-
Recent Posts
- Remaining Races and Recounts
- Election Recap
- Electoral College Anachronism
- Election Security
- Election Night Preview — Part Six (Post-Midnight Eastern)
- Election Night Preview — Part Five — The Local News and the West Coast (11:00 To 11:59 P.M. Eastern)
- Election Night Preview — Part Four — Prime Time Hour Three (10:00 to 10:59 P.M. Eastern)
Search
Welcome to DCW
Upcoming Events
7/15/24 - GOP Convention
TBD - Democratic Convention
11/5/24 - Election DayTools
Archives
Tag Cloud
2008 Democratic National Convention 2012 Democratic National Convention 2012 Republican National Convention 2016 Democratic National Convention 2016 Republican National Convention 2020 Census 2020 Democratic Convention 2024 Democratic Convention 2024 Republican Convention Abortion Affordable Care Act Alabama Arizona Bernie Sanders California Colorado Donald Trump First Amendment Florida Free Exercise Clause Free Speech Georgia Hillary Clinton Immigration Iowa Joe Biden Kansas Maine Marco Rubio Michigan Missouri Nevada New Hampshire North Carolina Ohio Pennsylvania redistricting South Carolina Supreme Court Ted Cruz Texas United Kingdom Virginia Voting Rights Act WisconsinDCW in the News
Blog Roll
Site Info
-
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
- tmess2 on Election Recap
- Anthony Uplandpoet Watkins on Election Recap
- Anthony Uplandpoet Watkins on Election Recap
- DocJess on Don’t think we’re getting a contested convention
- Matt on Dems to nominate Biden early to avoid GOP Ohio nonsense
Archives
- November 2024
- October 2024
- September 2024
- August 2024
- July 2024
- June 2024
- May 2024
- April 2024
- March 2024
- February 2024
- January 2024
- December 2023
- November 2023
- October 2023
- September 2023
- August 2023
- July 2023
- June 2023
- May 2023
- April 2023
- March 2023
- February 2023
- January 2023
- December 2022
- November 2022
- October 2022
- September 2022
- August 2022
- July 2022
- June 2022
- May 2022
- April 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- December 2021
- November 2021
- October 2021
- September 2021
- August 2021
- July 2021
- June 2021
- May 2021
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- October 2019
- September 2019
- August 2019
- July 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- February 2019
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- November 2014
- September 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- March 2014
- January 2014
- August 2013
- August 2012
- November 2011
- August 2011
- January 2011
- May 2010
- January 2009
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
Categories
- 2019-nCoV
- 2020 Convention
- 2020 General Election
- 2020DNC
- 2024 Convention
- 2028 Convention
- Anti-Semitism
- Bernie Sanders
- Charlotte
- Chicago
- Civil Rights
- Cleveland
- Climate Change
- Coronavirus
- Coronavirus Tips
- COVID-19
- Debates
- Delegate Count
- Delegates
- Democratic Debates
- Democratic Party
- Democrats
- DemsinPhilly
- DemsInPHL
- Disaster
- DNC
- Donald Trump
- Economy
- Elections
- Electoral College
- Federal Budget
- Freedom of the Press
- General Election Forecast
- GOP
- Healthcare
- Hillary Clinton
- Holidays
- Hotels
- House of Representatives
- Houston
- Identity Politics
- Impeachment
- Iowa Caucuses
- Jacksonville
- Joe Biden
- Judicial
- LGBT
- Mariner Pipeline
- Merrick Garland
- Meta
- Milwaukee
- Money in Politics
- Music
- National Security
- Netroots Nation
- New Yor
- New York
- NH Primary
- Notes from Your Doctor
- NoWallNoBan
- Pandemic
- Philadelphia
- PHLDNC2016
- Platform
- Politics
- Polls
- Presidential Candidates
- Primary and Caucus Results
- Primary Elections
- Public Health
- Rant
- Republican Debates
- Republicans
- Resist
- RNC
- Russia
- Senate
- Snark
- Student Loan Debt
- Sunday with the Senators
- Superdelegates
- Syria
- The Politics of Hate
- Uncategorized
- Vaccines
- War
- Weekly White House Address
Meta
Tag Archives: Vladimir Putin
Foreign Elections — Spring/Summer 2019
The next two months will see several elections in our allies/major democracies.
This weekend is the election in Spain for both houses of their parliament. In Spain, the lower house is elected by proportional representation on a provincial basis. While there is a nominal 3% threshold in each province, the (fifty) provinces range from one seat (in which whomever finishes first gets the seat) to thirty-six seats (in which case the threshold makes a real difference as it would take slightly over 2.7% to win a seat). In the Senate, most of the provinces get four seats. While voters directly elect most of the members of the Senate, the catch is that voters have one vote less than the number of seats (i.e. three votes in a province with four seats) which translates into the largest party getting three seats and the second-place party getting one seat. The regional parliaments also get to appoint the remaining fifty-eight members of the Senate. For this election, there are five national parties (ranging from two Democratic Socialist parties to a Trumpian nationalist party) and several regional parties.
