Elections

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Four Reasons why the GOP will lose in 2016

Democrats may lose Congress thanks to apathetic voters, gerrymandering, and acting too much like Republicans, but we’ve pretty much got the White House secure for the foreseeable future.  Here’s why:

1.  The Electoral College.  As much as I want to get rid of it, it certainly works to the Democrats’ favor.  You need 270 electoral votes to win, and Democrats start with 252 that are pretty much guaranteed, in states that haven’t voted Republican since Bill Clinton was elected.

If you add to that group Virginia and New Mexico (states that have been reliably blue the past few elections) then bang, you’re at 270, and that doesn’t even count the possibilities of winning Nevada, Ohio, Florida, and Colorado, all of which have gone Democratic in the past two elections (even North Carolina and Indiana went Democratic in 2008, so don’t necessarily count them out either).

Republicans, meanwhile, start with maybe 167 guaranteed electoral votes.  That’s a huge burden to overcome. emap

Look at that map again. See how the Democrats only need to get Florida to win? If not Florida, then only two states (for example, Virginia and Nevada).  For the Republicans to win, they will need pretty much every single gray state on this map. And even if they took every single gray state, that would only be 280. If as few as one state goes the other way (Florida or Virginia, for instance), they lose.

2.  Numbers.  There are more of us than there are of them.  If we’d vote in equal percentages, we’d always hold Congress, too, but we don’t — except in Presidential years.  More people voted for Democrats in 5 of the last 6 Presidential elections (and in that last one — GWB’s re-election — there are those who question that).  There’s no reason to assume that will change, especially because of…

3. Demographics.  Republicans are predominately older white men.  It’s true.  Young people, women, minorities — all securely Democrats.  And as the country becomes less and less white, and as women become more and more independent, those numbers keep changing to the Democrat’s favor.  Further, fewer people identify themselves as conservative these days.   It’s a trend that has reasonable Republicans rightly worried.

4.  Candidates.  Let’s face it, the Republicans do not have a shining star on the horizon — there is no one with the personality of Ronald Reagan who can charm America into voting for him.  Instead, we get Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie, Ben Carson, Mitt Romney (again),  and a bunch of others who, in the last poll, could not get past 10%.

The Republicans know this.  And that is why they so desperately are trying to suppress the vote and get rid of campaign finance laws.  “If you can’t win by getting the most votes, then cheat and buy the election” is their motto.

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GOP betting the House

The GOP only won the House of Representatives in 2012 because of gerrymandering — more people voted for Democrats overall but because of the way districts are drawn, the majority didn’t win.

Thanks to the Shutdown, which most Americans correctly attribute to Republicans, there are enough Republicans in jeopardy of losing their seats that we could see Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2016.

Of course, this poll is of the “If the election were held today, who would you vote for” variety, placing the incumbent against a nameless opponent. These are tremendously unreliable because (a) anything can happen within a year; and (b) people compare their current representative with an ideal opponent of the other party, and that’s usually not what happens.

Still, this poll is important because it emphasizes what many of us have been saying: This shutdown is hurting Republicans. They are so much in a bubble that they do not see this, but the numbers don’t lie.

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Chris Christie loses 2016 Presidential election

Once more, New Jersey governor Chris Christie has proven that he is unfit to be nominated by the Republican party to run for President in 2016. Yes, it’s true — he has once again placed the good of his state over the good of his party.

It was bad enough when he actually said a nice thing about the President after Hurricane Sandy, acknowledging the help his state received from the feds. Just because it was true never stood in the way of the modern Republican party.

But now, with the death of Senator Lautenberg, Christie had the opportunity to appoint a new Senator who would serve until the next election. Clearly, he should have appointed a Republican to fill the seat left vacant by a Democrat, even though the will of the state was clearly to put a Democrat into that seat at the last election. No, Christie has decided to let the people decide who should fill the seat by holding a special election. Maybe they’ll choose a Republican, you never know.

The party is outraged that he would allow the will of the people to be more important than the good of the party. So, by doing the right thing, he has pretty much destroyed any chance he had of getting the nomination of his party in 2016.

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2016 Democratic Presidential Straw Poll

Let’s just have some fun with a meaningless poll this far before any primary.

Not everyone is convinced Hillary Clinton or even Joe Biden will run in 2016.

Who do you think will run for the Democratic primary?

Not who you think will win; not who would you like to run. Who do you think will run?

You can vote for up to four.

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Bush versus Clinton? Again?

One of the reasons I supported Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton is because I have a real dislike of dynasties. We have over 300 million people in the US. Can’t we stop electing husbands and wives and sons and daughters of the same politicians?

This is nothing against Hillary. I think she’d be a fine President.

But now Jeb Bush may decide to run in 2016, and we could be presented with the third Bush getting a nomination and a race that looks awfully familiar: Clinton versus Bush.

In America, we don’t have royalty, but we apparently have something similar: A Ruling Class. We’ve had our Roosevelts and our Kennedys and our Bushes and our Clintons, going all the way back to John Adams and John Quincy Adams. Not that these people have necessarily been unqualified, but in a country this large, it would be nice to see who else is out there.

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How the GOP can win the presidential race

To follow up on yesterday’s editorial cartoon:

The Republican party has won the popular vote only once in the last six presidential elections (when Bush won by a razor-thin margin). They have a huge uphill battle, and it’s not getting any better for them. The population is changing, and the old angry white man vote is dying.

Look at the electoral college voting patterns. You need 270 electoral votes to win. If we count every state that has voted Democratic in the last six elections, the Democrats start off with 242 votes, and the Republicans have 206. If you count only the last two, the Democrats have 332.

This is bad news for the Republicans, which leaves them with two options: (1) expand their base by appealing to younger voters, women, and minorities; or (2) cheat.

As we have seen, they have decided to go for option 2. Republicans have instituted voter purges and intimidation, creating hardships for those in Democratic-leaning districts and causing long lines to discourage voting. They’ve fought against early voting and other methods which will encourage people to exercise their rights. They’ve gerrymandered districts in ways that keep Democrats from winning.

They’ve created a propaganda machine to convince people that voter fraud is taking place (quite ironically). They’ve passed laws making it harder for people to register and vote. And they’ve challenged the Voting Rights Act in court.

Because, let’s face it, the only other solution would be to actually listen to the will of the people.