Elections

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GOP as carnies

Carnies have the attitude that if you’re gullible and stupid enough to fall for their rigged games, then you deserve everything you get.  They’re very proud of their deceptive actions, because they’re so much smarter than the rubes who fall for them.

The Republican party feels the same way about you.

This is nothing new.  Dick Nixon had a “Dirty Tricks” committee specifically designed to do these things. fakepelosisite And now the current party has taken a book from Tricky Dickie and has created a series of false and misleading campaign websites for Democratic candidates.

The National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee bought up hundreds of URLs on Democratic candidates and created sites that mimic the real ones.  They have the candidate’s picture really big, and then a big “donate” button, and then in small print, it says “Help us defeat the candidate.”

These are so misleading that Google has started putting their warning pages up before you can see them, telling you that it is a potential phishing site.

This fits in with the theme of the the blog this week, which is that the GOP has a specific policy of lying and being misleading.  What’s more, like carnies, they’re proud of it.  Daniel Scarpinato, the NRCC’s press secretary, brags about the fake website program and plans on expanding it.

In response, the National Democratic Committee states that it has no plans to ever create deceptive web sites of this sort.

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The best voter suppression

Republicans are doing everything they can to suppress the vote, because every study shows that if everyone voted, Republicans would pretty much lose. Vote (Not every district, of course, but they would certainly lose their House majority, as well as many statehouses.)  

But there is one idea that they haven’t grasped yet which would accomplish the same goal.

What they need are for people to become apathetic about politics — especially young people, who are overwhelmingly less religious, more liberal, and less prejudiced than their elders.  What the Republicans need is a way to keep these people in a state where all they want to do is watch TV and eat doritos.

You see where I’m going with this, right?  Come on, Republicans!  Legalize marijuana and then those kids won’t even be motivated to get out and vote!  Bam!  Instant suppression without breaking any laws!

(OK, Republicans, stop reading now.  The rest is for my Democratic friends.

Shh!  Don’t let on.  Most republicans are so clueless about both marijuana and what young people want and think that they just might fall for this!)

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Judge throws out Pennsylvania’s voter fraud fraud

As we are all aware thanks to Fox News, there is massive voting fraud, with people claiming to be someone else just so they can risk going to jail to cast one more vote they shouldn’t.th061QIW1J

Here in Pennsylvania, the Republicans leapt into action to prevent this fraud.  Why, do you know that over the past ten years there has been a grand total or zero examples of this fraud?

OurTea Party governor and his cronies used these statistics to support their contention that the voter suppression laws they passed were necessary because, you know, ‘Merica.  Or something.  I didn’t quite follow the argument, although Republican leaders had admitted on the record previously that the purpose of the law was to suppress Democratic votes.

Well, it turns out that this Judge understood the law, much to the dismay of Republicans.  And now the voter registration suppression law is no more.

Oh sure, they’ll appeal, but they lost before when they went to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

Mostly these guys are afraid.  Pennsylvania has more Democrats than Republicans.  If it wasn’t for gerrymandering, the Democrats would have won more Congressional seats in the last election.  Our Republican governor is the least popular governor in the entire country, and he and his party are rightly worried.

So what do they decide? Change their stands?  Try to appeal to the public by adjusting their radical ideas?

“No,” they decided.  “Let’s cheat.”

Well, that will be a lot harder from now on.

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Poetic justice for Republicans

A few days ago, I wrote about how the GOP is trying to get rid of the Tea Party crazies that are driving the party into the ground. They’ve lost a bunch of races they should have won because the party has nominated people so far out of the mainstream that even Republican voters couldn’t stand them.  01-dead-gop-elephant

But it’s their own fault, and they should have seen it coming.

Support for the GOP is at an all time low, partially because they are associated with these people who refuse to compromise, spout nonsense as if it were facts, and whose sole purpose is to get people to hate our own government as much as they do. Admittedly, support for both parties and the President is at an all-time low, but it’s not surprising that support for government is at its lowest when a large segment of one of the parties has “hate the government” as its goal. These people should realize that hatred for the government includes them.

