Tag: midterm election
Upbeat Trump Says Terror Attack Could Still Save Republicans In Midterm Election

Upbeat Trump Says Terror Attack Could Still Save Republicans In Midterm Election

A report about the mood among Republican leaders facing the increasing probability of major Democratic gains in the 2018 midterm elections contains a disturbing comment attributed to President Donald Trump.

Discussing electoral possibilities, the president indicated that an attack by terrorists on U.S. soil would be helpful to the Republican Party, according to multiple sources. He specifically cited the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the U.S.

“In private conversations, Trump has told advisers that he doesn’t think the 2018 election has to be as bad as others are predicting,” the Washington Post explains. “He has referenced the 2002 midterms, when George W. Bush and Republicans fared better after the September 11 terrorist attacks, these people said.”

The article did not contain information on how the individuals present reacted when Trump made the remarks.

Vox quickly published a response about the “terrifying” implications of Trump’s comments, which would be alarming coming from any public figure, much less the Commander-in-Chief of the United States.

Midterm Outcome: Mandate On Obama Or Big Money At Play?

Midterm Outcome: Mandate On Obama Or Big Money At Play?

Look at it this way: at least the 2014 midterm elections are over.

Maybe the most clueless pronouncement ever made by a U.S. Supreme Court Justice was Anthony Kennedy’s comment in the 2010 Citizens United case arguing that unlimited “independent [campaign] expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”

Not even secret donations by free-range tycoons hiding behind fake “charitable” groups with names like Citizens for Cute Kitten Videos. Because when Scrooge McDuck dumps a truckload of bullion into a political campaign, it’s not because he wants anything in return. It’s all about the public good.

Also, the justices ruled, because money is a form of speech. Scrooge needn’t even disclose spending $50 million on TV ads claiming that a candidate seeking to prevent McDuck Industries from dumping liquid cyanide into backyard swimming pools has a hidden history of torturing kittens.

That would be a violation of Scrooge’s First Amendment right to free speech: exactly like a law forbidding you, dear reader, from posting a comment calling me a mangy dog. How could anybody think otherwise?

If only the Supremes had ruled that speech was a form of money. That’s one I could have endorsed.

Metaphysical absurdities aside, the clearest effect of Citizens United has been to make people more contemptuous of politics. “This fall,” writes New York Times columnist Tim Egan, “voters are more disgusted, more bored and more cynical about the midterm elections than at any time in at least two decades….just 29 percent of the electorate said they were ‘enthusiastic’ about voting this year.”

And those, I fear, are mainly the crackpots. Where I live (Arkansas) the easiest way to avoid toxic political arguments during this election season is to pronounce anathema on the lot. Nobody argues with you (except my sainted wife, who tends be dreadfully earnest about these things).

Particularly resented is the ceaseless barrage of TV commercials that has made watching local news broadcasts hazardous to mental health. Ordinary citizens simply don’t know who, if anybody, to believe. The easy option is to believe nobody, and to quietly yearn for the return of the shouting auto dealers and discount furniture pitchmen.

Alas, that reaction’s exactly what McDuck Industries wants. To fix the problem will apparently take a constitutional amendment stipulating what should have been obvious to a powerhouse intellect like Justice Kennedy: that money’s definitely not speech, it’s power.

And that apportioning and delimiting power is what the U.S. Constitution is all about.

Another unfortunate aspect of the 2014 campaign has been the temptation to portray it as a national referendum on President Obama. The news media’s Cult of the Presidency sustains the ongoing melodrama and affirms their own self-importance.

Historically speaking, almost every president’s party loses power in sixth-year midterm elections—perhaps as it begins to dawn upon starry-eyed supporters that the country’s in as big a mess as ever. Thus what the Washington Post calls “Obama’s journey from triumphant, validated Democratic hero to a political millstone weighing on his party’s chances.”

It happened to Ronald Reagan in 1986 and to George W. Bush in 2006, and it would probably have happened to Bill Clinton in 1998—booming economy notwithstanding—if the fools hadn’t impeached him.

It’s particularly likely when a large number of Senate seats are being contested in states that the president lost two years earlier—definitely helping McDuck Industries identify which races to target.

Consider Arkansas, where Sen. Mark Pryor drew no GOP opponent in 2008, but finds himself confronted with McDuck-financed Rep. Tom Cotton, whose entire campaign consists of repeating “Obama, Obama, Obama” like a cockatoo.

It’s apt to work, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist John Brummett writes “because of an irrational aversion to President Barack Obama and Obamacare, the local application of which is saving hospitals, insuring hundreds of thousands of poor people, holding down premiums and saving the state vital money in its Medicaid matching.”

