Tag: parties

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politics State

The Central Issue

Midway through 2004 I talked about the importance of having a two party system in Utah specifically. The Deseret News now writes a story quoting Harry Reid saying the same thing on a national level. Senator Reid put it perfectly in saying, “Legislation is the art of compromise, and a strong two-party system is fundamental to our democracy.”

I was focused on Utah and I proved to be correct as Utah voted more overwhelmingly Republican than any other state in November. Only Washington D.C. was more partisan in their voting – 89% democratic. Now, even though I am no longer a resident of Utah, I still hope that the political landscape of the state can become more balanced so that real meaningful political discussion can take place. I would bet that if a study were done we would find a strong negative correlation between those states that have lively political debate and those states that have lively social problems.

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politics

First Right Step

This is the best statement of the current position of the democratic party that I have recently read. Getting Howard Dean as the head of the party is the best first step that the party could have taken. Dean has already proven that he is able and willing to think outside the box and try new things to energize the party which is exactly what they need. It didn’t hurt that the new minority leader in the Senate is a very moderate politician. That should help to remove the extreme image that the party often has to fight in the media.

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politics

Soul Searching

This is the type of thing to expect from a party that is trying to find its place in American politics. The Democrats are starting to think about their stance on abortion as they search their souls to find ways to appeal to more people. It is about time that they looked at their core issues to figure out the difference between what the American public wants/believes and how they are viewed in public opinion.

It seems to me that they are painted as favoring environmental protection while they are weak on military protection while most people are more interested in having military protection before they get too worked up about protecting our environment. To put it generally, the caricature of the Democrats is that they are strong on all the less important issues. If they will start to take a close look at what people feel strongly about they will be able to restate their positions and find a message that appeals to the primary values and needs of America and they will be able to restore balance to our political system by no longer being the little brother in our two-party system.

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National politics

The Power of the Minority

I am very interested in the moves that the democrats will make as they try to get back to their winning ways. I found an interesting perspective by David Brooks in the New York times.

I really expect that American Politics are largely going to be determined – for better or worse – by what the Democrats end up doing in their efforts to start winning majorities at the national level.

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National politics

A Little Prophecy

In one of his last columns William Safire makes an interesting prophecy about the political future of our nation. He says, “If I were starting out in politics or its commentary today, I’d become a Democrat.” Coming from one of the most staunchly Republican pundits I have ever read, that is an interesting statement.

His reasons offer a ray of hope to the democratic party today and a voice of warning to the Republicans who currently hold power. To the republicans he says, “The G.O.P. personality will split in a couple of years, as all huge majorities do in America. Idealistic neocons will be challenged by plodding, pragmatic paleocons, who, by fuzzing the party’s present character, will someday lead it down the road to defeat.” and to the Democrats he suggests that they can begin to win again if they will “take advantage of its bantamweight agility and ‘stand for something.'”

In some ways I am starting out in politics in that I figure that I still have at least 30 years worth of political participation ahead of me. I could not agree more with Mr. Safire that joining the Republicans represents jumping onto an old champion racehorse – lots of victories behind it, but not many left in front of it. Siding with the Democrats gives the newcomer an opportunity to help shape an up-and-coming champion which will start to produce greater and greater victories so long as discipline and principles are vigilantly maintained.

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National politics

Spin

The DNC is busy making sure that Bush doesn’t win the debates on spin after the fact so they have made sure to send their followers to make their voice heard at the polls.

Online polling is unscientific at best no matter which man wins, but they’re making sure that there is no chance of balance when they make such a blatant effort to misrepresent public opinion by overloading the poll results with the votes of the democratic faithfull. It sure looks fishy when CBS News has Kerry winning by an 80% margin when all the other polls have margins of 9 to 40%. I guess the republicans don’t vote CBS.

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National politics

Cracking the Blocks

Thanks to electoral-vote.com I discovered the efforts of Colorado Democrats who hope not to be disenfranchised in the presidential election this year as reported in the Rocky Mountain News at the beginning of August.

This is exactly in line with what I was advocating in response to the New York Times editorial about abolishing the electoral college. Right now there are too many states taken for granted in every election but if we put the vote of every elector in play to some degree we will have a much more democratic system as it was designed to be. I suggest that the voiceless Republicans in California and New York try to get similar measures on their ballots for November.

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National politics

Two Non-Binding Parties

I was interested as I read this article from Wired Magazine about the new opportunities in politics for people to define themselves outside the strictly Republican vs Democrat framework. Instead they can define themselves in contrast to a party affiliation. The example in the article is Governor Schwarzenegger who is a Republican, but is much more centrist or liberal position on many issues than the National Republican party.

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politics State

Utah Race Defined

Now that the republican primary is over I can say difinitively who I am voting for in the governors race. I have spent months looking at everything I could find on the candidates and so far as I can tell the least promising republican candidate just won the republican primary so I’ll vote for Scott Matheson.In Utah that is not quite as bad as voting for a third party candidate because the democrats still have a slim chance of winning. This is not a state where every vote counts. The majority is overwhelmingly republican so that nationally both parties have eternally roped Utah off as being a given red state.

Right now I am voting for a change in the political structure of the state. We no longer have political dialog, we are stuck with republican diatribe. There is no discourse here. I understand that a huge percent of the population share common values on the largest issues, but that has stifled the discussion on what seems to be the second tier issues where there is not as much uniformity of opinion.

Somehow the political atmoshpere here has to change so that presidential candidates do more than fly over Utah on their way to California and, if we’re lucky, stop for fuel occationally. We also need to have more diversity of opinion so that there can be real discussion in our state legislature because of the uncertainty caused by neither party having an overwhelming majority.

With the same rules as the US Senate a democratic fillibuster on a key issue would last only long enough to count the first 60% of hands as 80% of the legislature voted to end the filibuster. In truth we have a one party state in a two party nation.