There are three things to look at in the results from Spain. First, is there a natural majority for either of the two main blocs (the two Democratic Socialist parties vs. the two center-right party)? Second, how does the Trumpian (Vox) party perform? Third, how do the regional parties (which want increased local autonomy/independence) perform? From the traditional American foreign policy, we would prefer a result that creates a strong functional government capable of being a partner with us. Russia (and our current administration) would prefer a divided election result with strong performances by Vox and the regional parties pulling Spain further away from NATO and the European Union and potentially splitting Spain (one of the larger European countries) into several separate countries focused on their grievances with each other rather than building a strong Europe.
Posted in Elections
Also tagged Australia, Brexit, Donald Trump, European Union, India, Russia, Spain
Comments Off on Foreign Elections — Spring/Summer 2019
Strength in Leadership
Earlier this week, Donald Trump — again — expressed his admiration for the strong leadership of Vladimir Putin as compared to the current leadership of the United States. It is understandable why somebody who is the head of a closely-held family business would sympathize with the leadership style of Vladimir Putin. There is a lot of similarity in the ability of such individuals to make decisions for their company or country between such a business and a police state. The leader of a democracy, however, does not have the same ability.
Posted in Donald Trump, Elections, Politics
Also tagged Donald Trump, Russia
Comments Off on Strength in Leadership
Putin-Trump 2016
No, I don’t think that Trump is actually running on a ticket with Vladimir Putin. It’s just that sometimes, you just can’t tell for sure. Throughout 2015, the conventional wisdom was that, at some point, as the primaries approached, Republican voters would wake up from their flirtation with Donald Trump and realize that Trump is not a Republican, that he supports almost none of the traditional positions that the Republican Party has taken for the past fifty years.
Nowhere is Trump’s lack of respect for issues and principles clearer than when he stumbles into foreign policy. The only discernable principle that Trump has demonstrated so far when it comes to foreign policy is some variation on mercantilism — that the only foreign policy interest that the U.S. has is what’s good for U.S. business, primarily what’s good for the Trump Organization.
The past week has seen several examples of this approach. On NATO, forget the fact that the security guarantees that the U.S. has given eliminates any need for Germany, Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, etc., to develop their own nuclear weapons (and all could within months). What matters is how much everyone is paying, as if the U.S. Army was 21st century mercenaries fighting on behalf of the highest bidder.
Today, after evidence that Russia was behind the hack on the DNC and is actively interfering in U.S. politics, Trump makes a statement that is (at best) ambivalent, and (at worst) encouragement for Russia to keep going. While it’s a dirty secret of international diplomacy and espionage that everybody tries to influence what is going on in other countries (even our allies), the normal response when your country is being targeted is to demand that it stop.
At the same time, when asked about the Crimea, Trump’s response was that he had to think about his position on Russia’s annexation of the Ukraine. Later, Trump indicated that he thought that, under a Trump Administration, there was no reason why the U.S. and Russia couldn’t be on friendlier terms. Now, I don’t think any U.S. Administration is going to be in a position to force Russia to give back the Ukraine. However, part of our agreement with the Ukraine when they agreed to give up the nuclear weapons that fell into their hands when the Soviet Union collapsed was that we would help guarantee the security of the Ukraine. Saying that those arrangements are something that a Trump Administration needs to think about is astonishing.
While saying that he did not know why we couldn’t be on friendlier terms with Russia, Trump also (contrary to earlier claims that he knew Putin and could get along with him) denied really knowing much about Putin. Which ultimately is the problem. It is one thing for a U.S. presidential candidate to have no clue about who is running Angola or East Timor. It is another thing to be clueless about the big players like Russia and China. There are good reasons why we have problems with Russia. On almost every major international problem, Russia is opposing our position (and vice versa).
The fact that Trump is blissfully ignorant of these issues means that nobody has any idea what a Trump foreign policy would look like. (The same can be said of a lot of Trump’s flip-flopping domestic agenda.) At least a lot of the Republican foreign policy leadership has stood up and said that Trump is too risky for them to take and that they will be voting for Hillary. Among the rank and file, the question for the next three months is whether Republican voters actually support the traditional Republican foreign policy or whether the only philosophy that the Republican Party stands for is to stop the Democrats, no matter the cost.
Posted in Donald Trump, Rant
Also tagged Crimea, Donald Trump, NATO, Ukraine
Comments Off on Putin-Trump 2016