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Paleo's avatar

Four Democrats, Case, Cuellar, Glusenenkamp-Perez and Golden voted for the "SAVE" act, which will would require documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration, bar states from counting late-arriving mail ballots, and dramatically infringe on states’ authority to run elections. While the bill doesn't have the votes to overcome a Democratic filibuster in the senate, it's still pretty galling to see it get 4 Democratic votes. Especially, the putrid Ed Case, who has no case to make that he needs to vote that way because of his district.

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PollJunkie's avatar

Another banger by Golden.

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Mark's avatar

Or perhaps you should say "Bangor" by Golden.

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Henrik's avatar

I know Hawaii has a unique and fairly insular (heh) political culture that’s more conservative than it gets credit for, but can somebody please primary Ed Case?

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PollJunkie's avatar

I am skeptical that Hawaii has an undocumented problem as bad as the other 48 have so this obviously did not influence his vote. (Note: Illegal voting is rare, aggressively prosecuted and in the cases that are few and far between, the majority has been done by undocumented Republicans)

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Henrik's avatar

No, definitely not. Big homeless problem, but those are usually native Hawaiians

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Zero Cool's avatar

I've been hearing Honolulu in particular is having a big problem with homeless population. It's become a real crisis over there.

Naturally, with Honolulu being the main metropolitan city in Hawaii and where most air travel tends to embark before going to other HI islands, it may have the most issues with the homeless.

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michaelflutist's avatar

The phrase "undocumented problem" somehow bothers me, I think mainly because it's a huge oversimplification that ignores the larger issues of the creation of an underclass and the need for immigration because of the country's low birth rate.

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PollJunkie's avatar

I support immigration reform and legalization while increasing border security.

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michaelflutist's avatar

That's cool and perfectly reasonable.

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ArcticStones's avatar

Moreover, the term "undocumented problem" is a linguistic atrocity! Surely all problems should be documented as thoroughly as possible, so they can be grappled with and defined, so as to facilitate good solutions.

(Yes, I know "undocumented" is intended as a noun, not an adjective.)

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Zero Cool's avatar

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that unless you're referring to a particular context and attitude of Hawaiians. Both HI-01 and HI-02, which is represented by Rep. Jill Tokuda, have about the same PVIs.

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Henrik's avatar

I’m referring to how the HI Dems are a big tent party that captures a whole lot of small-c conservative voters (sort of an inverse Kansas GOP) in addition to Hawaii’s very unique cultural milieu

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Zero Cool's avatar

Where do you see the conservative-minded voters in HI? I would imagine Maui and Oahu although not so much Kauai.

Molokai is completely native Hawaiian-inhabited with the exception of one resort. I'm sure residents vote like everyone else in HI although I doubt they are conservative, unless it means they don't want change in this island as far as commerce and residential development is concerned.

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Darren Monaghan's avatar

Jill Tokuda is favorite to succeed Hirono when that seat opens up IMO!! 💙🇺🇲

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Miguel Parreno's avatar

I've been looking at Adrian Tam and I think he'd be a substantial upgrade over Case.

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Jay's avatar

Surely Honolulu has no shortage of ambitious Dems who could challenge Case. Maybe they’re afraid because he’s been in politics so long?

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Paleo's avatar

I don't get how the guy has lasted this long.

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Zero Cool's avatar

The only thing Case has going for him is that he's the cousin of AOL co-founder Steve Case.

Besides that, he's ripe for a primary challenge and should easily get the can out of the primary. A D+13 district doesn't need someone like Case, especially considering it's just +1 higher than HI-02.

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JanusIanitos's avatar

Isn't the Hawaii electorate far more deferential to incumbents than typical?

Primarying an incumbent sans a career ending scandal or similar is difficult by default, even if Hawaii doesn't favor them more than usual. I'm not surprised Case has stuck around since his initial return to office in 2018, with a rather crowded primary electorate then too.

Especially in Hawaii, federal politics as a job has to be shit. The commute is terrible. They basically lose a day every time they need to make a one way trip between Hawaii and DC. It's not as nice of a job as other states and primarying an incumbent would be difficult. Most potential challengers are going to take a pass as a consequence, making it easy for Case to stay in office.

