It’s Election Day today, you can smell the aroma of desperation and tea bags in the air.
It will be interesting, this will be the first big reflection of the influence the Republican Extremists, aka, Tea Partiers, have. With the election of Rand Paul and what transpired there, I would think Dems and Progressives are thrilled by the Tea Partiers being in the mix. They are forcing even an old timer “maverick” McCain to subscribe to extremist positions.
Here are a couple of tidbits from a new WAPO/ABC poll:
7. Overall, which party, the (Democrats) or the (Republicans), do you trust to do a better job in coping with the main problems the nation faces over the next few years?
Both Neither
Democrats Republicans (vol.) (vol.) No opinion
6/6/10 44 32 2 18 4
4/25/10 46 32 2 18 3
2/8/10 43 37 2 17 2
24. How do you personally feel about the policies offered by the Republicans in Congress – enthusiastic, satisfied but not enthusiastic, dissatisfied but not angry, or angry?
---------- Positive ---------- -------- Negative -------- No
NET Enthusiastic Satisfied NET Dissatisfied Angry op.
6/6/10 38 3 35 60 44 16 2
11/23/09 34 3 31 61 46 15 5
25. Do you have a favorable or unfavorable impression of the political movement known as the Tea Party? Do you feel that way strongly or somewhat?
------- Favorable ------- ------ Unfavorable ------ No
NET Strongly Somewhat NET Somewhat Strongly opinion
6/6/10 36 17 19 50 25 24 14
3/26/10 41 21 21 39 16 23 20
2/8/10 35 20 15 40 20 20 25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/postpoll_060810.html?sid=ST2010060800022
So, while anti-incumbent fever is at an all time high, those who cool down enough to think about it would, by a meaningful majority, want new Dems to replace their incumbents than Repubs.
And The Tea Party crowd is nosediving in popularity, 50% unfavorable now against 36% favorable.
Sure hope Orly Taitz and other wackjob Tea Partiers win in primaries today, it may spell the death knell of this bogus group.
If you haven’t already, get out there and vote and please share your thoughts on your state and local elections below!
The tea bag partiers need to mix up a new batch of ice tea. the one they are drinking now just doesn’t get it.
The objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand has been totally discredited by one of it’s staunchest proponents. Alan Greenspan. Sure, on a small scale if you allow business to operate in a free unfettered unregulated market, 99.9% of them will do the right thing. But we have moved into the era of the megasized multinational corporatocracy. They have no incentive at all to do the right thing. So how can tea bag partiers talk about personal responsibility while the corporatocracy says, “What, me worry?”
If the public doesn’t get the insanity of the Tea Party now, when in the middle of the corporate-caused worst oil spill in the midst of the worst corporate-caused recession, they want corporations to have more power and be less regulated…than they never will.
Woke up this morning to find the utility-backed proposition that would assure that PG&E and other for-profit generators would have virtually NO challenge from municipally-owned generators is neck and neck. In one Op Ed some solitary guy dismissed all candidates with “everybody lies”. Big money ruled the outcomes on several CA campaigns. In other words – there is a sucker born every minute, and he votes.
How can we reform anything with too many people either NOT voting or voting stupidly in the face of evidence that a given measure or person is not good for them or the society?
My job is to mobilize voters with intelligent reflection on what non-partisan propositions mean. My particular membership does well, I think, but we’re a drop in the bucket – about 2 million out of whatever number is voting.
Was it always this way? I don’t think so. Media has a role in dumbing down the issues and misrepresenting them. One “analysis” in the Sacramento Bee about the utility initiative waited until the very last line to point out the lies. The “analysis” was a screed against government overspending which had nothing at all to do with demanding a 2/3 vote on utility changes – public money or tax money is not spent by municipal utilities to move into new areas. Rather than refuting the utility company lies, the “analysis” more or less supported the impression that taxpayers were being gouged. Not true.
I fear for my state and for our nation with the degree of utter ignorance that is in play. Orly Taitz did NOT win, but the guy who did has voted only once (two years ago) and has not got a clue what the office for which he’s running actually DOES. He thinks he can make rules for voting which, in fact, are up to the Legislature or courts, not to that office of Secretary of State. He’s a Black man demanding now that voters have to show ID at the polls which has been overturned by the courts. Never mind his historical ignorance of barriers to voting that affected whole Black populations and would again. Like Arnold, he thinks what he wants is his to demand. And apparently a whole lot of voters agreed that personal fiat trumps law. Great. Just great.
You know my favorite saying – “you can’t fix stupid” but when Stupid is dominant then you also can’t fix anything else. CA used to be a good place to live, but in many ways it no longer is. Now we’ve adopted the open primary where Big Money will be absolutely essential to name recognition. Thanks for nothing, voters. With the knee jerk reaction that parties are “bad”, we’ve now opened the door to stealth candidates, undue influence, and lack of representation from people we might really want if we paid attention to anything but fluff and glossy PR.
If Stupid wants to defend itself against leadership because it’s been brainwashed, then how will we ever reform the state, bring back democracy, and start living sensibly? If the supermajority vote on the budget engenders gridlock AND illegal vote trades, why do we keep it? Because “they” might get away with something. Don’t know what that something is, but it probably benefits someone other than Stupid – except Stupid doesn’t know what that is, who that is, or what the alternatives are. Buying the Republican mantra – “well, it COULD be true” – as they lie and fearmonger, voters like Stupid keep sucking it up, but we all die because of it.