The Republicans only have themselves to blame for their condition, because of gerrymandering.

Over the past fifteen years or so, the GOP has managed to redraw the state lines in the most ridiculous way to create as many safe districts as possible for them. By diluting Democratic votes, they were able to guarantee majorities in states where they did not hold the majority. Here in Pennsylvania, for instance, more people voted for Democrats in the last election yet more Republicans were elected because of the strange way the districts were drawn.

So if you are a Republican politician in a district that is safely Republican, you shouldn’t have to worry, right?  Wrong.

The problem is with primaries.  Hardly anyone votes in primaries, where the parties choose their candidates.  You’re lucky if you get a 20% turnout in a primary election.  That’s 20% of registered voters, not 20% of the eligible voters.

And who votes in primaries?  Just those people who really really care about politics.  And if you really really care about politics, chances are you are much more conservative or much more liberal than the average voter.

So primaries give us the more extreme members of each party.  Then if you gerrymander to remove even the moderates of your own party, you end up with a voting electorate that is at the very edge of political thought — the extremes of the extremes.

These extremes on the right are represented primarily by those who identify themselves these days as “Tea Party” members.  And they think that anyone who does things like compromise in order to accomplish anything are traitors and not Real Americans — even very conservative members of their own party.

So they run “Real Americans” against the incumbents.  Incumbents get scared and refuse to challenge them and sometimes take their extremist views in order to stay elected.  And ultimately, the extremists win the primary either by electing their own favorite or by forcing the incumbent to come to their side.

However, once the fall election comes around, their numbers don’t increase. Moderate voters (that is, the majority of Americans) turn away from these extremists and elect Democrats instead.

In some districts these extremists still get elected in the fall election, and then they go to Washington and shut the government down, which hurts the reputation of the rest of the Republican party.   It drives their poll numbers down and ultimately hurts all of them.

And it’s all their own fault for gerrymandering districts in the first place.  Unfortunately, we are all suffering because of it.

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I’m an elected politician

On Tuesday I ran a last minute write in campaign for Judge of Elections for my precinct, and the official results have me as the winner.

The Judge of Elections is the person who makes sure the machines work properly, guarantees that everyone gets to vote who is eligible, and otherwise keeps everything running smoothly on election day.

I attribute my electoral success to three factors:

1. A presence at the polls (thanks to Mark Dodel who stood in for a few hours) making that personal touch;

2. A desire to elect new people to replace the old; and

3. No one else was running.

It’s only a matter of time until the Governor takes note of me and appoints me to the US Senate.

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Another referendum on Obamacare loses

Romney ran on a platform he claimed was a “referendum on Obamacare” and lost. Cuccinelli in Virginia did the same thing and also lost yesterday. This is also after they tried 42 times to repeal it, and after they appealed it to the United States Supreme Court and lost.

How many times do you guys have to be hit over the head until you get it?doctor-obama

Of course, the Cuccinelli crowd is spinning this as if it was a win. “We did better than expected based on the polls,” they say. “Clearly this was because people didn’t like Obamacare.”

Had Cuccinelli won, they would have claimed it was about Obamacare and felt vindicated, saying “See? People don’t want Obamacare.” But he lost, and they’re still saying “See? People don’t want Obamacare.”

When you define the terms so that you win no matter what, you’re being dishonest and hypocritical.

Besides, given the GOP voter suppression going on, there may be another perfectly good explanation as to why the Democratic vote wasn’t as good as pollsters thought it would be.

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Judge Ventrella?

Once more I am reminding everyone to vote today. Voting is literally the least you can do to be a good citizen.

And I am putting into practice what I preach.

No one in my precinct was running for Judge of Elections. That’s the person who is in charge of the voting machines in the precinct. He or she oversees the workers there, makes sure everyone gets to vote and is eligible, and otherwise makes sure things run smoothly.

So I have been standing at the poll, handing out a flyer asking people to write my name in.

I think this will be a very important position to have, especially if Pennsylvania’s new suppress-the-vote law is in effect by next year. We will need someone making sure that no one gets turned away who should be able to vote.

Aw, who am I kidding? I just want to be able to call myself “Judge Ventrella.”

