It’s now become the calling card of the Republican presidential candidate to say the entire election process is “rigged.” The same process that took a “new-comer”, “outsider”, “non-political businessman” from his mansion in Manhattan and turned him into a presidential candidate, is now all of a sudden, “rigged!” That rigged system allowed Donald Trump to beat almost 20 seasoned Republican politicians in the nomination process, but now that Trump is behind in all the credible polls in the general election, he and his campaign are crying foul!
According to Trump at a recent campaign event, the system can correct itself if it turns around and works in Trump’s favor again. Trump suggested that he might be hurting himself by saying the system is rigged, because if his supporters show up and vote multiple times for him to win, well, that will be just fine.
During a Saturday campaign stop in Cleveland, Ohio, Donald Trump doubled down on recent claims that the entire election is rigged, including what he baselessly argues is widespread voter fraud against him. In almost the same breath, he jokingly insinuated that his supporters could commit voter fraud to help him win, by illegally casting ballots in several locations.
“Maybe they’ll vote for Trump, I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t be saying that,” he said, shrugging and egging the crowd on. “I may be hurting myself, you’re right. You’re right. Maybe they’re going to vote for Trump. All right, let’s forget that. It’s okay for them to do it.”
The statement came as Trump accused Democrats of relying on votes of undocumented immigrants and dead people. There is no evidence to suggest that either constituency turns up to the polls and votes on election day.
Now that we’ve got some room to breathe a bit until the New York primary hits with full force this week (that’s when the ads will start running), it’s worth looking at the present election season and asking, “Is this democracy?” I’m sure the rest of the world is following the elections and is wondering how the greatest democracy in the world can elect its political leader with such a long, messy, potentially divisive process.
As are many Americans.
The 2016 primaries will, I think, redefine the system we have for a few reasons. The first is the influence of social media. No longer can a candidate say one thing in Arizona, contradict themselves in Massachusetts and say a third idea in Florida and have nobody notice. We are too connected and communication is instantaneous.
The second reason is that many more people are taking part in the primaries, partially due to social media, but mostly due to the issues at stake and the bitter polarization between the parties.
Finally, Donald Trump, love him or not, has made this campaign into his own reality program and no news organization can resist him. But now that we have more voters participating, more citizens are questioning the process, and for good reason.
A look at the primary results so far suggests that both parties lack transparency, and the Republican Party is on course to actually thwart their own system in order to stop Donald Trump from becoming its nominee. On the Democratic side, although Hillary Clinton has a substantial delegate lead, the use of free-floating superdelegates is skewing her lead. These delegates are party elites who can essentially vote for whichever candidate they please, and most of them have pledged themselves to Hillary, although as in 2008, they can always switch their allegiance to Bernie Sanders should he upset her in New York and Pennsylvania. So even though thousands of Democrats have gone to the polls, they’re finding that their democratic will is not being honored.
On the Republican side, superdelegates are not really the problem, as they mostly have to vote as their state did during the primary. The real issue is that the candidate who wins a state primary’s popular vote does not necessarily get all, or even a representative portion of that state’s delegates. This has happened to Trump in Louisiana and Colorado, and threatens to derail his bid for a majority once the GOP Convention starts in July. This also affects Bernie, as Saturday’s Wyoming Caucuses show. He won the most votes, but he and Hillary will get the same number of delegates.
This is why many voters are feeling disenfranchised, despite their being able to cast a ballot. In effect, although the Supreme Court just ruled in favor of counting all voters in the latest “one person, one vote” case, we don’t seem to all have that vote. The Republican Party is risking more because they have come out in favor of doing all that they can to deny Trump the nomination, even if he comes close to having enough delegates. This would fracture the GOP and probably lead to Trump running as an independent, especially if Ted Cuz is the nominee despite not having anywhere near the required delegate majority after the primaries.
The Democrats won’t suffer the same fate, but it would help if Hillary won enough delegates independent of the superdelegate votes. That would at least convince Democrats that their votes had weight.
Nominating contests have traditionally not been expressions of democracy, but now much of the country is paying attention at this early stage. 2020 will look different.
I predict that the global rise in temperature will show a significant decline on Monday as all the hot air bloviators, pollsters, consultants and media talking heads hold their steamy breath as they await the results of the Iowa caucuses. And why shouldn’t they? The numbers all say that Donald Trump will win the caucuses over Ted Cruz, with the rest of the GOP field barely in their rear-view mirror.
And then of course there’s Iowa’s importance as a…as a…mid-western, um, evangelical-heavy, um…white, um…state. That really doesn’t represent much about America except that the Republicans there seem to have fallen for Trump’s snake oil and Cruz’s smarmy insincerity.
