Prophylactic

"We have so many people that are trying to position themselves to run for president, I think it's hard to say who is the leader, and there's a lot of angst about that," said Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill yesterday on Meet the Press, the angst stemming from the establishment's worrisome inability to control the process. You wouldn't want someone like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, say, winding up as the nominee, would you?

The political horse race

Democrats for Ohio governor in the news today: Schiavoni, Pillich, Whaley, Sutton, Cordray, Springer... The only question: Who will Win, Place and Show?

The mainstream media never -- never! -- tells us what candidates stand for. We knew far more about Always Dreaming on Derby morning than we'll know about our next governor when we get up on election day.

quote unquote: Adlai Stevenson

In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take. -- Adlai Stevenson

Won't be fooled again?

According to Gallup, 60% of Americans want a third party candidate for 2016. Even so, in the fall of 2016, we will be warned once again (by The Nation, Daily Kos and their ilk) that -- once again -- we must must must vote for the Lesser-of-Two-Evils -- a Wall Street-militarist-security state Democrat -- or face Catastrophe -- a Wall Street-militarist-security state Republican.

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result isn't really the definition of insanity. But it is the definition of stupidity.

See, In U.S., Perceived Need for Third Party Reaches New High: Twenty-six percent believe Democratic and Republican parties do adequate job (Gallup).

2016: Winning

The Daily News reports that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, moving ahead with his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination -- "It's Jeb's turn!" bumper stickers are already at the printers, is meeting with potential donors and lining up support in the downtown Manhattan financial community. Since Hillary Clinton has also been engaged for many months in regular seances in the offices of Goldman Sachs, it's already clear who is not going to lose the 2016 election: Wall Street.

Oh, the humanity

"... all the folks agree that this is terrible, this is one of the worst catastrophes in the world. It's–it's–it's the flames, oh, four- or five-hundred feet into the sky and it ... it's a terrific crash, ladies and

gentlemen. It's smoke, and it's flames now ... and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring-mast. Oh, the humanity and all the passengers screaming around here. I told you, I can't even talk to people whose friends are on there. Ah! It's–it's–it's–it's ... o–ohhh! I–I can't talk, ladies and gentlemen. Honest, it's just laying there, a mass of smoking wreckage. Ah! And everybody can hardly breathe and talk, and the screaming. Lady, I–I'm sorry. Honest: I–I can hardly breathe. I–I'm going to step inside where I cannot see it. Charlie, that's terrible. Ah, ah—I can't. I, listen, folks, I–I'm gonna have to stop for a minute because I've lost my voice. This is the worst thing I've ever witnessed."

Act like a national party

The Democrats should use their pac money for a national congressional campaign; instead of backing a few potential "winners" here and there, they should tie the GOP's reactionary majority to its truly lunatic fringe, turn every vote in the country into a judgement on Republican radicalism, make it clear that you can't have that nice Monica Wehby in Oregon, say, without getting Joni Ernst, the new Republican nominee for Iowa’s Senate seat, who is anti-amnesty for immigrants, hates the Nixon-backed Clean Water Act, and wants to privatize Social Security.

Actually, Monica Wehby doesn't seem that nice, but you get my point.

Impractical Proposal #2,567,043

If white men over 50 are so angry and bitter about not being employable that they're willing to ruin the country, how about this? 

Draft them into the military and dispatch them to the 700 U.S. military garrisons around the world where they can keep busy shooting at people unlike themselves. 

Bring home the able-bodied youth now in uniform, give them educations, and put them to work. 

Good for everybody. 

Win win.

Practical Proposal

Or at least vote from 6 p.m. Friday to 6 p.m. Sunday.

Punditry

Here's a handy list of blogs edited by The Economist:

• Analects | China
• Americas view | The Americas
• Babbage | Science and technology
• Bagehot's notebook | British politics
• Banyan | Asia
• Baobab | Africa
• Blighty | Britain
• Buttonwood's notebook | Financial markets
• Charlemagne's notebook | European politics
• Clausewitz | Defence, security and diplomacy
• Democracy in America | American politics
• Eastern approaches | Ex-communist Europe
• Feast and famine | Demography and development
• Free exchange | Economics
• Game theory | Sports
• Graphic detail | Charts, maps and infographics
• Gulliver | Business travel
• Johnson | Language
• Leviathan | Public policy
• Lexington's notebook | American politics
• Newsbook | News analysis
• Prospero | Books, arts and culture
• Schumpeter | Business and management

Let's really debate the issues

Here's a nice tweet I just saw: "@JohnGabree I think I am going to vote with you on Feinland and no on prop 28, whoever you are."

