Tag: Political Analysis

What Do I Believe?

The clock is ticking….about 30 days before we vote.

It is that time again….we will elect our next president and I will be giving my thoughts on their policies and ideas…..about 17 years ago I wrote a piece explaining where I am coming from on the political front….this will help the reader understand where I am in my political views.

Professor, What Do You Believe In?

I guess to some this will put me in the Left column and since I think the two political parties are nothing more the corruptible cogs in a financial machine very few of my thoughts will champion either side.

I hope this will clarify any confusion the reader may have.

Choose your vote wisely for the country depends on you.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Harris/Trump Comparisons

+++I regret that this may be my only post today for I have a round of doctor’s visits starting rather early….I will check back whenever I have a free moment….hopefully I will be back tomorrow.+++

This is an IST FYI post…..

The election looms large and now would be a good time to look at a comparison of the two camps on policies that are shaping this vote.

Time to learn the issues and stop leaning on a worthless social media site for your decision.

Keep in mind this is a very simplistic analysis and if further info is needed go to their websites for that info….

We will begin with the Harris camp….

Student loan debt and medical debt

  • Harris is adamant that medical debt should not count toward consumer’s credit reports. She has also said she is “committed to continuing to relieve the burden of medical debt,” and praised North Carolina’s move to abolish the debt of 2 million residents.

Climate goals

  • Harris was staunchly anti-fracking and called for a federal ban on the oil and gas extraction process during her 2020 presidential bid, but in the years since she has become more lenient. She claims that she no longer wants to ban the process, but has yet to elaborate on her energy plans for the future.

Health Care

Price gouging in medicine is so prevalent that dozens of television shows have used the open secret for material. The Biden-Harris administration started capping drug prices for life-saving medicine like insulin in 2023, and made vaccines available at no cost with the Inflation Reduction Act. The plan has saved senior citizens an estimated $1.5 billion in its first year, by allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices.  

Border and Immigration

  • Harris has been working to increase funding along the Mexico border for several years now, and has overseen diplomatic efforts with Central America. Under her watch, a crackdown on asylum claims was implemented and is expected to continue. Her border plans include increased funding for ICE, tighter policy to limit migrant surges, more border security in the form of increased border patrols, and more detention beds in facilities to house more asylum seekers.

Abortion access

  • America has the highest maternal death rate of any developed country, and Harris has endeavored to bring attention to the elevated death rate of women of color for decades. She was the first vice president to give a speech at a Planned Parenthood Clinic, and went on a “fight for reproductive freedoms tour in 2024 to oppose the “extreme attacks throughout America.”

Foreign Policy

  • While Harris has expressed “serious concerns” over the civilian deaths in Gaza, she has declared “unwavering commitment” to supporting Israel. She has emphasized the need to free the Israeli hostages from Hamas custody and has emphasized the need for Israel to vacate Gaza once a ceasefire and a “permanent end to the hostilities” is struck.
  • Harris is fully behind the Ukrainian efforts to oust Russia’s invasion. She has met with President Zelenskyy to discuss energy assistance, humanitarian needs, and securing weapons and other resources. She believes not helping Ukraine bolsters Russia’s assets and has sworn to stay in NATO saying, “NATO is the greatest military alliance the world has ever known.”

Police funding

Economy

  • Harris aims to remove the tax on tips, pledges not to raise taxes on those making less than 400k a year, and is expected to release her proposed tax cut plan for the middle class soon. She has opened investigations into big grocery chains like Kroger to assess price gouging, and has a 3-section plan to address the lack of affordable housing across the country.

Now we move on to Donald Trump’s policies (or so they are stated at this point in the cycle)….

Economy

  • Trump wants to eliminate taxes on tips as well as social security. He has called for 10-20% tariffs on imports from all countries aside from China, for which he proposes a 60% tariff.
  • He wishes to expand on the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and has promised tax cuts for people of all income levels and businesses. Trump is also focused on grocery prices and has promised an executive order to “defeat inflation.”