Which is why I think the results will likely be different from the media narrative that’s been written since the fall. I could be wrong, and if I am I will say so because I live in New Jersey and from the governor on down to us little folk, we New Jerseyans always tell the truth and admit our failures and flip-flops.
For what it’s worth, I have been saying all along that neither Trump nor Cruz will be the GOP nominee because both their personalities and their policy prescriptions will not appeal to a majority of either party voters or the electorate at large. Trump has been inconsistent in his message on the stump and hasn’t really come up with specific fixes for the economy, foreign policy or constitutional issues mainly because he doesn’t have many. Calling people stupid or losers or saying that he can fix things because he’s a businessman doesn’t inspire confidence. Cruz, likewise, is running to head a government that he doesn’t even respect. He says he knows what the constitution means and the original intent of the framers, but my suspicion is that they would laugh him out of the room for being a presidential pretender at best.
Trump and Cruz are likely to be first and second in Iowa, but I don’t believe that either one will crack 30% of the vote and the big surprise will come from Marco Rubio, and one of Bush or Kasich, who will do far (far) better than what they are polling right now. I think they could approach 20% of the vote, which would instantly put them in line to be seen as the moderate/establishment savior for the party, and the de facto person to beat in New Hampshire.
For the Democrats, Hillary Clinton’s e-mails have reared their ugly heads again and they will have a slight impact on the race, but I think she will still win the caucuses by about 5 percentage points over Bernie Sanders. He’ll likely poll in the high 30s or lower 40s on Monday, and will go into New Hampshire as the favorite to win there, but I don’t think he’ll do that either. Clinton has too much money and more support among minorities for Sanders to mount a national challenge.
After a very long pre-season, it’s time for political junkies everywhere to get their electoral needles ready for the voting binge to come. The fun starts now.
Donald Trump secured the endorsement of Pastor Jerry Falwell Jr. I don’t know why because as far as I know, the pastor should be teaching and preaching about love and compassion, and not the hate mongering shown by Trump and his campaign.
That said, Ted Cruz, a man who can be considered the best panderer in Washington, panders even more for the evangelical vote by going all out Christian.
“I fear for America,” he said. “If we keep on this path there comes a point of no return and my prayer is that this awakening continues, that the body of Christ rise up to pull us back from the abyss.”
After mentioning how campaigning has been “humbling,” Cruz said that “we are going to, together with God’s blessing and grace, pull America back from the abyss and it is this election that makes the difference.” He then urged people who oppose gay marriage and abortion rights to back him in the Iowa caucuses.
The South Carolina Senate has voted and the vote was overwhelming – 37 to 3 in favor of removing the confederate flag from Statehouse grounds in the state!
“We now have the opportunity, the obligation to put the exclamation point on an extraordinary narrative of good and evil, of love and mercy that will take its place in the history books,” said Sen. Tom Davis, R-Beaufort.
Lawmakers had largely ignored the flag until the killing of nine black people during a Bible study at a historic African-American church on June 17.
Well, yes and no. Aren’t all presidential elections the most important election in history? It certainly feels that way, especially if you listen to the media buzz that emanates every four years. The future of the country is at stake. The direction of our foreign and domestic policies will be set by the voters in this election.
So it shall be in 2016, but this time there is some truth to the hype. We’ve just witnessed a few Supreme Court decisions that have profoundly changed the country’s political and social landscape. We are still suffering from the after-effects of the Great Recession. Race has roared back as a flashpoint issue. The world situation is critical (as it always seems to be). And by the end of this month, we’ll likely have over 20 people who’d like to run this government formally declare their intention to do so. Impressive. Or foolish.
Right now I would say that the edge in the race has to go to the Democrats, if for no other reason than they have a clear front-runner in Hillary Clinton and control of the electoral college map. The Republicans are far more split than the left and the remnants of the Tea Party are forcing some of the more moderate candidates to run farther to the right than they’d like. Of course, Bernie Sanders might have that impact on Clinton, forcing her to the left, but she has the advantage of being a known quantity for the past two decades. In addition, more of the Republican candidates are nationally known than are Martin O’Malley and Jim Webb, which means that it will be more difficult for their messages to find daylight.
The Republicans will have the burden to show that they can run the country more effectively than President Obama has during his term. The problem is that more Americans favor the Democratic position on most major issues. Most of the GOP candidates have come out against the court’s marriage equality ruling and want to enact religious freedom laws to protect those people who oppose that decision. These laws might be popular in certain states, but when Indiana tried to enact such a law in March, it met with intense opposition from the business community, the NCAA, and other groups who are committed to a diverse educational and workplace environment. Plus, moderates favor marriage equality, and the GOP will need those voters in key states if it wants to win next November. Rolling back the major civil rights issue of our day will likely be a self-inflicted wound from which the Republican Party will not likely recover.
