Category: Politics

Excellent column by Paul Waldman in the Washington Post

He’s right. Democrats don’t promote their ideas like they are popular. Republicans don’t care if they are popular or not. They just want to force their extremist ideas on all of us. Remember the 2000 election? Bush always acted like he had won. Gore didn’t.

Bad opinion column by Ross Douthat in the New York Times

I disagree with a lot of this.

  1. Douthat says: The Electoral College’s legitimacy can stand up if an occasional 49-47 percent popular vote result goes the other way. That’s not true. I think two of the last six elections are a lot more than occasional. Also, 2004 and 2020 could have easily resulted in elections won by the popular vote loser. The legitimacy of the Electoral College was also damaged by the way the Republican-dominated Supreme Court gave the 2000 election to George Bush. This also has hurt the credibility of the Supreme Court. Four of the justices were appointed by Republican presidents who didn’t win the popular vote.
  2. Douthat says: Especially in the current climate, which looks dire for the Democrats, the Republicans have an opportunity to make the Electoral College complaint moot, for a time at least, by simply taking plausible positions, nominating plausible candidates and winning majorities outright. Republicans have shown no interest in this. They didn’t have a real platform in 2020 and McConnell says he won’t say what they would do if they win the majority in 2022. Many Republican positions are not popular:
    1. They oppose abortion while the majority favors keeping Roe vs. Wade
    2. They oppose all gun safety bills while the majority favors at least some changes such as universal background checks.
    3. They wouldn’t give Merrick Garland even a hearing for his Supreme Court nomination while the majority supported giving him a hearing.
  3. Douthat says: And Republican structural advantages, while real, did not then prevent Democrats from reclaiming the House of Representatives in 2018 and the presidency in 2020 and Senate in 2021. He is ignoring the fact that Republicans are using voter suppression laws to increase their advantage. They also have used gerrymandering and the Republican Supreme Court will help them. Sure, Democrats do it too but Republicans have done more. Also, look that the terrible racist gerrymandering DeSantis has proposed in Florida.
  4. Douthat says that Republicans should nominate someone other than Trump. Are the alternatives much different? Potential candidates like DeSantis believe in the stolen election, massive voter fraud and racist policies. They’re not an improvement.
  5. Douthat says: Second, to the extent that there’s a Democratic path back to greater parity in the Senate and Electoral College without structural reform, it probably requires the development of an explicit faction within the party dedicated to winning back two kinds of voters — culturally conservative Latinos and working-class whites — who were part of Barack Obama’s coalition but have drifted rightward since. He ignores the fact that the most liberal Democratic ideas have not been enacted. Going too far to the right will cause the Democrats to lose support on the left.

Where we are headed is an election in 2024 where whichever party loses will not trust the results. I fully expect to see things like some states with multiple sets of electors.

Maryland Governor Hogan is a conservative, not a moderate

Good tweets by Ronald Brownstein on the Republican agenda

Republicans are further right than Democrats are left

It’s getting to be an extremist right-wing cult. Most of them won’t stand up to Trump, their lying bigoted leader. I thought that after he lost, they would move more to the center but instead they have become more conservative.

a prior post on this subject

Update on corporate donations to Republicans who would not certify the election

Important Washington Post column on our future

Great column and warning. I strongly recommend reading this.

Republicans will claim fraud if they lose the California recall

They can’t accept the idea that everyone is not a white nationalist like they are. Trump set the template in 2020 and his cult will follow it for future elections.