Climate goals

  • Trump aims to open federal land, like state parks, for housing construction and oil and gas exploration. He intends to “unleash American energy” by dismantling the Green New Deal and investing in more oil, gas, diesel, and electricity by tapping into America’s “God-given abundance of Oil, natural gas, and clean coal.”

Trump claims that climate change is a hoax, and is staunchly pro-deregulation when it comes to the environment. He intends to withdraw from the “unfair” Paris Climate Agreement and is anti-clean energy, often complaining about wind turbines.

Crime

  • Trump promises to increase police funding, hire new officers, and retrain existing police forces. He intends to dispatch the National Guard into “high crime communities,” and imprison violent offenders and career criminals behind bars indefinitely.
  • Trump will “defend Law and Liberty” by defending the Second Amendment and upholding religious freedoms including the right to pray in public schools. He intends to appoint as many “constitutionalist” judges as he can.

Foreign policy

  • Trump wants to expand military spending, rehire “every patriot who was unjustly fired,” and install a state-of-the-art missile defense shield. He has broadly promised to “restore our standing in the world and American leadership abroad,” and calls for an “end to globalism and an embrace of patriotism.”

Military

  • In addition to the National Guard changes mentioned above, Trump intends to continue with the work his administration started in 2016. He claims to have enhanced veterans’ healthcare choices and expanded mental health access, but Millitary.com paints another picture. He has no concrete ideas for how he will continue to help veterans.

Domestic policy

  • Trump is a hard-core advocate of free speech and promises to punish any federal agency that tries to infringe upon the right. He promises landmark legislation to limit social media platforms from restricting free speech.
  • He intends to reform election laws by limiting state and local officials from making changes, banning “unsecured drop boxes and ballot harvesting,” and by banning private money in local elections.

Trump will “drain the swamp” by imposing congressional term limits, banning taxpayer-funded campaigns, and banning members of Congress from becoming lobbyists or trading stocks.

  • Trump will “drain the swamp” by imposing congressional term limits, banning taxpayer-funded campaigns, and banning members of Congress from becoming lobbyists or trading stocks.

Healthcare

  • Trump’s healthcare plans involve stopping all COVID mandates and “restoring medical freedom,” an end to surprise billing by implementing transparent pricing and reducing the price of prescription drugs and health insurance premiums. He claims that he “will always protect Medicare, Social Security, and patients with pre-existing conditions.”
  • Trump has remained mostly ambiguous when it comes to abortion, but he has promised to limit access to the abortion pill mifepristone. He outsources much of his abortion stances to his advisers, who have spearheaded the campaign against a woman’s right to choose.

(wegotitcovered.com)

Like I stated earlier….very simplistic but a good primer if you are still scratching your head on who to cast a vote for in November.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Election Day 2022

This is a breakdown done by the site fivethirtyeight.com gives a look at what could be the ‘spoilers’ for the mid-terms…..

Election Day, the FiveThirtyEight forecast has numbers that won’t surprise anyone who’s been following political coverage. The site gives Republicans an 83% chance of taking the House and a 54% chance of taking the Senate. The site’s Nate Silver, however, runs through three points that will go a long way in determining how Tuesday actually plays out.