The same is true, to a lesser extent, on the issues of health care and immigration. The American public is still split on whether the ACA is good policy, but most people want the law to be fixed, not repealed. That the Supreme Court saved the law will provide fundraising fodder for the right, but the GOP cannot afford to take health insurance away from those who already have it under the exchanges. They have floated a fix, but it would repeal the personal mandate, and that would cause havoc because those premiums are keeping the law afloat. And the health care industry is changing so rapidly because of the law that companies and hospitals would probably oppose anything that cuts into their profits or practices. Remember that the ACA was based on conservative principles. The GOP should recognize that. If they can’t find a way to fix the law, they might find that public opinion turns more to the left, and towards a public health care system that’s the dream of most Democrats.
Donald Trump notwithstanding, the Republicans have a big problem when it comes to immigration. Any candidate that echoes Mitt Romney’s “self deportation” policy in 2016 will lose badly. Marco Rubio supports an immigration plan that is more progressive than the other candidates and he’s paying for it by losing support among conservatives. One of the candidates is going to have to convince the faithful that a new immigration law is in the best interests of the party and the country. That candidate will then have chance at winning the general election.
The Democrats have their own problems because they can’t run too far away from President Obama, but they can’t be too close either. Americans like the idea of more forceful environment action, but don’t like executive orders. They want higher wages and less income inequality, but don’t want higher taxes or government regulation of the economy. And I suspect that most people don’t want the government to punish banks, as Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have advocated.
The Republicans need to present a more positive message to the country about what they’re going to do if elected, not continue to be against everything that the Democrats are for. They have to realize, as the Democrats did in the 1980s, that their policies are not connecting with enough voters for them to win a national election. This election, though, like most, will be fought on economic and security grounds. Again, the GOP is on the defensive as they are seen as the protectors of the wealthy and against spending on infrastructure, public education, and health issues. An arch conservative, like an arch liberal, will not win in 2016. Pragmatism and a vision to move us forward will.
Because this is the most important election of them all.
If the sentiments expressed in this article in the New York Times today is any indication, then the Democrats are in deep trouble in the November Senate elections. President Obama still has his fans, but even people who voted for him are losing some faith that he can lead the country out of its present political torpor in the last two years of his term. His opponents, and at this point there are more than ever, are downright gleeful at the thought of having the GOP take both houses of Congress, though they do express frustration and anger at his failures.
RealClearPolitics is being a bit coy about it, but most of the recent polling gives the Republicans leads in the states they need to win to take control of the chamber. The same is true over at Electoral-Vote, except the Votemaster is not being coy at all and is saying at this point that the GOP will claim at least 52 seats after the elections. And even over at the Princeton Election Consortium the news for Democrats is not positive, with the prognostication currently calling for 51 Republicans come January.
Does this mean that it’s over? Not at all. Democrats famously under-perform in midterm election polling and there’s still a half-month to go before the votes are counted. President Obama has lent his also famous get-out-the-vote apparatus to the national party and most polling organizations make an assumption that the electorate in 2014 will look a lot like that of 2010. If that’s true, then the GOP will win. If not, and more of the Democrats’ constituents come out to vote, then there will be many surprises on election night.
The mood of the country will have a good deal to do with the outcome, and right now the Republicans have the upper hand. Of course, they are running on the fear of Ebola and ISIS, which they are convinced will both run through the United States over the next couple of weeks. It also doesn’t help that the seats the Democrats have to defend are in mostly red states.
If the Republicans win this year, then payback will most likely come during a more favorable cycle for Democrats in 2016. In the meantime, look for Congress to try to repeal the ACA, continue to investigate Benghazi, fortify the Mexican border against terrorists, and lower taxes on the wealthy.
Senator Elizabeth Warren has been on the campaign trail recently, trying to get as many Democrats elected in Congress as she possibly can. And with the midterm elections just around the corner, Warren is calling on other women voters to go to the polls and make a difference.
“If you don’t have a seat at the table, you’re probably on the menu,” Warren told the largely female audience at an event on Monday for Emily’s List, a group supporting pro-choice candidates nationally. “Washington works for those who have power. And no one gives up power easily, no one…Nobody’s just going to say ‘women have arrived and let’s just move over’…We have a chance but we have to fight for it.”
Warren went onto urge donors to specifically vote for candidates in tough reelection campaigns, including Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Kay Hagan (D-N.C). Their opponents are former senator Scott Brown and GOP candidate Thom Tillis, respectively.
