona Republic‘s Linda Valdez, who is arguably the most liberal member of the paper’s editorial board.

Quoth Linda:

First, you get rid of partisan primaries.

The system is a relic. These days, people who register to vote with no party affiliation make up the largest group of voters in the state. They can vote in partisan primaries, but few independents engage in elections devised to serve the political parties they have already rejected.

Partisan primaries are ruled by a few die-hard voters who represent the fringes of each party. Because most districts are not competitive, the primary candidates those extremists pick usually win in November. No moderates need apply.

In 2012, there was a ballot initiative to create a non-partisan, open primary system. It looked popular, but it failed after a “dark money” campaign raised doubts in voters’ minds.

“You learn a lot from failure,” says former Phoenix Mayor Paul Johnson, who championed the measure.

He made a checklist of what to do differently. He’s ready to try again to pass an open primary initiative.

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The anti-choice movement is not about “life”. Never has been.

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Monica Potter quote
“Pro-life” leader in a moment of honesty of what this is all about.

Since last Friday when a deranged man murdered three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic and injured several more, even some veteran pro-choice people have been stunned at the response by anti-choice people to it, which has been equal parts callous and defensive.

“After all these years and millions of babies that have gone to their death, violence is to be anticipated,” said Judie Brown, president of American Life League, in a phone interview with MSNBC. “Because it’s acceptable to violently kill a baby, so why isn’t it acceptable to violently kill other people?”

“We never approve of violence against anybody, whether it’s the unborn babies or the clients of Planned Parenthood or anybody else,” Ann Scheidler, vice president of the Pro-Life Action League, told MSNBC. But, she added, “it’s not the fault of the pro-life movement that someone found out that Planned Parenthood is doing these things. It’s the fault of Planned Parenthood for selling the baby parts.”

Planned Parenthood is a villain,” she said. “They undermine the integrity of families and the morality of young teen girls and kill babies on a regular basis, day after day. We’re not going to say, ‘Oh, poor Planned Parenthood, we should never say anything negative about what they call ‘services.’ Because they are a blight on our culture.”

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Democratic voters sit out yet another off-year election. Let’s examine why.

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

wheel-of-fortune

This is getting old. Tuesday was election day across the nation and Democrats performed poorly, yet again, as they have tended to do the past several elections that are not Presidential general ones. The reason for it is obvious: low turnout, averaging about 30% nationwide. The explanations behind that reason that liberals will come up with are akin to the game show “Wheel of Fortune”, where in the final round the common letters picked to guess the winning phrase had become so predictable that the show just started spotting them to the contestants years ago: R,S,T,L,N,E.

The R,S,T,L,N,E of Democratic losses are as follows, in no particular order of importance and with no judgment on my part on their veracity, as all are true to varying extents:

1. Democrats don’t have a message.
2. Democratic candidates run as Republican lite and run away from President Obama.
3. Gerrymandering.
4. Voter suppression and other logistical impediments to voting.
5. Citizens United and the flooding of elections with huge amounts of money from well-heeled right wing ideologues.
6. Demographics.

Let’s take them one by one:

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