  • Polling errors: Pollsters generally don’t have a great track record of late, and if they’re off in either direction, the implications are huge. If Republicans beat their polling averages by 3 points, they’re a virtual lock to take the Senate, writes Silver. If, on the other hand, it’s Democrats who beat their averages by 3 points, things are “very rosy” for them. They’d likely keep the Senate and possibly the House, too. Might the polls be biased against either Republicans or Democrats? Yes and yes.
  • Turnout gap: If the polls are accurate, then everything comes down to turnout and to which party has done the better job of energizing their voters. Republicans have generally led on this front (not unusual for the party looking to reclaim power), but some major polls this week suggest that Democrats have narrowed if not closed the “enthusiasm gap.” The size of the actual gap on Election Day—ranging, say, from a 6-point gap favoring Republicans to a 1-point gap favoring Democrats—will have big consequences.
  • Candidate quality: Republicans should be in a better position in regard to the Senate. “If all races went according to the national environment plus the state’s partisan lean,” we might be looking at a 54-46 Senate in favor of Republicans. But some “relatively weak” candidates have given Democrats a chance. “The GOP may well pay a price for its inexperienced, unpopular and in some cases scandal-plagued candidates,” writes Silver. “Just how much of one could determine which party winds up with Senate control.”
  • Read the full assessment, in which Silver acknowledges that “nobody in the polling or election forecasting community has any right to be all that confident about what will happen on Tuesday.”

Few more thoughts for this important day….

There have been multiple warnings in recent days that polling errors and other wildcards could result in midterm election surprises—nonetheless, the final ratings offered by Sabato’s Crystal Ball on the day before Election Day will likely surprise no one. The ratings out of the University of Virginia Center for Politics predict a GOP net gain of one Senate seat, resulting in a 51-49 Republican Senate, and a GOP net gain of 24 House seats, resulting in a 237-198 Republican House of Representatives. As for governorships, the prediction is a net gain of one for Republicans, resulting in a gubernatorial count of 29-21 Republican

A number of closely-watched races have swapped columns: The Raphael Warnock-Herschel Walker Senate race in Georgia started out as a toss-up but is now in the “leans Republican” column. The Arizona gubernatorial race made the same switch. The John Fetterman-Dr. Mehmet Oz race to fill an open Senate seat in Pennsylvania was initially “leans Democrat” and has shifted to “leans Republican.” As for those aforementioned “wildcards,” the site notes that its prediction is the best Democrats can hope for is a night that’s “good but not necessarily great” for Republicans. Politico, in its own final election forecast, has the battle for House control as “likely Republican” but puts the Senate in the “toss-up” column. But the Hill notes that in its final forecast, the Cook Political Report shifted the Senate toward Republicans.

I will be traveling around my area to polling stations to see what is happening…..

Please exercise your right to vote and do so that will make this a stronger and better nation.

Tomorrow may well be a new day!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Wanna Be An Expert Poll Analyst?

It is that time in the political cycle when polls are a daily occurrence…..this is how the system makes people think about voting and the candidates…..

But how can all these polls be read and understood?

I can help you with that and at the same time I can be the FYI blog……this is the suggestions from fivethirtyeight.com…..

Check the pollster’s track record. Some pollsters have long-standing reputations for accuracy, and others are more error-prone. You can check which are which using the FiveThirtyEight pollster ratings, which assign (most) pollsters a letter grade based on their historical accuracy and whether they follow best practices in their methodologies. In our view, the “gold standard” of polling methodology is using live phone interviewers, calling cell phones as well as landlines, and participating in the American Association for Public Opinion Research’s Transparency Initiative or the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research archive.2 These gold-standard polls tend to be the most accurate, although there are exceptions — some online pollsters, like YouGov, are quite reliable as well. If a pollster doesn’t show up in our pollster ratings, it’s probably new on the scene, which means you should treat it with more caution because it doesn’t have an established track record we can judge; at worst, it might even be fake. (If you’re not sure if a pollster is trustworthy and want us to do some investigating, feel free to email us at polls@fivethirtyeight.com.)