I came across this article by Fred Barnes in The Weekly Standard because I happened to be trolling around right wing sites and thought he had a provocative, interesting idea. I also found a site that castigated Progressives for Palin Derangement Syndrome. You know, that knee-jerk negative reaction the left has whenever Palins’s name comes up. The author seemed to suggest that those on the left were offended by Palin’s obvious feminism and suggested that the left loved women’s rights and opinions, but not Palin’s. Especially when she was shown shooting a gun. What the author missed is that Sarah Palin just sounds uninformed whenever she speaks. I have plenty of respect for her as a woman, as a mother, as someone who wanted to serve the people of Alaska. I just happen to disagree with every single word she utters. Nothing more, nothing less.
But I digress.
Fred Barnes wants the GOP to Go Big or Go Home, hence the title of my response. He says that if only the Republicans would advocate abolishing the IRS and a stronger, more muscular foreign policy, then they would win the hearts and minds of the American people. He does say that these positions might not win the GOP the Senate this fall, but would provide a template for action that the party could run on in 2016.
The problem is that most Americans do not want to get rid of the IRS, even though they hate its very guts. Deep down, they understand that if the United States is going to make good on its mission to protect the homeland and the common good, then it will need funds and a means by which to collect them. That’s what the IRS does. What Mr. Barnes should really be advocating is that all the companies that evade U.S. corporate taxes should actually pay up. That might lessen the burden on the overburdened middle class and it might provide more funds for, you know, schools, roads, bridges, job programs and Medicare.
Barnes is not at all specific when he talks about why the country needs a more muscular foreign policy, or even what that looks like. I have a suspicion that it looks like a foreign policy that throws bombs and bullets on people who are either innocent or who already hate us to the point that more bombs and bullets will help their recruiting efforts. But he doesn’t say, so this is all conjecture.
The article is instructive because these positions are precisely why the GOP has only won one big election since 2008, when they took over the House in 2010. Every other election has gone to the Democrats despite the baying from the right that Obama is abusing his power and is wrong on every issue. Clearly, America does not agree with that.
And that’s why the Republicans will not win a majority in the Senate this fall, nor will they win the presidency in 2016.
I was going to name this post, “Laura Ingraham Thinks Black People Voting is Pointless,” but who am I fooling. Laura Ingraham does not think, so the title would have been absurd.
As she filled the seat of Fox’s Bill O’Reilly, who was missing in action, Ingraham focused on the voter registration efforts going on in Ferguson MO., after the murder of unarmed black teen Mike Brown. It is apparently Laura’s thinking (there I go again with the thinking thing) that black people going to the polls to have a say in who gets elected is a divisive act, spearheaded by Democrats to keep senate seats. Nothing else.
“The racists are coming, the racists are coming” Laura says, implying that those words are being used by Democrats to get Blacks to the polls. And she concluded by saying that having back people vote would not stop the next Mike Brown, would not keep black men out of jails or give black people jobs.
Now, besides the obvious racism in Laura’s commentary suggesting that black men are jobless convicts with no hope or future, her suggestion that blacks should not vote because their life will remain the same shows her obvious bias and racism. If voting is pointless for blacks and minorities, then shouldn’t we expect similar commentary telling whites to stay home on election day?
Of course that advice to whites will never come, for it is the hope of racists like Laura Ingraham, to keep minorities in the minority. To have them think that voting is silly and trivial, and a waste of their time. Laura Ingraham and all the other Republicans in government know, that the best way to keep minorities in the minority is to take away their right to vote.
At one point in our short history, voting was a right. A right people fought and died for. But thanks to Republicans and their massive voter suppression drives, encouraging people to vote these days is now seen as a crime, a crime that landedTy Turner behind bars on Monday.
The stars of North Carolina’s Moral Mondays movement took the stage on Labor Day at Charlotte’s Marshall Park to condemn the state’s record on voter suppression and racial profiling, and urge the community to organize and turn out at the polls this November. Just a few hundred feet away, police cuffed and arrested local LGBT activist and former State Senate candidate Ty Turner as he was putting voting rights information on parked cars.
“They said they would charge me for distributing literature,” Turner told ThinkProgress when he was released a few hours later. “I asked [the policeman] for the ordinance number [being violated], because they can’t put handcuffs on you if they cannot tell you why they’re detaining you. I said, ‘Show me where it’s illegal to do this.’ But he would not do it. The officer got mad and grabbed me. Then he told me that I was resisting arrest!”
We use cookies to improve your experience on our site. By agreeing to this, we can analyze browsing behavior and unique IDs on this site. Declining or revoking consent may affect certain features.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
