He apparently has a good track record of increasing voter turnout in his own elections, which is reasonable grounds to assume he had a a positive effect on voter turnout nationally this cycle. I don’t know if we’ll have good stats on that soon, but I can anecdotally say that in my state of Colorado the turnout this year was markedly higher. All of my friends participated as well as my father, who are all usually apathetic about the primaries.
4 Likes
One thing that’s missing from those statistics is voter turnout. If I was looking for a candidate who could turn out the vote-- who could excite the electorate out of its slumber, I’d be using Minnesota: 76% turnout as a baseline (or as something to be optimistically improved upon).
I would not be using Mayoral races with 25 percent turn out as a benchmark for participation rates.
Can’t wait for the Democratic National Convention in July. The Democratic National Convention is so much more informative, interesting, inclusive, diverse and fun to watch (and attend), then the bamboozling, boring, exclusive and bland Republican National Convention. Maybe with a buffonish clown like republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump–this year’s train wreck called the Republican National Convention, will be more interesting.
Videos of two memorable moments from the 2012 Democratic National Convention.
A priceless and funny moment was this video of Julian Castro’s daughter, Carina Victoria, recognizing herself on the Convention Hall video screen during her father’s speech–and flipping her hair. The Democratic Convention Hall erupted in laughter.
The second video of former two term Governor of Michigan and current Hillary Clinton supporter, Jennifer Granholm’s–hyped speech, that electrified the 2012 Democratic National Convention. If someone does not know, after her firebrand speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, it was reported that Jennifer Granholm was also a contestant on “The Dating Game” in 1978.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/09/jennifer-granholm-dnc-firebrand-cute-on-78-dating-game/
Loved the way Jennifer Granholm used her speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, to call out states in attendance, which allowed those states to be recognized, stand and cheer and acknowledge their automotive bail-out success, which roused the Democratic National Convention. Like her speech or not, no one can deny–Jennifer brought down the house.
I’m not in a stat-seeking mood right now, but I’ve looked this up earlier and not only did some states have record voter turnouts, but those turnouts were heavily driven by unexpectedly high voter turnout among young people who voters for Sanders in high ratios.
For example, Wisconsin had about 48% voter turnout compared to 24% in 2012 and 34% in 2008 (this 25-ish for incumbent years and 35-ish for non-incumbent years holds back to 1980).
I talked about this in Nevada in another post. There you could see the extra voters beyond Obama’s big primary year were largely composed of young people who were voting for Sanders.
The data are scattered and hard to come by, it’s an article here and a exit polling report from CNN there. I think what I’ve seen supports Sanders bringing voters.
4 Likes
The question now is will Clinton make concessions and move towards the left where the Sanders voters are sitting…or will she and the Democratic Party double-down and prove they’re barely any better than the Republicans.
The lessons the DNC takes from this are important in the context of our system. If she and the DNC double-down and aren’t gracious winners then a lot of those Sanders voters aren’t going to vote…they weren’t going to vote for her anyway and they’re not going to respond kindly to a bait and switch.
Besides, it’s arguable the best long game (the one that saves our children) doesn’t involve Clinton winning at all. Another 4-8 years of near-Republican plutocrats running the democratic party sets up for 4-12 years of Republicans. That’s a LONG time.
2 Likes
Well, given that her opponent is an anti-Muslim demagogue who somehow managed to lose support in the polls after a Muslim made a terrorist attack on US soil, I think Clinton is basically free to be whatever Clinton she wants to be. She doesn’t exactly need to pander to Sanders supporters if she isn’t inclined to do so.
My read of Clinton is that she’s not so much a neo-liberal or a Republican or a Democrat or anything, she’s just a very good sample of about the middle of the American population. For example, starting to support gay marriage the year it crossed 50% in popular opinion. I don’t think that’s cynically governing by the polls, I think she just happens to be the person in the middle.
So I think it’s a question of how long it takes for a worldwide backlash against neo-liberal economic thinking. Austerity is a failure, people are sick of letting banks control the policies of democracies, one day people are going to basically revolt against the economists. Everyone rides the same wave. After the 2008 crash you saw governments all responding the same way regardless of their politics.
So when the wave goes that way we’ll see more sensible policies come in. But it won’t all happen at once. There will be leaders and early adopters (this is already happening - Canada’s last winning government ran on having a deficit saying, “Deficits aren’t bad”), followers and middle-of-the-pack countries, and those who have to be dragged kicking and screaming. With Clinton I think America might be middle-of-the-pack. With a Republican other than Trump I think America would have been dragged kicking and screaming. Trump is just something else.
2 Likes
Yes. It’s important that the Republicans will be able to appoint a Scalia replacement that can serve as a bogeyman. Imagine if he was replaced with a someone even slightly left of center? Liberals would become complacent, setting the country up for Republican majorities to come.
Well, I wouldn’t say ‘important’, but the Supreme Court issue still has a Roosevelt solution to it… which a Sanders type would be ballsy enough to push. It’s not impossible to forsee a future where Trump wins but we’re far better off from years 5-150.