  • Avoid comparisons between pollsters. Anytime you see a new poll, check to see what the pollster said previously before declaring that the race has shifted. Some pollsters consistently overestimate one candidate or party relative to what other pollsters find, a phenomenon called “house effects.” Similarly, especially for non-horse-race polls, pollsters often word the same questions in different ways — for example, asking someone’s opinion about “Obamacare” can yield different results from asking about “the Affordable Care Act” — which makes direct comparisons difficult.
  • Note who’s being polled. For elections, polls of likely voters tend to be more accurate than polls of registered voters, which in turn tend to be more accurate than polls of adults. That said, many pollsters won’t start surveying likely voters until the fall, and registered-voter polls are perfectly good substitutes until then — just be aware that the results may be a few points too Democratic. And polls of adults have their place too — such as when you want to know how the entire nation feels about something, like the coronavirus.
  • Pay attention to the margin of error. Reputable polls will always include a margin of error or confidence interval — it’ll look something like “± 3 points.” This reflects that polls can’t be exact, but they do promise to be within a certain number of percentage points (in this example, 3 points) almost all of the time (the industry standard is 95 percent of the time). In practical terms, that means that if a poll puts President Trump’s approval rating at 42 percent with a 3-point margin of error, his approval rating could be anything from 39 percent to 45 percent. Note that, in head-to-head polls, the margin of error applies to each candidate’s vote share, so if the same poll gave Trump 46 percent and gave former Vice President Joe Biden 51 percent, Trump could actually be leading 49 percent to 48 percent. (Though he could also be trailing with 43 percent to Biden’s 54, or fall anywhere in between those extremes.)
  • Consider the source. Partisan groups, or even campaigns themselves, will sometimes release their own polls, but of course, they have an ulterior motive in doing so: Make their side look good. On average, these “internal polls” tend to be about 4 or 5 percentage points too favorable to their sponsor, so don’t take them at face value. Be extra skeptical of internal polls that don’t release full methodological details, like the name of the pollster or the dates of the poll. Similarly, partisan media outlets may exaggerate their side’s standing by extensively covering good polls for their candidate while ignoring bad ones. Even mainstream news outlets can mislead, albeit in a different way: They may be tempted to overhype polls they conduct themselves (e.g., calling it a “shock poll” even if it’s not that shocking) in order to get clicks.
  • If a poll has an odd result, there might be a reason for it. Check the poll’s wording — is it accurate and unbiased? For example, some campaigns will release polls showing their candidate doing better after respondents hear a positive statement about them. Check when the poll was conducted; the survey may reflect an outdated reality or have been taken after some major event (e.g., a major military victory) that temporarily swayed public opinion. Even something as basic as the order in which questions are asked can affect the results; for example, if a poll is mostly focused on immigration but then asks about the presidential matchup, respondents may subconsciously choose the candidate they feel is best on immigration, not necessarily whom they support overall.
  • That said, don’t try to outguess or “unskew” the polls. People who pick apart a poll by claiming it has, say, too many Democrats or too few black voters in its sample are generally wasting their time (and they usually have an agenda). Polls are almost always weighted to match their target population’s demographics, such as race and age. This doesn’t mean all pollsters assign weights in the same way, though, and there are practices like weighting by education on which the industry is split. Not weighting by education likely contributed to some of the most consequential polling errors of 2016, and many pollsters have now begun to factor education into their weighting, but others are still holding out. In an era when graduating from college has a significant bearing on white people’s political preferences, we recommend putting more stock in polls that weight by education than those that don’t. (On the other hand, weighting by partisanship, an idea that’s received some attention lately, is dicey3 and not something most pollsters do. That’s because party identification, unlike many demographic traits, is fluid, so setting it as a constant risks predetermining the poll’s outcome.)
  • Heed averages, not outliers. If a poll’s result differs from every other poll, treat it with caution. Although an outlier poll can sometimes represent the beginning of a new trend (especially after a major event like a debate), they’re usually just flukes. Instead, we recommend looking at an average of the polls, which will more accurately reflect the polling consensus.
  • In the aggregate, polls are pretty accurate but not perfect. Since 2000, polls of presidential general elections taken within 21 days of Election Day have a weighted average error4 of 4.0 points. (Polls of Senate, House and gubernatorial races have slightly higher historical error.) That means you can trust the polling average to get pretty close to the final result, but it will rarely nail the election exactly. When an election is close enough that a normal-sized polling error could change who wins, prepare yourself for either outcome.
  • Polls are snapshots, not predictions. Even if a poll is a perfectly accurate measure of what would happen if the election were held today, things can always change between now and Election Day. Early general-election polls have been pretty predictive in the last few presidential elections, but with huge uncertainty surrounding major issues like the coronavirus pandemic and economic crisis, we don’t know if that will hold true this year. In general, polls gradually become more accurate the closer you get to the election.

