Tag: elections

Of course, in one sense, there surely is one party.  One party in congress, one Democratic candidate for POTUS and so on.

In another sense … no.  And there hasn’t been for quite some time – since FDR at least.  There used to be northern Dems and Dixiecrats.  Now there is a range of people from Al Franken to Ben Nelson.

Can one look at the voting records, speeches, ads and so on of Al Franken or (say)Pete Stark and say he is a tool of corporate America?  REALLY?

Barbara Lee? John Conyers?

Or going back a bit, Ronald Dellums?  

George McGovern?  (First presidential campaign I worked on, I turned 13 that summer).

The problem is two-fold:

1) The two party system

2) The actual views of a lot of Americans.

Let’s take the second first:

In the districts I mentioned, Obama (and Democrats before him) got upwards of 70% of the vote.  Sometimes WAY upwards.  When you have that kind of voter, you get that kind of representative.  Nor are these districts necessarily poor or minority-heavy.  OK, the districts that gave Obama the VERY highest percentages ARE mostly poor and DO have a lot of minorities.  But the 4 highest are all in NYC, and that’s because NYC (unlike many other cities) has a bunch of districts that are entirely inside the city. But CA-13 elects Pete Stark, and it’s a wealthy suburban district.

So, in wealthy or poor districts, suburban or rural, there is a TENDENCY, a strong tendency, for districts that have large Democratic majorities to get representatives we like.  

So, the first question becomes: Why aren’t there more such districts?  That has complex answers.

The first part of the two fold problem is the two-party system.  Unfortunately, with the current system of vote counting, any leftish third party is likely to hurt the causes it espouses.  The solution here is simple, although implementing it will be hard: Range voting (my choice) or some other system of voting.  In range voting, you grade each candidate (0-100 or whatever) and the candidate with the highest average wins.  In this system, I would be free to rate any 3 or 4 or however many candidates, and it couldn’t hurt them to get a higher grade. Range voting even avoids the infamous Arrow’s Theorem, which applied to rank systems of voting.  So, if your view was that Nader was best, then Gore, then Bush, and you thought Nader deserved a 100, Gore an 80 and Bush a 0, then that would be averaged in with all the other voters.  Then you could express your views without hurting Gore; and if a substantial number of people voted similarly, the Democratic Party would listen.

cross-posted from Sum of Change

Last week, we attended a candidate forum for candidates in the special election for Washington, DC’s At-Large City Council. We were hosted by DC for Democracy, Greater Greater Washington, and the DC Environmental Network. This event was streamed live and you can watch the entire recording of that livefeed here. Below, you will find videos broken out by question. We have posted every question that was asked, in the order it was asked. Enjoy!

Reprinted in full, with permission, from Ballot Access News, the newsletter of the highly respected and trustworthy ballot access expert Richard Winger.

Government-printed ballots in the United States were first created in 1888, and almost from the start, opponents of new and minor political parties started manipulating the ballot access laws to keep certain parties off the ballot.  The first such instance was in Nevada, when the 1893 legislature increased the petition requirement for new parties and independent candidates to 10% of the last vote cast, in a vain attempt to keep the Peoples (Populist) Party off the ballot.

But in over a century of struggle to avoid monopolization of the general election ballot to just the two major parties, there has never been a pressure group that worked in favor of restrictive ballot access laws, until very recently.  Leaders of the former New Alliance Party, who have renamed themselves several times, now call themselves IndependentVoting.org.  They hold themselves out as the leaders of independent voters, but they have become a pressure group working to limit choices on the general election ballot to just Democrats and Republicans.

.

 This will be a relatively short essay.  No photos.  No links.  

 Someone brighter than me recently hit upon a simple but insightful truism regarding American “major party” politicians:  Republicans fear their base, Democrats hate theirs.

 Spot on.

 At least for the last generation, Republican politicians live in more or less constant terror that their base will rise up against them if they don’t take the hardest-Right, most frothingly partisan position available (or which they can create).  Or, if they’re already inclined towards John Bircherism, they cruise along in the smug assurance that they can be found with the proverbial “live boy or dead woman” and it won’t matter one whit to their forgiving base (as long as they, the politician, admit that he’s a sinner and rails against whatever the Democratic cause de jure is).

 Democratic politicians, on the other hand, treat their base like the crazy uncle who lives in the guest room and whose Social Security checks help pay the household bills.  They need them around in order to keep those checks coming in, but they live a life of dread and resentment:  dread that nutty Uncle Lonny will pick the lock on his bedroom door and shamble into the living room at the next dinner party and strike up conversations with the decent people in attendance, and resentment that they have to keep this burdensome and onerous relative around as the bills, alas, keep coming in and must be paid.

 Of course one of the ironies of this dynamic, of these relationships, is that these days the Republican base are much more likely to be radicalized, to resort to violence, to behave like political jihadists (which should embarrass or repel most people within shrieking distance), which your basic Democratic base member merely wants to be able to go to the doctor without risking bankruptcy, corrupt Wall Streeters to be held no less criminally culpable as petty pot dealer from whom he, the Wall Streeter, buys his grass, and wants gay people to not get beaten or bullied to death.  All in all, rather modest demands, as demands go.  Also, Democratic base members are more likely to spell check their placards before putting them on public display.

 Nevertheless, these principles hold true.  Thus the average Republican politician during the average election season has little trouble “firing up” his or her base because during the course of their life in public office, or, if they’re a newcomer, during the course of their campaign, they’ve said, “How high?” whenever their base has screamed, “Jump!”  The Democrat, on the other hand, has to “rally” their base and “fire them up” because during the course of their time in office they’ve kept that same base at arm’s length (at best) and when their Democratic base has yelled, “Jump!” their officer holder has said, “Sit down and shut up!.  And don’t forget to support me (read:  send money) come next election.  And don’t forget to vote!”

 So there you have it.

.

So I just returned from a quick visit to Toronto, more precisely Etobicoke and the Muscoka lake area.  It was my uncles 80th birthday and all but one of his kids were there with husbands, wives and kids.  Needless to say as most large(ish) family gatherings go it was in turns fun, stressful, disheartening and uplifting with to much eating and drinking thrown into the mix.  Being the avid DD reader, news and political junkie and lefty I am lots of my conversations wormed their way towards Left and Right, Tea baggers, environmental issues, taxes, religion and all those topics mothers tell you not to discuss in polite company.

In the main most of my northern family has a rather dim view of our nation, not our people individually but our nation as a whole.  I’d venture to say they look at the U.S. in much the same way as many of us here at DD do.  What gives us the right to play big brother to the rest of the world and whats more does anyone with more than two brain cells communicating with one another really believe in manifest destiny, divine right etc. etc. they are tired of us.  China they believe is or will be the dominant nation for the foreseeable future.  They see massive upheavals ahead for all of mankind as well as life on earth as a hole.  Melting glaciers, rising waters, increasing population and demands on food resources worry them as well as any number of other issues we all worry about.