democrats

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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From the vault: “In Defense of Partisan Hacks”

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So I dusted off my best NPR voice and was in the KJZZ studio earlier today being interviewed by Steve Goldstein for Here and Now. The topic was the National Federation of Republican Women being in town this week and how the parties planned to target women voters. This old post of mine is not directly related to the topic of the interview but I thought of it because I ended the interview by proudly stating that I was a partisan and because the AZ Capitol Times Yellow Sheet reported that the Top Two people were going to be launching their initiative again and are leaning on prominent Arizona Democrats to support it.

From August 14, 2012:

Republic columnist Laurie Roberts took some time off from her “De-kook the Capitol” project (in which somehow our Republican controlled legislature will become less extreme by, erm, electing more Republicans) to hawk the Open Primaries initiative.

The top-two primary initiative would usher in a new system of nominating congressional, state, county and local officials. Instead of holding partisan primaries, Arizona would hold one primary open to all voters and the top two candidates, regardless of party affiliation, would move to the general.

Gone would be the day when most congressional and legislative elections are decided in the primary, when politicians who cater to narrow ideological interests find themselves elected before most voters ever cast a ballot.

Of course, Roberts produces no evidence whatsoever to substantiate this claim but, whatever. Puppies! Rainbows! I’ve already explained why I don’t care for this primary initiative and don’t trust many of it’s proponents so I won’t get too deeply into that again. What irked me about Laurie’s piece was her obvious disdain for partisan activism.

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No country for austerity pushing Democrats

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

deficit cutting

My biggest problem with centrist establishment Democrats has been their insistence on trying to prove they’re the bigger grown-ups in the room by embracing punitive conservative economic ideas and more successfully implementing them. Welfare reform was a perfect example of this. Democratic support for it, including President Clinton’s, was supposed to neutralize the issue for Democrats forever. Oddly, though, I never noticed the tendency of voters to associate Democrats with “welfare” to diminish. What happened was that the idea of “welfare” simply expanded to include any public assistance whatsoever, whether or not the recipient worked for wages, and then further to mean 47% of the country. People still defend welfare reform to me on the policy merits but no one can reasonably argue that it was a long-term political success for Democrats, unless they want to make the perverse case that Mitt Romney lost because at least half the country was offended that he thought they were on welfare.

President Obama embraced deficit reduction from the beginning of his presidency. And he did succeed in shrinking the deficit. Does he get any credit for it? Nope.

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Actually, the War on (Other) Women rages on

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com Pamela Powers Hannley, my colleague over at Blog for Arizona, took the Arizona Daily Star to task for running a column by Slate’s Hanna Rosin advising Democrats to back off on the War on Women rhetoric. The article itself is the usual eyeroll-inducing concern trolling that Rosin, who describes herself as liberal … Read more

In which I express my fervent wish that Laurie Roberts will shut up forever about child abuse.

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

There’s a terrible, awful story in the news right now about a Phoenix couple who starved their baby nearly to death. So it’s no surprise that Phoenix’s own Nancy Grace, AKA Laurie Roberts, was quickly on the scene to flare her nostrils about it on her column. I mean, I totally could see it coming but, dear sweet Christ on chimichanga platter is this thing dreadful.

What profound insight does Laurie have to add to this horrible situation? Why, slut-shaming, of course.

The case of Veronica Marie Diaz showcases much about what is wrong with our society, about why CPS is so overrun and just how daunting the task will be as the state rebuilds our child-welfare system. Here’s a 27-year-old woman with multiple children and no father apparently in sight. But, of course, there is a boyfriend.

There’s always a boyfriend.

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