Follow these steps set up by fivethirtyeight.com and you too can be an expert and political analysis.

If you would like the article to check my post……https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-to-read-2020-polls-like-a-pro/

The most important one is the last one…..polls are a snapshot……not a prediction……but yet the media reads so much into the polls…..makes for good and continuous speculation.

Look at this week…Biden is winning by far in the national polls…..which is good news if you are Biden supporter….but is it all that good?

The respected stats site FiveThirtyEight.com is out with its first batch of polling averages for the presidential election, and it’s good news for Joe Biden—at least on the surface. Biden is up 50.5% to 41.3% nationally, and he also leads in nearly all the swing states. But Nate Silver points out that Biden’s lead in many of those swing states is not as great as it is in the national polls. In Minnesota, for example, Biden is up by 6.6 points, less than his 9.2-point margin nationally. The upshot: If the polls tighten, Trump could again lose the popular vote but win via the Electoral College.

“While a Biden landslide is possible if he wins all these swing states, so is a Trump Electoral College victory, depending on which way the race moves between now and November,” writes Silver. At Politico, Steven Shepard writes about another issue that may favor Trump: the unreliability of state polls. The Trump campaign maintains that polls this year, as in 2016, are underestimating the president’s support. And the campaign “has a point,” writes Shepard. One example: People with more education are more likely to fill out these surveys, and they’re also more likely to vote Democratic. But the polls again may be undercounting others, particularly lower-income white voters who favor Trump.

You are now capable of reading polls and getting the most information out of them without the use of your favorite news media…..try it you may just like it.

Plus do not trust all the polls….do your own research and pick a candidate from knowledge and information not some popularity contest.

Think 2016 and just how badly all the polls were in predicting the outcome.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

“Illiberal” Democracy On The Horizon

I know there is lots of speculation about the direction of this country now and in the future.

First of all…”Illiberal”…against liberal principles(that is the political philosophy not some political party)…..

Personally I feel that this nation is approaching this tipping point for it has already begun….

Consider the following:

  • A coordinated mobilization of armed militias threatens elected officials in Democratic states, with open White House backing;
  • The most powerful member of the national legislature interferes in judicial appointments to gain his party permanent dominance over this branch of government;
  • A top official who has admitted his guilt in a major breach of national security is released from prosecution by the nation’s chief judicial officer.

The biggest threat to our republic is the loss of an independent judiciary…….

For good reason, many people will snort at the notion that the U.S. has ever lived up to the core premises of liberal democracy: the rule of law applied equally to all citizens; majority rule through free and fair elections. As the author of “Why the United States is Not a True Democracy, Parts 1 and 2,” I can hardly disagree! Majorities do not rule in this country. Basic citizenship rights, whether the right to vote or to be secure in one’s own person, are routinely violated by local and state governments.

But it could get much worse if Trump wins again. In a second Trump administration, with Republicans controlling the Senate and the federal court system, it is more than possible that the U.S. will move sharply towards illiberal democracy.

An “Illiberal Democracy” if Trump Wins Again

And there is a way to fight this possible coming storm….but not as long as the people are too goddamn lazy to look beyond their news organization….those the echo their biases and hatreds.

Look beyond the “divide and conquer” mentality of ignorance.

It is hard to see the signal amid the noise in the best of times, but the everyday chatter is especially difficult to comprehend in times of war, disaster, and infectious outbreak. Imagine a game of broken telephone with billions of speed-of-light internet connections – chances are the message will look nothing like the original at the other end, touched up by systemic misfirings and our own bias. But can we separate truth from pixie dust, fact from fiction? Can any of us agree if the sky is or is not falling?

