Category Archives: Politics

2016 GE: Hillary Clinton vs. GOP Field, Part VII

Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton

HERE  is the 7th installation in a series that deeply examines ALL of the Clinton-vs.-GOP polling to-date. You can also find parts I-VI at my politics blog. It’s a true data-baseline.

By “all”, I mean 1,537 polling matchups to-date, and it’s not even election year yet. Continue Reading...

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Unfinished Business — Congress’s Summer Recess and the Presidential Debate

As Congress heads out of Washington for a month of getting back in touch with their constituents and “educational” travel, the list of unresolved issues is (as always) extremely long.  How much of these issues Congress will manage to handle in September and October (and maybe November and December) is anybody’s guess.  (Mine is not many).  Some of these issues are more significant and may become part of the upcoming Republican Debates.  I would like to focus on two:  the Highway Bill and Iran.

Back in April, I did a post on the Iran Negotiations.  Most of what I said then is even more true now that there is a deal.  Iran has a right under international law to have a civilian nuclear power program.  From the international communities perspective, the issue is what procedures need to be in place to guarantee that Iran does not use their civilian program to develop nuclear weapons.  Previously, the U.S. was able to convince the rest of the world that Iran was not willing to give such assurances and the rest of the leading nations went along with the U.S. in imposing sanctions.  The rest of the world (with the exception of those nations most at risk) view the current agreement as adequate.  (For obvious reasons, the nations most at risk view any lifting as sanctions as bad because — even if Iran does not pursue nuclear weapons — the lifting of sanctions will allow Iran to devote more resources to other portions of their military.)  If the U.S. decides to kill the deal, it is unclear what would happen next.   How much of the agreement will the rest of the world insist that Iran comply with in exchange for lifting the sanctions if the U.S. is not part of the regime for enforcing the agreement.

At the Republican debate, it is unlikely that we will get any serious discussion of how the rest of the world would react if we walk away from the deal (or even the fact that Iran has the right to a civilian nuclear power industry).  Instead, the entire field (with the possible exception of Rand Paul) will say that the deal is not good enough,  Some of them may imply that no deal would be good enough.  Others will simply say the deal is bad without suggesting any additional terms that would satisfy them.  None of them will acknowledge the role of the rest of the world in keeping Iran in check and that this agreement is a multilateral agreement. Continue Reading...

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The Republican Clown Bus Rides Again

Next week, Fox News will decide on the initial GOP presidential field. Further on, the Koch Brothers will make their selection. Super PACs and Dark Money will weigh in also. It should not really be surprising that the least important decision-makers are the actual voters.

Think about it: the first candidate introduction to most voters will be next Thursday’s debate, and it is a media outlet making the decision about who shows up on stage. Not voters. Not the party. Fox News. It says a lot that the party itself has absolved itself from picking candidates. And as for the voters who will eventually make the decision? The ones who get polled? The database that is used to track them is owned by the Koch brothers via a data mining company called i360. Their data is far more detailed and complete than that of the RNC. (Source). After the jump – how the candidates ended up where they are.

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Green Light for Redistricting Commissions

In several states, voters (not trusting their legislators to be able to resist “stacking the deck” when drawing congressional district boundaries) have opted to take that power away from their legislators and place it with a non-partisan commission.  Today, in a 5-4 decision, the United States Supreme Court found that the U.S. Constitution gave the voters of the states the right to choose this method for drawing congressional district lines.

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Bernie Sanders Could Win the NH Primary, IF he Can Get on the Ballot

Bernie Sanders is doing very well in New Hampshire. The latest poll has him down by only 8 points, plus or minus 5.2, meaning the spread is really 3 – 13 points.  The RCP average has him down by 15, which is not bad this far out. If he keeps pulling in the kind of numbers he’s been getting both for speeches and dollars, he could really win the New Hampshire primary, if it wasn’t for a little problem with their candidacy statement.

After the jump, the legalese, some commentary and a poll.

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Is John Roberts Channeling Earl Warren?

Yesterday’s SCOTUS decision on the ACA was penned by the Chief Justice. It was thoughtful, legal, and went to the intent of the legislation. It also used Scalia’s own words against him, which is just plain fun.

But the overriding question is whether or not Roberts is doing to Bush what Warren did to Eisenhower; that is, transcending politics to actually be a constitutionalist. Roberts is not the smartest Supreme, that position belongs to Antonin Scalia, who places politics and his own racism, misogyny, and homophobia (not to mention hatred of Democrats) above what he knows to be legally and constitutionally correct. Originally, it seemed that Roberts was choosing that course. Over time, he more seemed to pick large decisions and make them 1:1 Right Wing to Left Wing.

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Hillary For America… On to #DNC2016!

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Sixteen sites bid for presidential debates

The Commission on Presidential Debates announced last week that 16 sites have submitted bids to host a debate in 2016:

Belmont University, Nashville, TN
City of Birmingham, Birmingham, AL
City of McAllen, McAllen, TX
Dominican University of California, San Rafael, CA
Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, KY
Georgia College & State University, Milledgeville, GA
Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY
Houston Community College, Houston, TX
Jacksonville University, Jacksonville, FL
Longwood University, Farmville, VA
State University of New York Rockland Community College (SUNY RCC) in partnership with Rockland Debates 2016, Suffern, NY
Texas A&M University, College Station, TX
University of Nevada, Las Vegas and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, Las Vegas, NV
Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO
West Virginia University and West Virginia State University, Charleston, WV
Wright State University, Dayton, OH

Four debates are usually held, 3 Presidential and 1 unwatched VP debate.

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LGBT Rights in Indiana

rainbowLast night, Mike Pence signed the updated “Religious Freedom” bill into law in Indiana. Here’s the text of the salient change:

SECTION 1.IC34-13-9-0.7IS ADDED TO THE INDIANA CODE AS A NEW SECTION TO READ AS FOLLOWS [EFFECTIVE JULY 1, 2015]: Sec. 0.7.

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Mario Cuomo – 1932 – 2015

Mario Cuomo, three-term Govenor of New York, never quite a candidate for President, and keynote speaker of the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, passed away today at his home in New York.

His forceful speech was the highlight of the convention:

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