I had commented yesterday that the listen feature didn't seem to work on Android phones, but David figured out what I was doing wrong (in about 10 seconds). How I couldn't figure this one out on my own is beyond me. Anyway, I listened to morning digest which is so convenient.
Term limits and age limits would age out a lot of our problems on both sides of the aisle. I'm sick and tired of a world run by 70- and 80-year olds. And I say that as a nearly 70-year-old.
I agree, terms limits for state legislatures have proven ineffective and just create a musical chairs scenario of the same politicians hopping around like in California. Mandatory retirement ages (70 perhaps) for elected office seems fairer and would encourage younger people to get involved earlier in their careers. They already do this for some state Supreme Courts.
Arbitrary age limits is a dumb idea. There are many elected officials in their 70s who are sharper and more energetic than people half their age. Look at Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Conversely, Jack Schlossberg is someone who may never be ready for public office.
There are just as many young and terrible office holders. Experience is a good thing. If they can still do the job physically an mentally, why should they be barred.
Once you turn 70, will you no longer useful for anything?
I'm sure there are terrific 70+ year olds. But age restrictions would save us from the McConnells and Trumps of the world. And the Schumers, for that matter.
Kind of unclear to me how you map the Republican Party being terrible onto age. Some of the better members like Romney and Murkowski would have issues with age limitations while people like Hawley and Tom Cotton won't hit them for 30 years. Age is just not really a correlate for depravity in US politics.
What is the likelihood of one or several key California races not being decided for days, if not weeks, due to the glacial pace of vote counting there? The nightmare scenario would be for the governor's race flipping from Hilton to Steyer after a week or more of late ballots coming in, which would lead to renewed attacks on election integrity and voting by mail from Trump and his chorus.
This may be cynical and anti-democratic, but would that necessarily be a bad thing? (I'm genuinely asking.) While it definitely undermines our democratic institutions to routinely have a party that claims elections are rigged, I wonder if forcing them to focus on an issue swing voters don't care about would be an excellent distraction and if it would weaken Republican turnout in California. Not that Trump needs help being distracted from issues voters actually care about, but any time we can throw them off message is good for us.
That's not what I'm asking. Obviously, we'd all prefer votes be counted faster. The question is that since it's inevitable that California will take ages to count votes and there's a strong likelihood that results will change as votes are counted, is it a bad thing if it provokes Republicans into talking about voter fraud? Are there potential benefits to it, how much damage do Republican claims of voter fraud hurt democracy, and do the benefits outweigh the damage?
This is going to be a blue wave if we keep working hard and donating as much as we can. But I am disappointed that Dems are not on the ballot in all races! I am also disappointed that Dems in the blue states have not combined the local elections with the even year midterm elections which would boost voter turnout and save tax money needed to make up for the Trump cuts. It also results in more women and more minorities being elected to local offices.
In some blue states we have combined local elections with state and federal ones. In my hometown we moved the city elections from odd years to the even year cycle. That is why we have a race for L.A. Mayor on today's ballot. The odd year turnout numbers were embarrassingly low and there was the extra cost of running two elections every year. Another change was to put all statewide initiatives (and almost all other ballot measures) on the November general election ballot where there is higher turnout than in primaries. That was a good idea, though it makes writing my general election newsletters more challenging. Describing complex ballot measures in a sentence or two is the political equivalent of writing fortune cookie inserts. Trying to say a lot in few words is not easy sometimes.
One thing that did not change is that most local elections are "nonpartisan", meaning that the candidates' party affiliation are not listed on the ballot. More importantly it is possible to be elected in the primary with a majority of 50%+1. The partisan races all go to the general election.
My Angeleno election predictions for today:
Mayor Karen Bass will make it into a runoff with Councilmember Nithya Raman. Pratt is noisy, but won't get the votes he needs. If Pratt does get into the runoff Bass will be easily re-elected in November. It is possible that Pratt and Raman both make the runoff, but I think that Bass will hang on to a spot.
City Controller: Zach Sokoloff will defeat incumbent Kenneth Mejia. Sokoloff has family money, and his mom has dumped $7.5m into independent expenditures mostly attacking Mejia. The accusations are troubling if true, but I have my doubts of their veracity. With only two candidates this will be decided in this election.