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Why voting in off season elections is still important

Government is not them. Government is us. We the people. We are government. The people we elect work for us.

Tomorrow is election day. In some states, they are electing governors and other major state-wide races, but in most places (like here in Pennsylvania) there are only local races on the ballot.i-vote-sticker

What always shocks me are people who do not vote in any election who then complain about their politicians. This is even greater in the off year elections where turnout is quite small.

When we the people get out and vote, Democrats do very well. That is because most people agree with the Democratic party’s positions.

The problem is that the people most likely to vote are rich, white, and elderly — pretty much, the only demographic left in the Republican party.

So in 2008, Obama and a bunch of Democrats are swept into office. Then in 2010, many people stay at home and the Republicans win big. The Democrats return in 2012 and Obama wins bigger than expected, and many Republicans lose their seats. Expect Democrats to probably lose seats in 2014 too. (If the 2014 race were tomorrow, Democrats would do great because everyone is mad at Republicans right now, but anything can happen in a year.)

Every election is important. Especially these off year ones. In a local race, your vote is tremendously meaningful, as people win these things by just a few votes all the time.

“But the election is just for Clerk of Courts, County Commissioner, and Dog Catcher,” you complain. “Who cares? Why does it matter?”

It does matter. These people affect your lives daily. Whether the corner streetlight gets fixed or your local taxes go up definitely are important to you. Not only that, you can call these people on the phone and they will talk to you. (Try doing that with your Senator or the President). Your views will be directly heard and paid attention to.

It is also important for your party. Yeah, in some ways it doesn’t matter if the local Register of Deeds is a Democrat or a Republican, but by electing more people from your party, it benefits the party. Each person elected takes with them supporters, lists of donors, and friends who will be there for the next election. Each helps the power “trickle up” to help get more people from the party elected at larger levels. It does matter.

If you’re reading this blog, you’re a political person. You have views and opinions. Make those views matter. Vote. Always vote. No matter how small the election.

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Can the Democrats go left?

The votes are the middle.

Candidates who veer too far to the left or the right don’t win elections. (Disclaimer: I’m talking mostly about Presidential and Senatorial races here; if you come from a small district that is very conservative or very liberal, then your “middle” is in a different place.)tumblr_static_donkey-transparent

The GOP has been nominating people far to the right lately in many races, and looks to be headed that way in the 2016 Presidential race unless they come to their senses. Some clueless Republicans think that if they had nominated someone more conservative than Romney, they would have done better. Their lack of success with very right wing Senatorial candidates even in Republican states shows that this is not true.

The Democrats have won 5 of the last 6 Presidential races with moderate candidates. (Aside #1: I am counting Gore as a “win” for the purposes of this because he did win the popular vote and would have been President save one Supreme Court justice. Aside #2: Don’t go telling me Clinton and Obama are “liberals.” They only seem that way compared to Republicans.)

So the question now is: Could the Democrats go farther left, since the Republicans will most likely nominate someone so far to the right that they will alienate most moderate voters?

No matter how people identify themselves, the fact remains that the majority of Americans support many liberal ideas. They want abortion to be legal; they favor gay marriage; they like medicare, medicaid, and even Obamacare; they want marijuana legal; they support environmental laws; and when their government is taken away during a shutdown, they discover they actually like a lot of the things the government does. Could the Democrats nominate a real liberal — Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders or Al Franken or someone?

Given the choice of the crazy person and the liberal, the Americans might make the right choice.

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Party Before Country: Cruz profits while we suffer

Senator Cruz tried to spin his loss in the Shutdown Showdown by saying that he had succeeded in bringing the issue of Obamacare to everyone’s attention.

Let’s discount the fact that more people like Obamacare now than they did before Cruz started his tilting at the windmill, and let’s look at what he really gained: Money. Lots of it.

Yep. Good old Cruz and his right-wing buddies raised a ton of campaign cash thanks to the Shutdown. They used it to send out all sorts of fundraising letters and their campaign coffers are now overflowing.

So who cares if the country is now further in debt because of this? The Republican party is now richer, and isn’t that more important?