If you haven't voted yet, you too might consider supporting Marsha Feinland:

Diane Feinstein is in no danger of losing her seat, but in many ways, especially with regard to trade and financials, she is far more conservative than the average California Democrat.

In the state's new primary system, the top two vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation, are the only ones on the ballot in November. Since Feinstein will be headed back to DC in any event, it will serve us better as citizens if she is debated in the fall by a strong candidate from the Left, rather a tweedledum Republican or some Democrat careerist setting himself up for a future run.

Feinland is an intelligent and articulate candidate -- would make a fine senator, in fact -- and supports a different set of policy choices than the centrist Feinstein on such matters as military expenditures, the security state, banksters, trade, immigration reform, economic justice, the role of government, and more. Feinstein is a lock. What we're voting on is second place in the primary and a spot on the November ballot.

2012: Are progressives learning how to get their message out?

Although the decline of the middle class has been discussed for decades, if Netroots Nation is any indication political progressives are settling on the notion of the American Dream as their metaphor for what's at stake in the current struggles in state and federal legislatures over issues like taxes, public spending, union rights and gay marriage, and what can be won or lost in the next election. Van Jones has been advancing the idea (here is the closing section of his speech this weekend at Netroots) of branding the hundreds -- thousands? -- of progressive organizations that work for change the American Dream Movement (apparently, Equal Rights-Economic Justice-Labor-GLBT-Women's-Peace-Reproductive Rights-Environmental-Veterans-Corporate Accountability-Death Penalty Movement is seen as unwieldy).

Throughout the Netroots gathering, restoring or reviving the American Dream was used as a shorthand by union and economic justice activists to describe their determination to upend the Right's assault middle and working class Americans. Just today, Change to Win, a labor research and organizing coalition that focuses on the plight of middle class, introduced this video:

This afternoon in Minneapolis, progressive congressmembers, represented today by Reps. Raúl Grijalva, Keith Ellison and Jared Polis, launched a series of teach-ins -- Speakout for Good Jobs Now: Rebuild the American Dream -- that will travel the country in the next few months to hear how the economy is affecting average people and to build support for progressive Democrats running for Congress.

On Thursday at 8pm (est), Jones will join MoveOn.org Civic Action and others to launch a Rebuild the Dream campaign to kick start  the American Dream Movement.

The American Prospect devoted its March 2011 issue edited by Robert Kuttner to America's Endangered Middle Class: Why saving it is ground zero of American Politics. If progressives want a winning theme that the Right can't match, as Jacob Hacker argued in the issue, this is it.

Update: Sen. Al Franken was joined by AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer Lee Saunders, Wisconsin Education Association Council President Mary Bell, SEIU President Mary Kay Henry, UFCW President Joseph Hansen and Bob Kuttner for a keynote session entitled "Attack on America's Middle Class and the Plan to Fight Back," moderated by Ari Melber of The Nation.

Watch live streaming video from freespeechtv at livestream.com

See, also: Progressives Push For Job Growth On Tour by Sarah Kenigsberg (Huffington Post 2011-06-18).

2010: Barbara Boxer is lucky in her opponent

It's beginning to look like California may be the only parish to dodge the teabagger onslaught on Nov 2:

Well, okay, and maybe New York.

Elections; Democrats pick up seat in House

Keep that in mind when you listen to the bloviations about Democratic losses and a resurgent GOP.

All politics is local, Tip O'Neill said. This is especially true of elections for state offices. So, while the loss of John Corzine is regrettable (and New Jerseyites will come to regret it, just as Californians came to regret dumping Davis for Schwartzenegger), it says very little about national politics, despite Obama's intense (but late) arrival at the party.

Only two elections yesterday were to federal office, and the Democrats won both. In California, Lt. Gov. John Garamendi easily took a House seat in a safe Democratic district (Garamendi's victory was less newsworthy in California than the ridiculous announcement by Carly Fiorina that she has decided she should be the state's senator).

Meanwhile, in New York's traditionally Republican 23rd Congressional District, the Democratic candidate, Bill Owens, bested Conservative Party candidate Douglas Hoffman after the Republican Party candidate, a moderate, endorsed Owens and pulled out of the race. Despite a flood of volunteers, donations, and endorsements by national conservatives from Sarah Palin and the Club for Growth to Tim Pawlenty and the Government Is Not Good PAC, conservative businessman Hoffman couldn't win in a district parts of which had voted Republican since the Civil War.