City Attorney: This will go to a runoff between the incumbent Hydee Feldstein Soto and challenger Marissa Roy, who has the endorsement of the LACDP (county Dems) and more left groups (DSA, etc). The third candidate, John McKinney has the moderate/conservative lane and the backing of the PPL (police union). If he does well he might get into the runoff with Roy. Hydee is a one-termer...
County Supervisors: District 1 (Eastern L.A. County). Sen. Maria Elena Durazo will get a majority win to succeed termed-out Hilda Solis. Solis is going back to Congress (in CA-38).
District 3 (San Fernando Valley and Westside): Supv. Lindsey Horvath will get re-elected with a majority.
Assessor: Our excellent Assessor Jeff Prang will win, despite facing numerous "some dudes". Assessor is important for both competence and honesty. The last Assessor ended up in jail...
Sheriff: Sheriff Robert Luna will be re-elected but might be forced into a runoff with his predecessor Alex Villanueva. We don't want Sheriff V. back!
Yesterday David said that this site is specifically pro-democracy. So I had a democracy-related question.
Say you have a democratic country, with a situation where 15% of the country's population simply refuses to obey any of the country's laws. And say that this 15% has a political party (or two) that demand the permanent continuation of this lawless status, and engages in civil (and sometimes not-so-civil) disobedience in support of this position.
This is obviously a serious problem in a democracy, so how should a democracy properly address this?
A law is passed that affects this 15%. They blatantly flout the law, and openly and publicly claim that they are above the law. The leaders of this 15% have repeatedly stated a belief that they answer only to what they believe to be the laws of a higher power, and that the laws passed by the country's legislature don't apply to them.
America already exempts some populations from certain laws, thinking specifically of Amish/Mennonite communities, but of course they're nowhere near 15% of the population. Honestly if they're geographically concentrated, my inclination would be to just let them secede.
years ago in college I took a class in consociationalism, the general concept of power-sharing between a majority and a minority. The professor was Belgian, and not surprisingly he held up Belgium as a model; Canada (Quebecois) was in between; and Rwanda was an example of it NOT working. When the Rwanda genocide started, I wasn't surprised. So...the long term answer might be to give the 15 percent some sort of seat at the table. If they'll accept it, as your question sounds like they're more interested in flouting the existing system than in shaping a new one. Some men just want to watch the world burn....
Happy Get This F*cking Day Over With Day to all (CA, IA, MT,NJ, NM, SD) who celebrate!
Yesterday was Happy Unsubscribe From All Likely Losing Primary Candidates' Email* Lists Before They Sell Your Name To Pay Their Campaign Debts Day to all who celebrated... and I did.
FHFA head Bill Pulte, who is a real estate mogul with no intelligence experience, will succeed Tulsi Gabbard as DNI. When FHFA had an opening during Obama, Obama tapped Rep. Mel Watt. Maybe Trump will put an elected official in Pulte's place.
I had commented yesterday that the listen feature didn't seem to work on Android phones, but David figured out what I was doing wrong (in about 10 seconds). How I couldn't figure this one out on my own is beyond me. Anyway, I listened to morning digest which is so convenient.
Term limits and age limits would age out a lot of our problems on both sides of the aisle. I'm sick and tired of a world run by 70- and 80-year olds. And I say that as a nearly 70-year-old.
Term limits are bad policy. Just hands over power and institutional memory over to lobbyists.
I agree, terms limits for state legislatures have proven ineffective and just create a musical chairs scenario of the same politicians hopping around like in California. Mandatory retirement ages (70 perhaps) for elected office seems fairer and would encourage younger people to get involved earlier in their careers. They already do this for some state Supreme Courts.
Yeah I'm less opposed to age limits
Arbitrary age limits is a dumb idea. There are many elected officials in their 70s who are sharper and more energetic than people half their age. Look at Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Conversely, Jack Schlossberg is someone who may never be ready for public office.
Legislative term limits are a bad idea; I'm fine with limiting executive tenures (president, governors, mayors, etc.).
Right, those are less objectionable. Since the comment I responded to was addressing the California congressional primaries I didn't specify.