To Divide and Conquer: Science, News, and Hate in the Age of Instant Media

But not to worry there are some Americans that want this so they can discriminate…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Time To Redefine!

As we get closer to the election in 2020 the MSM will continue to define the candidates as Left or Right and in some cases Centrists…l.all this defining is just a ploy to drive the conversation and to define the country politically as they see fit.

I am what use to be called a “Hard Leftist” and some people call Trump a Rightist and people like Biden as a “Centrist”…..all this needs a redefining program….none of the old definitions are accurate in these troubling times.

One of the most persistent—and destructive—myths in politics is that America is a center right country politically.  It is reinforced by both parties, the press, and pundits and it has become generally accepted by much of the public.  This myth explains why folks warn against going too far to the left; about the dangers of embracing—gasp—”socialism,” and why most attempts to divine the “electability” of the multitude of candidates in the Democratic race are misguided at best.

For example, from the center right, New York Times columnist and NPR commentator David Brooks said:

According to a recent Gallup poll, 35 percent of Americans call themselves conservative, 35 percent call themselves moderate and 26 percent call themselves liberal. The candidates at the debates this week fall mostly within the 26 percent. The party seems to think it can win without any of the 35 percent of us in the moderate camp, the ones who actually delivered the 2018 midterm win.

First of all, any objective analysis of the 2018 midterms shows it was progressive candidates and voters who delivered the win.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/07/03/its-time-redefine-left-right-and-especially-center-us-politics

I agree this redefining is needed….I hate that moderates are calling themselves progressive these days and fascists are calling themselves conservative.

As a lifelong “Leftist” I despise the comparisons the media and ill-informed bloggers makes these days……they are defining who YOU are and you are allowing them to do so.

NOT ME!

Time to stand up for who you are!

“lego ergo scribo”

We Need New Rules Of Engagement

This is not my take on something foreign policy or one of our many wars….but rather the pundits on the Tube that are doing everything but what we need them to do.

I am an old fart and I always believed that the media should be neutral and give all sides to a story….I was naive back in my early informative years.  Even before corporations could own media outlets (thanx Bill Clinton) outlets were controlled by corporations through advertising dollars….now they just own them outright and their bias is f*cking obvious.

I am think that most pundits are soulless assholes that their principles are for sale to the highest bidder….that is NOT what this post is about…..

Nope!  This opinion is about these pundits, no matter which network they work for, hawking their books and personal appearances…..book signings, band dates, speeches and seminars…..plus most have reverted to their days in Congress….that is work 3 days off 4 with long breaks in between their non-work.

This crap has nothing to do with the news of the day…..pushing their personal books or those of the parents is sad and disgusting.  Pushing their seminars is also.

If they need these things to supplement their pay then maybe they should step back and look at their expenditures….or re-negotiate their very lucrative appearance contracts.

Then there is the subject of the Summer…..that of electability….who can best beat Trump……in other words screw principles it is about the win not the nation.

What is being said about the Great Lie of Electability…….https://lobotero.com/2019/07/16/electability-the-lie-that-keeps-on-giving/

All that aside…..there are a wealth of ambitious proposals from every candidate…..the problem I have is they never tell me how they will set about getting these plans through the blockade in DC.

Then there is the lying toad of the DNC, Tom Perez, who tells how they try to protect the Dem candidates…and yet they spend millions protect Biden and not so much the other candidates.

We need to get the big money trolls out of the DNC….the Clintonians.

No one acknowledges the partisan crap that is the nation’s capital……no wants to admit that promises are just hollow words thrown at the voter during elections.

When one of these candidates has a plan for getting these programs into action then I shall give them my vote…..but until then……

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Here Come The Ladies!