Of course, Trump could also choose Terry Crews/Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Comancho for VP and then step down really quick before he’s assassinated. Then everyone wins!
3 Likes
I was reminded today of a 1996 article by Henry Louis Gates in The New Yorker entitled Hating Hillary. Aspects of it are surprisingly current despite being 20 years old. There’s just something about her that makes some people not like her, and then they come up with “reasons” to explain their gut reaction. In reality, she’s not anywhere near as extreme (in either direction) as people seem to project onto her.
4 Likes
Why (** *** ***) vote for Hillary Clinton
Hillary understands the importance of unifying and not alienating–critical components of the Obama coalition heading into the 2016 presidential general election.
The Congessional Black Caucus (CBC) comes out vehemently against Bernie Sanders proposals to reform the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination process.
“Let me be clear, our delegate selection process is not rigged,” South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn wrote in the separate letter. “It is transparent to the public and open for participation for all who wish to declare themselves.”
The CBC officials also argued that opening up primaries to voters who aren’t Democrats “would dilute minority voting strength in many districts across the country.”
“The concern many of us have, of course, is that our numbers would shrink in terms of having influence over and involvement with what happens at the convention,” Missouri’s Rep. Emanuel Cleaver said.
Copies of the letter were also sent to Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
I think one reason is clear in the 3rd paragraph of this article, which begins with a discussion of her complexion and choice of clothing designer. What story about a male political figure would detour in this way?
I rather like HRC, but she is utterly familiar to me as we share a childhood: we were both born in the same hospital, and we grew up not that many years or miles apart (though it is not unlikely that her parents’ friends were shooting at my parents’ friends in the 50s.) However, that isn’t the same as liking her policies or politics, and we don’t need to project (as the people quoted in the Gates article do) to find such issues, we have 25 years of watching her to draw from.
Does the Congressional Black Caucus have a position on … say… Payday Lending?
Because I know that Debbie Wassermann Schultz has staked out a position that’s very much at odds with what what Elizabeth Warren says, and what Bernie Sanders says.
4 Likes
Why, exactly? What makes you have any strong feelings about her at all as opposed to indifference? Inquiring minds in this thread are interested to know, because to a lot of people, even if Hillary’s ‘good’, she’s nothing to get excited over.
There’s an article in Slate that makes a case for Clinton-- though if you don’t like her foreign policy, you won’t like it.
2 Likes
[quote=“Drew_G, post:928, topic:72574, full:true”]
Why, exactly? What makes you have any strong feelings about her at all as opposed to indifference?[/quote]
I don’t have strong feelings; I don’t “quite like her”, for example. She simply reminds me of people from my life I know and like. For example, I enjoy the way she speaks, especially the flavor of her snarkiness, which manages to be less hateful than Trump’s sarcasm but just as biting.
1 Like
This is partly just the New Yorker. They tend to go on about things like details of the room they met the person in, how they arrived at the interview, childhood memories evokes by the scent of the person, etc. The tangent they chose for Clinton, however, was indeed very gendered.
And I wonder how much of my dislike of Clinton is gendered. Then again, I don’t like Bill Clinton, I don’t like Obama. I kind of like Al Gore but I like angry Al Gore who emerged a few years after he lost the presidency, I have no reason to think I’d like Gore the president if he had won instead.
I liked Clinton at the Benghazi hearings, she was fantastic. I just feel like she’s a late adopter on every good idea (really a middle-of-the-pack adopter, it’s just that it feels very late to me).
I don’t like her foreign policy, but I think the article cast a positive light on her. She’s taken a lot of stupid positions, but I vastly prefer someone who takes stupid positions after careful consideration of who might be harmed by them and an effort to minimize that harm than someone who automatically takes stupid positions based on their commitment to being stupid.
7 Likes
I am sure you are aware that, Debbie Wassermann Schultz is history.
Here is one article about a press release from the CBC’s .gov website.
March 9, 2015 Press Release
WASHINGTON, D.C. -Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) Co-Chairs Reps. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ) and Keith Ellison (D-MN), Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus G. K. Butterfield (D-NC), Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) Linda Sánchez (D-CA), and Chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC) Judy Chu (D-CA) sent a letter last week to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray calling for a strong national standard for payday loans.
The text of the letter is below and a PDF copy can be found here…
Funny comment today from Hillary Clinton about Donald Trump.
…“He’s written a lot of books about business, but they all seem to end at Chapter 11,” Clinton said in a clear dig at Trump’s four corporate bankruptcies. “Just like he should not have his finger on the button, he should not have his hands on our economy.”…
4 Likes
The best argument for voting for Hillary I’ve seen to date. Notice that “Trump might win” is largely unnecessary to the analysis.
The interview is long, but the relevant bit starts very shortly after some formalities and about a minute of discussing Ann Coulter:
I’m not sure that it convinces me, but I’m just saying that if there’s a path to convincing me, mentioning Nader in 2000 isn’t the way to do it.
2 Likes
[Bernie Sanders says he will vote for Hillary Clinton to defeat Donald Trump] (http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/bernie-sanders-vote-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-president-1.3650624)
1 Like