There are just as many young and terrible office holders. Experience is a good thing. If they can still do the job physically an mentally, why should they be barred.
Once you turn 70, will you no longer useful for anything?
I'm sure there are terrific 70+ year olds. But age restrictions would save us from the McConnells and Trumps of the world. And the Schumers, for that matter.
Kind of unclear to me how you map the Republican Party being terrible onto age. Some of the better members like Romney and Murkowski would have issues with age limitations while people like Hawley and Tom Cotton won't hit them for 30 years. Age is just not really a correlate for depravity in US politics.
What is the likelihood of one or several key California races not being decided for days, if not weeks, due to the glacial pace of vote counting there? The nightmare scenario would be for the governor's race flipping from Hilton to Steyer after a week or more of late ballots coming in, which would lead to renewed attacks on election integrity and voting by mail from Trump and his chorus.
This may be cynical and anti-democratic, but would that necessarily be a bad thing? (I'm genuinely asking.) While it definitely undermines our democratic institutions to routinely have a party that claims elections are rigged, I wonder if forcing them to focus on an issue swing voters don't care about would be an excellent distraction and if it would weaken Republican turnout in California. Not that Trump needs help being distracted from issues voters actually care about, but any time we can throw them off message is good for us.
Given a choice between fast and accurate, I will always prefer accurate.
That's not what I'm asking. Obviously, we'd all prefer votes be counted faster. The question is that since it's inevitable that California will take ages to count votes and there's a strong likelihood that results will change as votes are counted, is it a bad thing if it provokes Republicans into talking about voter fraud? Are there potential benefits to it, how much damage do Republican claims of voter fraud hurt democracy, and do the benefits outweigh the damage?
...I was agreeing with you (I think?)
Highly unlikely in a Trump midterm.
Also, there might be a brand of Republican that could make CA-GOV competitive, but Steve Hilton ain't it.
This is going to be a blue wave if we keep working hard and donating as much as we can. But I am disappointed that Dems are not on the ballot in all races! I am also disappointed that Dems in the blue states have not combined the local elections with the even year midterm elections which would boost voter turnout and save tax money needed to make up for the Trump cuts. It also results in more women and more minorities being elected to local offices.
In some blue states we have combined local elections with state and federal ones. In my hometown we moved the city elections from odd years to the even year cycle. That is why we have a race for L.A. Mayor on today's ballot. The odd year turnout numbers were embarrassingly low and there was the extra cost of running two elections every year. Another change was to put all statewide initiatives (and almost all other ballot measures) on the November general election ballot where there is higher turnout than in primaries. That was a good idea, though it makes writing my general election newsletters more challenging. Describing complex ballot measures in a sentence or two is the political equivalent of writing fortune cookie inserts. Trying to say a lot in few words is not easy sometimes.
One thing that did not change is that most local elections are "nonpartisan", meaning that the candidates' party affiliation are not listed on the ballot. More importantly it is possible to be elected in the primary with a majority of 50%+1. The partisan races all go to the general election.
My Angeleno election predictions for today:
Mayor Karen Bass will make it into a runoff with Councilmember Nithya Raman. Pratt is noisy, but won't get the votes he needs. If Pratt does get into the runoff Bass will be easily re-elected in November. It is possible that Pratt and Raman both make the runoff, but I think that Bass will hang on to a spot.
City Controller: Zach Sokoloff will defeat incumbent Kenneth Mejia. Sokoloff has family money, and his mom has dumped $7.5m into independent expenditures mostly attacking Mejia. The accusations are troubling if true, but I have my doubts of their veracity. With only two candidates this will be decided in this election.
City Attorney: This will go to a runoff between the incumbent Hydee Feldstein Soto and challenger Marissa Roy, who has the endorsement of the LACDP (county Dems) and more left groups (DSA, etc). The third candidate, John McKinney has the moderate/conservative lane and the backing of the PPL (police union). If he does well he might get into the runoff with Roy. Hydee is a one-termer...
County Supervisors: District 1 (Eastern L.A. County). Sen. Maria Elena Durazo will get a majority win to succeed termed-out Hilda Solis. Solis is going back to Congress (in CA-38).