Arkansas, however, ain’t America, only a provincial one percent of it. What’s more, the “irrational aversion,” sad to say, has ancient roots.

Otherwise, two thoughts:

First, Obama is not as unpopular nationally as frontrunning news media pretend. As Media Matters’ Eric Boehlert points out, despite misleading headlines about “plummeting” approval rates, the president’s actual numbers have consistently held in the low- to mid-40s—not good, but nothing close to the mid-20s achieved by George W. Bush.

Secondly, along with Obamacare, improving the health and security of millions, he’s greatly improved the economy, controlled budget deficits, and added 5.5 million jobs, reducing unemployment to 5.9 percent.

In foreign policy, sure the Middle East remains a godawful mess. But when wasn’t it?

Maybe Paul Krugman laid it on a bit thick in Rolling Stone, calling Barack Obama “one of the most consequential and, yes, successful presidents in American history.”

Nevertheless, barring unforeseen disasters, the president’s claims are substantial.

Photo: Brendan Hoffman via Flickr

Voters To Weigh Tax Caps, Increases

Voters To Weigh Tax Caps, Increases

By Elaine S. Povich, Stateline.org

WASHINGTON — Capping or outlawing state income taxes by referendum is either wise or foolish, depending on whom you ask. Voters in Tennessee and Georgia will decide for themselves on Tuesday when they consider two of the most interesting fiscal measures topping state ballots this election year.

Of the 146 referendums that are on state ballots this midterm election year, 21 involve tax or budget decisions, according to Ballotpedia, a nonpartisan tracker of ballot issues. Overall, there has been a downward trend in the number of referendums over the past few election cycles, as several states have made it more difficult to get an issue on the ballot. There were 184 in 2010, the last midterm election. There were 40 fiscal measures on the ballot in 2010.

The revenue measures range from the income tax proposals in Tennessee and Georgia, to an increase in income taxes for Illinois millionaires to the repeal of a Massachusetts law that ties gasoline tax increases to inflation.

Political consultants and academics who study referendums say voters often support tax hikes that state legislatures won’t, such as raising taxes for specific education or transportation projects. But they also note that voters lack the overall view of state spending that legislators have.

It’s highly likely that the Tennessee and Georgia voters will side with those who want to keep income taxes low or eliminate them from the discussion, according to polling in those states and tax analysts.

In Tennessee, voters will decide whether to enshrine into the state constitution a law barring a broad-based income tax. The state taxes income from dividends and interest but not earned income. Proponents, including Republican state Sen. Brian Kelsey, who sponsored the measure that sent the issue to the ballot and who chairs the “Yes on Three” campaign, said the measure encourages fiscal responsibility.

“Being a low income tax has brought more economic development to the state,” Kelsey said.

But opponents argue the measure is shortsighted, and eventually may require the state to increase other taxes.

Michael Leachman, director of state fiscal research at the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, D.C., described the referendum as “a wild overreaction to a problem that doesn’t exist.”

“Here you put something into the state’s constitution, to foreclose the possibility that in the future you might want to — even temporarily — increase the state’s income tax to go through a very severe recession, for example,” Leachman said. “It is really wrong-headed. You don’t know what the future is going to bring.”

A ballot measure to amend the Tennessee constitution must first get a majority vote from the House and Senate during one two-year period. Then it must win a two-thirds majority vote from both chambers in the next two-year period.

The measure must appear on the ballot during a gubernatorial election year. In order to pass, the question must not only get more “yes” votes than “no” votes, it must receive a majority of the votes cast in the governor’s race. If a voter casts a vote in the governor’s race, but then leaves the ballot question box blank, that essentially counts as a “no” vote on the referendum. Kelsey said that occurred in 2002 when the constitutional amendment to institute a lottery cleared the bar, but another constitutional amendment did not.

In Georgia, voters will decide whether to cap the state’s top income rate at 6 percent in the state’s constitution. The measure is likely to pass, despite similar arguments against it that it would put the state in a fiscal “straitjacket.”

Republican Senate President Pro Tempore David Shafer and other proponents insist the referendum will reinforce Georgia’s status as a low-tax state. The actual wording of the referendum is: “Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended to prohibit the General Assembly from increasing the maximum state income tax rate.” The Assembly decided by a two-thirds vote in the recent session to send that issue to the voters.

Wesley Tharpe, tax and economic policy analyst for the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, said locking in a low tax rate might be bad for the state in the future. “Today, the state has embraced having low taxes, some of the lowest in the country, but we have congested roads, an underfunded health care and education system. Georgians of the future might decide differently on funding education,” he said.