I am tired and don’t know how much more we can take as a state or I can keep doing as a person. I have great hope from GROW and our possibilities, but the worry I have is – is it too late? I hope not.
Choicelady, I share your disappointment and…well…despair at how corrupt voting has become and how corporations can buy the results in most cases.
Look at Arkansas, where they reduced Halter’s strongest county from 42 to 2 polling places for a county of 80,000 people. And Blanche Lincoln is “the comeback kid”? As, apparently is my ass.
As for CA, the only qualifier I would offer for the messed up results on propositions is that there was very light turnout and even lighter turnout by Dems. The only competitive races were between Republicans, which unfortunately put all of these propositions in the best position to have Republican/Corporate friendly outcomes.
Why did Prop 15 not pass? That is insane. A proposition to reduce corporate financing of elections and control of politicians…and it was opposed more decidedly than allowing power corporations virtual monopolies?
I know you and your colleagues worked hard to get Prop 15 passed. I feel like personally apologizing for all the jerks in this state that voted it down in favor of continued corporate oligarchy.
First Prop 8 and now this. It is astounding to consider the ignorance of far too many who happily vote against their own interests and democracy…because they have committed to following the marching orders of a leader or group.
As I said, I am dismayed but I won’t concede. The false advertising and lies these corps promote help them greatly in undermining our democracy.
With that in mind, after taking a little time to process and work through the results of this election, I think it is only more urgent that GROW moves decisively forward with its goals.
BTW, the PG&E and Mercury Insurance backed initiatives both failed…but by smaller margins than the Fair Elections initiative.
How messed up is that?
I haven’t been on much, as I’m up in Portland/SW Washington with family, and on 2 1/2 year-old nephew babysit watch…
Coming up though, I saw a bumpersticker on a old van in southern Douglas county, Oregon [this is still Jefferson State land]. It said, paraphrasing:
Throw the TERRORISTS in D.C. OUT
I was like, wow. I don’t remember it all but I remember 1) throw the bums out 2) the alarming use of word ‘terrorist’ and 3) D.C. (likely making it a Northwestern-made bumpersticker). It may or may not have had ‘terrorists’ prefixed with ‘Pelosi’. It may have, I was just kinda taken aback, but not incredibly surprised, given what part of Oregon I was in. This was still far away from Eugene and a secluded part (as much as you can be on I-5) of Oregon.
Now, with that, I don’t know how you can’t have an opinion on these people. And I wish I could brush off calling elected politicians terrorists as mere incendiary rhetoric…
By the way, I thought this was brilliant. There’s a consistent stream to this type of thinking:
httpsh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiaI63pBmLs
The vid keeps buffering and suffers from audio breakup Khirad. Can you provide a link – I’d love to watch it!!
The same thing happened to me until I lowered the resolution. Then it ran smoothly.
Thanks dildenusa!
Very funny vid, Khirad 🙂 but it still doesn’t take the scarey out of those bumperstickers.
Completely OT – it’s only just occurred to me that it’s fenders over here and bumpers in the UK – so why do we call them bumperstickers and not fenderstickers? Langauge is peculiar sometimes.
The group I find most annoying is the “no opinion” folks on these surveys. I’m sure I know quite a few of them. They don’t follow what’s going on, don’t care about anything but their little microcosm, and might not even know where the Gulf of Mexico is. I shall not judge, I shall not judge, I shall not judge….
And how about the 20% who approve of BP?
I’ll put the “no opinion” folk in with the “swing voters” who even in 2008, with Bush policies destroying our nation and economy, were undecided between 4 more years of going deeper in the toilet or voting for change.
Yep, really tough decision.
Was it Voltaire that said people get the government they deserve?
When it comes to the good old USA, not enough people vote.
GROW needs to get out the word and register people to vote.
Hispanics are registering as Democrats in Phoenix –
http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/azelections/articles/2010/06/08/20100608arizona-immigration-law-backlash.html
Excellent. Latinos are being politicized by the law. Wouldn’t it be delicious if it backfired and the end result was a slew of new Latino candidates sweeping into office? Hehe.
A friend just forwarded this to me. Sorry I’m too dumb to block quote.
“Arkansas Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter has momentum going into tomorrow’s runoff election against U.S. Senator Blanche Lincoln, but only two polling places will be open in the most populous county Halter carried in the Democratic primary election. TheBlue Arkansas blog has been all over this disturbing story. Garland County has about 80,000 residents, of whom about 12,000 voted at 42 polling places in the Democratic primary on May 18. The Chairman of the Garland County Election Commission, Charles Tapp, is not budging from the decision to open only two polling places in the county for the runoff. That will create obstacles for many voters, especially minoritiesand people in rural areas. On June 4 Tapp promised to open polling stations on the weekend to make it easier for people to vote, but the stations were closed on Saturday. ARDem explains why you should care:
Pulaski County, which Lincoln carried easily on May 18, has about six times the population of Garland but will have about 50 times as many voting locations openon June 8. Blue Arkansas is urging disenfranchised voters to call Lincoln’s campaign, the Garland County Elections Commission, the Arkansas Elections Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice. The White House and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which are backing Lincoln, should also denounce any attempt to suppress the vote in Arkansas and should demand that a sufficient number of polling stations be open statewide tomorrow.”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/6/4/872879/-42-Polling-Places-Shut-Down-to-2-in-Halter-Stronghold-UPDATESuccess!
http://bluearkansasblog.com/?p=2983
My friend just supplied the source.
http://mydd.com/2010/6/7/ar-sen-not-enough-polling-places-in-halter-stronghold-2