In so far as anything can be predicted from these mid-mid-term votes, there isn't much good news for anybody. The fact that Michael Bloomberg, who is generally well regarded in New York, could expend $100 millon -- he outspent his Democratic opponent by more than 10-1 -- to barely win reelection should give pause to candidates like Carly Fiorina or California GOP gubernatorial wannabe Meg Whitman who think they will be able to buy their way into office with much smaller fortunes. Corzine's loss in New Jersey suggests that anti-tax rhetoric still has the power to defeat common sense, making the likelihood that we will fix any of our long term health care, education, unemployment and infrastructure difficulties problematic.  And even if he jumped in late, his people have to be a little concerned that Obama may have very short coattails.

They may not care -- for them, political purity may trump political power -- but the fact that the extreme right can't win in a district like the 23rd doesn't bode well for their chances in more centrist areas of the country. They also may not care, but the Blue Dogs and the DLC should be worried that the Rainbow coalition that carried Virginia for Obama decided to stay home when the party nominated a status-quo conservative. Moderate Republicans, meanwhile, might as well pack it in. The only hope for traditional Republican pols like the 23rd's Dede Scozzafava is to switch parties now so they'll be ready to run as Democrats in 2010.

For sanity sake, we have Jon Stewart to keep the media in perspective:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Indecision 2009 - Reindecision 2008 And Beyond
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Fundraiser: Make A Difference

Here's a chance for those who support a broader menu of choices at the polls to get behind a worthy and viable alternative to the sorry offerings of the establishment parties -- and have fun doing it! Labor activist Cindy Varela Henderson is the only candidate in the 26th with a program for change. It's just a bonus that the benefit's comedy and music line-up includes some of the finest performers in L.A. Not to miss.*

Comedy Night Fundraiser
a night of political
comedy to benefit the
CINDY VARELA HENDERSON
for State Senate
campaign

Featuring:

-> Rick Overton
-> John Fugelsang
-> Jann Karam
-> Ann Randolph
-> Bill Bronner
-> Judith Scott
-> Gary Gordon

-> with Jeff Norman, MC

-> and Special Music Guest Suzy Williams

Fanatic Salon, 3815 Sawtelle Blvd.,
just south of Venice Blvd.

Sunday - May 3 - 7:30 p.m. - $15

Proceeds go to the Cindy Varela Henderson for State Senate Campaign

* And, if you have to miss, send them some money anyway
info: 310-568-9622 or http://www.votecindy4senate

The Franchise: Making every vote count

The long lines at the polls become even more puzzling when you consider this:

According to Curtis Gans,

Despite lofty predictions by some academics, pundits, and practitioners that voter turnout would reach levels not seen since the turn of the last century, the percentage of eligible citizens casting ballots in the 2008 presidential election stayed at virtually the same relatively high level as it reached in the polarized election of 2004....The percentage of eligible citizens voting Republican declined to 28.7 percent down 1.3 percentage points from 2004. Democratic turnout increased by 2.6 percentage points from 28.7 percent of eligibles to 31.3 percent. It was the seventh straight increase in the Democratic share of the eligible vote since the party's share dropped to 22.7 percent of eligibles in 1980.

Increased absentee voting. Increased early voting. The Democrats up a little. The Republicans down a little. But overall, only a marginal increase in the number of voters. So why the long lines?

Although a greater interest among voters concentrated in particular precincts -- areas with large populations of black voters or students, for example -- might have created enough congestion at those polls to satisfy the media's expectation of a big turnout, isn't it more likely that the impact of the electoral college, leading as it does to the disenfranchisement of minority party voters in non-competitive states and the focus of campaigns on a handful of constituencies, led to longer lines in those few locales where voters knew their vote would count. I know people in California and New York, for example, who stayed home because they felt their choice for president was moot.

Some of the advance voting problems can be attributed to the limited number of polling places in most jurisdictions. Nevada, an exception, allowed voting in some grocery stores -- it would be helpful to know how that worked out, but most states required early voters to travel to some remote county office or isolated post office to drop off ballots. If unprecedented numbers of people voted in advance, it must have eased the pressure on election day; and repeated warnings over many months of an impending deluge of ballots gave election officials plenty of opportunity to get ready; so it still seems odd that there were the number of problems there were on voting day.

Not being much of a conspiracy theorist, I'm reluctant to sign on to the theory that there was a plot to depress the tally. But it would be useful to the proper management of future efforts of this sort if we knew what did happen this time. Even if it was only a matter of increased turnout in districts where voting mattered, there might be ways to prepare for such eventualities in coming elections.

In any event, if it is not going to continue to distort campaigns and alter outcomes of elections, we have to get rid of the electoral college. It's past time for every citizen's vote to count equally.