I haven’t posted on politics in awhile and boy has there been a number of interesting events. So here, in no particular order, are my own muddled thoughts. Continue reading →

So last night I brought up the question what happened to the Republican dominance in California for Presidential elections. Brad theorized that it was a demographic change that lead to Claifornia becoming a safe state for the Democratic Party in presidential elections. I expressed some doubt, but he may be right. Be low the cut is a graph I made of the popular vote totals in California for both the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates. For comparison I also graphed the popular vote totals for both parties nationally.

The Democratic part has been gaining  steadily in the Golden State since about 1980, this did not translate into victories until 1992, but the trend is plain. What I found even more surprising was that the trend was mirrored, though delayed in the national vote totals. From 1952 through 2008 in general the Democratic Party has been gaining popular votes and the Republican Party has been bleeding them.

If this is demographics, then it could spell massive trouble for the Republican Party. The Tea Party revolution will be carrying the party into the wrong direction for electoral victory. Note that the Republicans did not lose votes totals, slipping behind the Democrats when the total losses became too great, but rather votes moved from the Republican ledger to the Democratic ledger. It is hardly likely that those migrating votes are of a Tea Party mentality. As such moving towards the Tea Party is unlikely to bring those votes back to the Republican party and is therefore unlikely to help in the long term electoral prospects of that party. (there may be short term swings such as 1964 or 1994 but the trend lines continue.)

Becoming a lite version of the Democratic pArty is no answer, rather the Republicans are faced with a generational challenge of finding a philosophical stance that agrees with their principles, and is flexible enough to sweep in votes from the growing Democratic wave.

Continue reading →

A friend of mine is fond of saying that his vote, nationally, doesn’t matter because he lives here in California and no matter what he thinks, wants, or votes California is going to be in the Democratic column come election night.

Today that is true, but it hasn’t always been that way.

From 1952 through 1988 California was a reliable Republican state, only once 1964 ending up in the Democratic totals during the Goldwater Disaster.  However from 1988 through the current day, five straight elections, California has gone Democratic and teh Republicab’s haven’t had a ghost of chance at the electoral college votes locked up in the Golden State. Why?

Did California turn that Liberal in 1992?

Did the Republicans move that far right in 1992?

Was it a combination of both?

First: Once again we have the horribly heated rhetoric in which your opponents are automatically the equivalent to Hitler and or the Nazis. This, as it was with the protest on the right, is simply absurd. While the move to break a set of public worker unions is a major political step,  one certain to generate intense feelings, it is not in any way comparable to the degenerate, racist, insane positions of the NAZI party. This is a perfect example as to why I dislike extremes in nearly all its forms, it is blinding and when you are cocooned in its comfortable black-and-white world you are unreeachable by reason or rational thought. Continue reading →

I have deliberately waited several days before commenting on the events last Friday in Tucson Arizona.  My reasons for waiting were manifestly simple; I wanted to have more information. The earliest reports are always the most sketchy and the least reliable. Eye witness testimony is notoriously untrustworthy. (Consider that for decades we though the RMS Titanic was one piece because eye-witness testimony said is did not break up and sink, but merely sank.) Continue reading →

Thanks to the synergistic timing of Sarah Palin’s TLC Realty show and her daughter’s entry into the finalist rounds of Dancing with the Has-Beens, people are again freaking out over Sarah Palin and the thought she might run for president. Andrew Sullivan certainly in this pack and is always a twitter over the GOP being remade in Sarah;’s image.

Everyone should just take a deep breath and take a stress pill.

First off the idea that the GOP is being remade into Sarah’s image didn’t seem to pass the election test. The Candidates most like her in style and in substance, O’Donnell and Angel both lost. Angel very much avoided the main stream press and tried to get to the Senate without facing serious inquiry. Yes, she nearly won, against an incumbent who was hated in his own state, and on the wrong side of a wave election. That fact that she couldn’t beat Harry Reid is evidence just how weak of a candidate she truly was. Any sort of mainstream Republican candidate would have blow Harry out of the water in this election. The same goes for Delaware and Christine O’Donnell. So the Sarah Palin model — if there is such a  thing — is a losing one.

Yes, Sarah Avoids the press and only get interviewed by friendly press. So what? She is not running for anything. She is not a politician, she is a celebrity.

I maintain that she is not an idiot, in fact I am counting on her not being on idiot. She is in her happy spot, she had found her niche in the modern entertainment/political ecosystem. she gets paid loads of money, get all the friendly press and attention she could want, and has zero real responsibilities. I do not believe she is going to throw that aside.

Nope.

She’s not going to run. She’ll tease her base with it, ’cause that brings in teh support and love and the dollars, but she’s not going to do it.