2020 will be an interesting election….there will be more women running than ever before. (I will give my analysis a bit later in the post)

Advocates for gender equality are reckoning with what one called a “wonderful challenge”—four or more women running for president in 2020, the AP reports. To many activists, that means a field more reflective of a party that counts women as a crucial voting bloc. But the prospect of multiple women in the race also presents obstacles, with no single candidate holding a claim to women’s votes to the degree Hillary Clinton did in 2016. The women’s vote, and groups that provide financial and grassroots support, could split. Looming over it all is persistent gender bias and the question of whether Americans are ready to elect a female president. “We do realize there’s still sexism in this country, and what we’re trying to do is change minds,” says EMILY’s List President Stephanie Schriock, whose group aids the campaigns of Democratic women supporting abortion rights.

In the early days of the Democratic primary, leaders of many advocacy organizations are thrilled that so many women are seeking the presidency, but are not backing any particular candidate. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren last month became the first woman to launch a presidential exploratory effort, joined shortly afterward by New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. Sens. Kamala Harris of California and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota also are considering running. Among those candidates, Gillibrand is particularly vocal in invoking her gender as a driver of her campaign, while Warren’s campaign has emphasized economic inequity. So is gender still a problem for candidates? “Because there are so many women running, it doesn’t totally inoculate women from sexism, but it does provide some guardrails,” says a gender-equality activist.

(Amy has weighed in after this draft was written)

I think it is great that so many women are running but that does not mean that I think any would make a good president.

Warren…a populist message but I am not convinced that she is all that progressive.

Amy…..corporate shill

Kamala……resume padder

Gillibrand….another Clinton-esque corporate shill

Tulsi……seems to be a true progressive and an antiwar person (she is the closest to an antiwar candidate so this will probably get my vote)

Did I forget anyone?

Let us not forget a passing word for the men running…..

Castro……a DNC construct…..too ambitious

Booker…..a media savvy and a corporate shill….a made for TV candidate.

Some guy with a name NO ONE can pronounce….who knows?

And for God sake do not forget the media favorite….BETO!

I am sure there is more to come and my worthless analysis will follow.

Pick a candidate and vote!

The Coming Democratic Candidates

The long awaited 2020 election is speeding to a conclusion…..each month the events seem to speed up….after 700+ days of Trump all eyes look to the next election.

So far we have 4 announced Democratic candidates for the presidency….and more in the wings waiting for the best time to announce….we are doing good we have 4 women, one Hispanic and counting (as they say…whoever “they” are)……

The fun thing is that the Dems in 2020 will look like the GOP field in 2016…crowded…and some good ideas will be lost in the rush to the front runner position.

But so far the field has many prospects and all have a track record to run on not like the GOP of old.

For fun the site fivethirtyeight.com has a list of the Dems and how they will be broken down…..I know it is early but it will be fun to see just how accurate the site is this time around.

So for the 2020 Democratic nomination, we’ve resolved to entertain multiple hypotheses about the contest simultaneously. Perhaps the party will decide, and so we should be looking at how much support each candidate has from party elites. Perhaps the candidate most dissimilar to Trump will win, and so we should be evaluating the candidates based on that criteria. Perhaps the primary is just so hard to forecast that you might as well look at the polling, crude as it might be. (It has more predictive power than you might think.)

We’ll see. But we nonetheless think that (despite its mixed success in 2016) the coalition-building model is also a useful tool, especially if we make a few tweaks to how we applied it four years ago.

Just as with the Republicans in 2016, the concept this time around involves considering five key groups of Democratic voters. Here are those groups:

  1. Party Loyalists
  2. The Left
  3. Millennials and Friends
  4. Black voters
  5. Hispanic voters (sometimes in combination with Asian voters)

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-5-key-constituencies-of-the-2020-democratic-primary/

The field keeps expanding and the diversity of the Party will be brought forward…….but is it really a diversified group?

The country wants “new” candidates….we are tired of the same promises and the same lies and the same inaction….we want “new blood” for DC….