District 3 (San Fernando Valley and Westside): Supv. Lindsey Horvath will get re-elected with a majority.
Assessor: Our excellent Assessor Jeff Prang will win, despite facing numerous "some dudes". Assessor is important for both competence and honesty. The last Assessor ended up in jail...
Sheriff: Sheriff Robert Luna will be re-elected but might be forced into a runoff with his predecessor Alex Villanueva. We don't want Sheriff V. back!
Yesterday David said that this site is specifically pro-democracy. So I had a democracy-related question.
Say you have a democratic country, with a situation where 15% of the country's population simply refuses to obey any of the country's laws. And say that this 15% has a political party (or two) that demand the permanent continuation of this lawless status, and engages in civil (and sometimes not-so-civil) disobedience in support of this position.
This is obviously a serious problem in a democracy, so how should a democracy properly address this?
Can you elaborate on "simply refuses to obey any of the country's laws"?
A law is passed that affects this 15%. They blatantly flout the law, and openly and publicly claim that they are above the law. The leaders of this 15% have repeatedly stated a belief that they answer only to what they believe to be the laws of a higher power, and that the laws passed by the country's legislature don't apply to them.
Bosnia, basically lol
America already exempts some populations from certain laws, thinking specifically of Amish/Mennonite communities, but of course they're nowhere near 15% of the population. Honestly if they're geographically concentrated, my inclination would be to just let them secede.
years ago in college I took a class in consociationalism, the general concept of power-sharing between a majority and a minority. The professor was Belgian, and not surprisingly he held up Belgium as a model; Canada (Quebecois) was in between; and Rwanda was an example of it NOT working. When the Rwanda genocide started, I wasn't surprised. So...the long term answer might be to give the 15 percent some sort of seat at the table. If they'll accept it, as your question sounds like they're more interested in flouting the existing system than in shaping a new one. Some men just want to watch the world burn....
Know it's an internal but nice. Baldacci by 8 in ME-2 https://x.com/PollTracker2024/status/2061767495288021413?s=20
That LePage is 77 (and IMHO looks older), in a cycle that doesn't seem to be friendly to older candidates, might help us here.
I am wondering if Gavin Newsom’s critical remarks about his own party is designed to get GOP and Independent support for his presidential run?
Perhaps, but just as a heads up, 2028 presidential primaries are not to be talked about here iirc
Democratic, specifically. You can still discuss the Republican ones.
May I ask why?
The name of the website is the downballot and there are like 9,000 elections between now and the 2028 Presidential primaries.
Plus if I recall the 2016 primaries caused a lot of drama at DK and so the rule is a measure to prevent things from getting ugly
No Democratic Party Primary presential talk please. Other sites deal with it and it always gets way too contentious and drowns out everything else.
Survey USA: Hilton 20, Steyer 20, Becerra 17, Bianco 11
I think this one is in the digest.
Happy Get This F*cking Day Over With Day to all (CA, IA, MT,NJ, NM, SD) who celebrate!
Yesterday was Happy Unsubscribe From All Likely Losing Primary Candidates' Email* Lists Before They Sell Your Name To Pay Their Campaign Debts Day to all who celebrated... and I did.
*= Texts, too.
These candidates are who I think will win in their respective primaries today:
CA-G: I think Becerra comes first and Steyer just about comes second over Hilton
IA-S(D): I think Josh Turek beats Zach Wahls pretty comfortably
MT-S(D): Sadly I think that Reilly Neill win win
MT-1(D): I think Cleveland wins over Forstag and Busse
NJ-7(D): I think Bennett very narrowly beats Shah
NM-G(D): I think Deb Haaland wins easily
SD-G(R): I think Dusty Johnson comes first but it will go to a runoff
i think bennet wins comfortably, and that's not just because I want to be able to leave her victory party at a reasonable hour
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-william-pulte-acting-director-national-intelligence-tulsi-gabbar-rcna348036
FHFA head Bill Pulte, who is a real estate mogul with no intelligence experience, will succeed Tulsi Gabbard as DNI. When FHFA had an opening during Obama, Obama tapped Rep. Mel Watt. Maybe Trump will put an elected official in Pulte's place.