The Georgia legislature is one of many that sent contentious issues to the voters this year. Lawmakers in 36 states have put at least 86 measures — both fiscal and non-fiscal — on the November ballot, according to Ballotpedia, the rest came from citizen initiatives.

One way to entice voters to increase taxes by referendum is to earmark the extra revenue for a specific area, like education. Both Illinois and Nevada have measures on the ballot involving schools. Illinois will decide whether to impose a surtax of 3 percent on incomes over $1 million earmarked for schools, while in Nevada, voters will decide whether to adopt a 2 percent margin tax on businesses that make more than $1 million, with the revenue going to support schools.

In Illinois, the measure is advisory and won’t commit legislators to following through, but Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, assuming he gets re-elected, might persuade the legislature to enact it. The Illinois Legislature failed to approve referendum ballot measure to amend the state constitution to impose the tax, so it went with the advisory referendum.

“If this measure is approved, it may make it easier for (Quinn) to get the constitutional amendment,” said Brittany Clingen, ballot measures project director for Ballotpedia. That assumes that Quinn, who is locked in a tight race with Republican Bruce Rauner, survives the election.

The Nevada measure is complicated because it can be calculated several ways, and is the subject of an intense political fight, pitting the Nevada Education Association against the AFL-CIO, which initially supported the measure. Opponents argue it would dampen business in the state. Supporters say it would be good for teachers and schools.

Clingen says earmarking the money does make it easier for states to sell tax increases. “People like to support schools and children,” she said, citing the Nevada vote. “But there’s a real world effect on business.” She said the issue has attracted plenty of money, with opponents outspending the support side.

Jennie Bowser, an independent political consultant and an expert of referendums, says taking fiscal issues to the voters can be a “good way to make fiscal policy,” especially if state legislatures are reluctant to raise taxes. “You can achieve a policy goal that everyone’s in favor of but which is hard to finance.”

But, she noted, voters don’t have the “bird’s-eye view” of the state’s fiscal situation overall. “They are picking and choosing the pieces they like, and they don’t necessarily fit together in a coherent way,” she said.

Bowser said some ballot issues are attracting big money from opponents and supporters. Oregon, for example, has a measure on genetically modified organism (GMO) food labeling which has attracted more than $23 million in contributions — about $16 million from opponents and $7 million from backers. An Oregonian poll showed the measure trailing by six points just a week before the election. All of the attention to the ballot issue is likely to drive up voter turnout, according to Bowser, who lives in Portland.

“There’s a whole lot of academic research that says having a ballot issue on the ballot increases turnout by 3 percent,” she said, noting that the GMO issue does “pump up voter attention and increase turnout.”

The issue is attracting big money from out of state, according to the Oregonian, including donations from corporate food giants like Monsanto and DuPont Pioneer. Each has given more than $4 million. On the other side, California-based Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps and the Center for Food Safety Action Fund in Washington, D.C., have each given more than $1 million.

Massachusetts voters will get to decide whether to repeal a provision that automatically raises the state gasoline tax with inflation. According to the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, 14 states have a “variable rate” gas tax, while 32 states have fixed taxes (the others didn’t supply data).

A recent Boston Globe poll showed the state evenly divided on whether to repeal the inflation adjustment, with each side garnering 42 percent and the rest undecided. Massachusetts also has a referendum on whether to repeal casino gambling, and voters polled favored keeping the gambling, which backers say would raise millions for the state, by 53 percent.

Photo: Casey Konstantín via Flickr

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Districts Drawn To Elect Minorities May Cost Democrats Control Of House