A new USA Today national poll shockingly showed that Democratic voters and Democratic leaning independents overwhelmingly prefer “someone entirely new” to any of the current field of potential presidential candidates. This cannot be for lack of choices; there are potentially four times the number of candidates lining up at the starting gate as the most recent Democratic presidential primary.

Yes, this is one poll, but maybe we should refuse to dismiss voter feedback too easily.

Lots of woman announced and some waiting…..but what will this uptick in gender equality could mean to politics…..

Advocates for gender equality are reckoning with what one called a “wonderful challenge”—four or more women running for president in 2020, the AP reports. To many activists, that means a field more reflective of a party that counts women as a crucial voting bloc. But the prospect of multiple women in the race also presents obstacles, with no single candidate holding a claim to women’s votes to the degree Hillary Clinton did in 2016. The women’s vote, and groups that provide financial and grassroots support, could split. Looming over it all is persistent gender bias and the question of whether Americans are ready to elect a female president. “We do realize there’s still sexism in this country, and what we’re trying to do is change minds,” says EMILY’s List President Stephanie Schriock, whose group aids the campaigns of Democratic women supporting abortion rights.

In the early days of the Democratic primary, leaders of many advocacy organizations are thrilled that so many women are seeking the presidency, but are not backing any particular candidate. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren last month became the first woman to launch a presidential exploratory effort, joined shortly afterward by New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. Sens. Kamala Harris of California and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota also are considering running. Among those candidates, Gillibrand is particularly vocal in invoking her gender as a driver of her campaign, while Warren’s campaign has emphasized economic inequity. So is gender still a problem for candidates? “Because there are so many women running, it doesn’t totally inoculate women from sexism, but it does provide some guardrails,” says a gender-equality activist.

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Isolationism? Fascism?

In the days of Hillary and her pundits on the tube we were lead to believe that Trump was an isolationist……those incessant babbling from the pundits and what happened?

It’s nearly impossible to read major newspapers, magazines, or online publications in recent months without encountering a plethora of articles contending that the United States is turning inward and “going alone,” “abandoning Washington’s global leadership role” or “retreating from the world.” These trends supposedly herald the arrival of a new “isolationism.” The chief villain in all of these worrisome developments is, of course, Donald Trump. There is just one problem with such arguments; they are vastly overstated bordering on utterly absurd.

President Trump is not embracing his supposed inner isolationist. The policy changes that he has adopted regarding both security and international economic issues do not reflect a desire to decrease Washington’s global hegemonic status. Instead, they point to a more unilateral and militaristic approach, but one that still envisions a hyper-activist U.S. role.

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/where-trumps-alleged-isolationism-32996

I admit that I do not like many of Trump’s foreign policies but as an analyst I just do not see a lean toward isolationism……just another broken promise?

Then there are those that kept saying that the election of Trump and some of his policies were ushering in a time of fascism in the US……actually the calls for fascism were loudest in Europe from the pundits……what happened?

Were fascism to ascend again in Europe, international security would be menaced and the liberal international order be even more imperilled. However, Europe’s current far-right parties fail to meet the minimum fascist criteria.

Just as the taxonomy of European far-right parties is not settled, there is no unanimously agreed definition of 1930s fascism. Differences over generic fascism or a recognisable fascist ideology punctuate the scholarly literature.

Even the two fascist exemplars, Mussolini’s Italy and Nazi Germany, had important differences as well as similarities. However, the fascist movements that arose after 1918 and their shallow imitators—like Franco’s Spain and the Romanian Iron Guard—can be distinguished from today’s far-right movements.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2018/10/10/fascism_has_not_returned_113881.html

To be honest I could find fascism in the policies of Reagan and both Bush….just as those “people” on the Right want to find aspects of the Dems that they think smacks of socialism…..

These two stories were nothing more than sensationalism and speculation that drives the MSM these days….

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