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AWildLibAppeared's avatar

In the state legislature, there recently were a series of primaries that ousted some incumbent. I have to wonder if the organizers who fielded those candidates could maybe recruit a single, strong primary challenger to field against Ed Case.

It's also worth mentioning that the man is 72, he's a white guy representing a 68% AAPI district, and he originally returned to the seat with only a plurality of Dem primary voters. He's not a good fit for his district in multiple ways. He was beaten once before in 2006, so he probably can be beaten again with some effort and the right recruit.

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michaelflutist's avatar

I don't think race is much of an issue for Hawaiian voters; correct me if I'm wrong.

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michaelflutist's avatar

He's somehow an extremely talented and pretty popular politician.

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James Trout's avatar

Because incumbency and seniority. As a small state, Hawaii LOVES their incumbents at the federal level because they feel it is their only way to get federal money back home.

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Darren Monaghan's avatar

He's in his 70's, sooner he retires from politics permanently; the better!!

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Tim Nguyen's avatar

Yea no I don't care how popular voter ID laws may be, but voters rarely vote for candidates based on their positions and support for these type of laws. Look at Susan Crawford and the recent Wisconsin Supreme Court election. Sure the voters overwhelmingly supported the voter ID laws, but they still also overwhelmingly supported Crawford, who ran as a liberal and progressive and probably known to oppose such draconian laws. Ironically such draconian voter restrictions may just end up hurting these conservative democrats if they were implemented. Aside from that, supporting these type of measures, especially when you know there's likely gonna be a strong blue wave midterm shows a poor political intuition. Then again, I've seen similar if not worse instincts from conservative democrats like opposing the public option in the ACA.

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PollJunkie's avatar

Voting rights act by Democrats during Biden was amended to include voter ID.

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Tim Nguyen's avatar

Huh I wasn't aware of that. The one thing that always infuriates me about these laws, is if you care that much about voter ID and "election integrity", where's the effort to provide a detailed website and resource that can educate voters, let alone help provide them with voter ID if their ID is lacking or incorrect? I hope Biden's voter ID included those changes too.

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Zero Cool's avatar

As long as things are practical and not meant as a prelude for more restrictive measures to stop voter turnout, I can live with the voter ID requirements. Detailed information on how to manage this via a website would make sense.

On the other hand, if you get a mail-in ballot you can work around it easily. At least in the State of California that is the case.

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Tim Nguyen's avatar

Sadly they often aren't and we're not even talking about undocumented residents and temporary visa workers yet. Many communities notably Native Americans live on reservations and lack a formal address of their own. We've seen how adverse voter ID laws affect them when such requirements for addresses are made. Moreover, you have transient populations that include many homeless and low income people that not only may lack a residence, but perhaps not even the income to process voter IDs for themselves. I can't speak for all places, but I am convinced many politicians that push for voter ID and election integrity are willfully blind to these challenges.

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Zero Cool's avatar

Yeah, that is a problem. Common sense is one thing but if you're making it more complicated, then it's hard for Native Americans to even have a voice if they are facing such headaches dealing with the voter ID crap.

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Andrew's avatar

I don’t recall that at all. Why would they bother watering down the bill? To get Manchin and Sinema to support ending the filibuster? I doubt that would have done it for them.

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PollJunkie's avatar

Because the concept of a voter id is popular among Americans. I am sure the bill had all the provisions to mitigate the downsides of voter id and did not have a blatant Jane crow like ID requirement.

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James Trout's avatar

Yep. We can complain about it all we want. Our gullible electorate thinks "voter fraud" is a lot more common than it actually is.

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michaelflutist's avatar

You mean conservative Republicans, don't you?

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stevk's avatar

That's not what those votes are about. They know that it will not survive the Senate, so leadership let them vote in favor so they can point to that vote next November as evidence of their "independence".

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PollJunkie's avatar

Yes except for Golden because he voted for the funding bill and is against the tariff bill even when the other 3 aren't. He's a conservative democrat IG.

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ArcticStones's avatar

True, and he can be utterly exasperating at times. But Jared Golden is probably the best ME-02 can hope for.

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CuriousReader4456's avatar

The alternative to Golden is a 100% MAGA republican. I gladly take Golden over that.

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SCOTT BRIZARD's avatar

Absolutely disgraceful- what the eff is wrong with them and why didn’t Jeffries ‘whip’ their ‘no’ votes instead of letting them get away with this?!

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