Districts Drawn To Elect Minorities May Cost Democrats Control Of House

By David Lightman, McClatchy Washington Bureau

RIVIERA BEACH, Fla. — Black residents of this small southeast Florida town like their congressman.
Rep. Alcee Hastings looks like them. He understands them. “If the person has the same race as you, I think they care about you more. They understand where you come from,” said Michael Foreman, a personal trainer.
Hastings, a black Democrat, represents a surgically drawn district where a majority of the population is black, one of dozens of majority-minority districts around the country.
For three decades, lawmakers have increasingly crafted similar districts so that historically underrepresented populations will have adequate representation. And the roster of minorities in Congress has jumped, with the number of African-Americans more than doubling. The vast majority are Democrats, like Hastings.
This jagged line-drawing has had another effect: It’s created what the highest-ranking black member of Congress called “political ghettos,” shoehorning racial minorities into those districts and making it easier for Republicans to win in surrounding areas. That’s helped the Republicans win and maintain majorities in the House of Representatives.
And it helps explain why the two major parties can get roughly the same number of popular votes nationwide yet give the GOP more seats in the House. In 2012, Democrats actually got slightly more of the national popular vote, yet the Republicans today have a 233-199 majority in the House, an edge that’s expected to grow.
If Democrats were elected based on their share of the popular vote, said David Wasserman, House editor at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, the party would have gained 19 more seats in 2012 and probably had a House majority today.
The clustering of Democrats “hurts them a great deal,” he said.
Majority-minority districts have mushroomed since the 1980s, when the Voting Rights Act helped give racial minorities a better chance to elect candidates of their choice. The nation had 35 majority-minority districts in 1982. Today it has 118, according to Wasserman. About 1 in 5, 88, have non-white majorities among the voting age population, according to FairVote, an organization that seeks to make elections fairer.
While the original goal may have been to ensure minority representation in the government, the every-decade drawing of new congressional district boundaries took on a partisan air.
Republicans realized in the early 1990s that packing districts with reliably Democratic minorities improved Republican chances in next-door districts, and Democrats who wanted the majority-minority districts would go along. The strategy helped Republicans win control of the House in 1994 for the first time in 40 years, and the party has controlled the chamber for all but four of the last 20 years.
Courts have noticed, as lawsuits challenged the notion that district maps unconstitutionally categorized voters by race. Earlier this month, a federal court in Virginia ordered that state’s legislature to redraw the lines for Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District after the November election.
The district is a majority-minority hodgepodge that stretches roughly 70 miles from Richmond to Newport News, carefully drawn to include as many black voters as possible.
Rep. Robert Scott, a Democrat, was first elected to the seat in 1992, the first black since Reconstruction to win a congressional seat in Virginia. He’s the only black in the 11-member delegation in a state where 20 percent of the population is black.
The Republican-led General Assembly passed a plan that added thousands more black residents to the 3rd District in 2012. Scott didn’t need them. Over 20 years, he’s won his seat with a range of 69 percent to 97 percent of the vote.
But by adding more minority Democrats to his district, it took them out of neighboring districts — making them safer for Republicans.
“Tellingly, the populations moved out of the 3rd Congressional District were predominantly white, while the populations moved into the district were predominantly African-American,” the court majority found.
Nationally, Republican leaders said they are not engaged in race-packing. “Not at all,” said Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon, chairman of the Republicans’ House campaign committee.
Anyway, he said of the line drawing, “I don’t know that it makes that much difference.”
It can make a difference. In southeast Florida, Hastings, whose district is about 54 percent black, won his last election with 88 percent of the vote, and he’s expected to coast again. He shares a boundary with Rep. Patrick Murphy, a white Democrat who eked out a 2012 victory with 50.4 percent. Murphy’s district’s is 13 percent black.
Move some of Riviera Beach’s black population into Murphy’s district and he would probably have an easier time. Moving boundaries like that could be repeated throughout America and still leave minorities as majorities.
“These lines do make it harder for us to play in other areas,” said Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, the Congressional Black Caucus chair.
“You create political ghettos where you stack the minority voters in one district and thereby bleach out the others,” said Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, Congress’ highest-ranking black Democrat. “It’s unconstitutional and also unconscionable.”
But the system has proven difficult to change.
Many black Democrats, as well as their representatives, said they fought too long for equal representation and say the specially designed districts empower a long-neglected constituency.
“I don’t want to see a Congress that is lily white,” said Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga. “That means we have to have some majority African-American districts to be able to represent what is important to our constituents.”
The Democrats’ dilemma is evident in Riviera Beach, where black residents are reluctant to give up a majority-minority district.
Don’t get us wrong, said blacks in Riviera Beach. We could vote for the right non-black candidate, but having a black congressman is comforting. They’ve had many of the same experiences as we have, said Franklin Williams, a handyman.
He recalled calling police after someone broke into his home. “When the officer came he treated me like the bad guy,” Williams said. “Race is not supposed to matter, but in some cases it does.”
Go over to the predominantly white part of Riveria Beach, into Murphy’s district, and the look and the talk are strikingly different. Swing voters are everywhere, and no one cares about the race of their congressman.
“Skin color should not be an issue at all. I thought that was over in the early 1900s,” said Erica Elliott, bar manager at Two Drunken Goats Beach Cantina.
The big issue, said yacht captain Ken Gibson, is that Hastings has stayed too long. Gibson wants term limits; he wants people with a feel for the area.
“I don’t care if he’s Republican or Democrat. I just don’t like him very much,” said Gibson, an independent.
Both sides understand well the very different attitudes on different sides of the bridge, and across similar boundaries all over the country. That’s why change is elusive and frustrating to those who seek it.
“Voters are supposed to be choosing their representatives,” said Elisabeth MacNamara, president of the League of Women Voters. “Representatives shouldn’t be choosing their voters.”

Photo via Peter W. Cross via McClatchty

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