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bethanydelleman · 2 years ago

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Darcy’s Excuses

This is the most frequent passage cited to prove that Darcy is shy/socially awkward/introverted. I want to break it down.

“Perhaps,” said Darcy, “I should have judged better had I sought an introduction, but I am ill-qualified to recommend myself to strangers.”

“Shall we ask your cousin the reason of this?” said Elizabeth, still addressing Colonel Fitzwilliam. “Shall we ask him why a man of sense and education, and who has lived in the world, is ill-qualified to recommend himself to strangers?”

“I can answer your question,” said Fitzwilliam, “without applying to him. It is because he will not give himself the trouble.”

“I certainly have not the talent which some people possess,” said Darcy, “of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done.”

Firstly, Darcy is flirting with Elizabeth here. When he says he should have sought an introduction, he’s trying to indicate that he likes Elizabeth and should not have snubbed her. I doubt he cares about the others. However, he does say what some people use to justify the shy/socially awkward argument, he doesn’t recommend himself to strangers.

But then right away, Elizabeth calls him out, he’s well-educated, why the heck not? Because for context, these people are taught how to converse. Their society has far more “scripts” for conduct than ours. Darcy could easily have gotten through the entire Meryton assembly on canned phrases, just like Elizabeth jokes about at the Netherfield Ball:

“It is your turn to say something now, Mr. Darcy. I talked about the dance, and you ought to make some kind of remark on the size of the room, or the number of couples.”

Now his cousin jumps in, Colonel Fitzwilliam probably gives us the most truthful answer, given what Darcy says about himself later. Darcy doesn’t recommend himself because he doesn’t want to most of the time.

Then we have Darcy again. Now some of this statement does sound a lot like someone who struggles socially, “catch their tone of conversation”, but the second part, “appear interested in their concerns”, that is just basic politeness! “My mom is sick.” “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” Many people are actually concerned about other’s concerns, but Darcy in his radical truth telling phase, HE isn’t going to pretend.

And then we have this passage, which some people interpret as an extrovert attacking an introvert (just TRY to be less introverted):

“My fingers,” said Elizabeth, “do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women’s do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault—because I would not take the trouble of practising. It is not that I do not believe my fingers as capable as any other woman’s of superior execution.”

Darcy smiled and said, “You are perfectly right. You have employed your time much better. No one admitted to the privilege of hearing you can think anything wanting. We neither of us perform to strangers.”

This is the key! Darcy will not perform. He knows how, he’s perfectly capable. We see him do it multiple times. Why did he not get through the Meryton Ball on canned niceties? Because to him that’s performing to strangers and he doesn’t want to do it. Why is he so rude to Sir William when he says something trite? Because Darcy doesn’t do small talk, he’s not going to perform. The problem is that small talk is what makes the world go round.

So yes, if you cherry pick from the passage, Darcy seems shy and socially awkward, but if you take it as a whole, the truth becomes more apparent. Colonel Fitzwilliam is probably a more reliable witness here, he’s not flirting! And we know many of Darcy’s other thoughts, he know what he says at the end:

“What did you say of me that I did not deserve? For though your accusations were ill-founded, formed on mistaken premises, my behaviour to you at the time had merited the severest reproof. It was unpardonable. I cannot think of it without abhorrence.”

Your reproof, so well applied, I shall never forget: ‘Had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.’ Those were your words. You know not, you can scarcely conceive, how they have tortured me; though it was some time, I confess, before I was reasonable enough to allow their justice.

Darcy’s reasons are excuses, when he actually suffers for his behaviour (finally) in the form of Elizabeth’s rejection, he reviews what he has been doing and changes. He doesn’t stop being socially awkward, he just actually puts what he was fully capable of doing into action. Because he has known how to do it all along, he just didn’t bother.

Also, Elizabeth can identify introverts. When she meets Georgiana, she immediately guesses shy and pities her for it. Her beloved sister Jane is modest and reserved. I doubt she’d be shaming someone for having a personality type.

Furthermore, Austen celebrates introverts! Mansfield Park is a whole freaking novel about an introvert who figures out everyone! Fanny Price would have seen through Wickham no problem. Austen knows the values of shy and introverted people. Darcy’s problem therefore is not that he is shy/socially awkward. It’s that he’s a dick about it.

#mr. darcy #elizabeth bennet #pride and prejudice #jane austen #anti-darcy Shyboi campaign #darcy is a mean girl #I'm going to keep banging on about this #mostly because of that recent poll that said he was shy #he's not shy #he's a jerk #and I will die on this hill #the blood of the Anti-Shybois will water the meadows of tumblr

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theliberaltony · 4 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

For months now, President Trump has trailed Joe Biden in the polls. First, it was only a 5- or 6-percentage-point gap, but since the middle of June, that margin has widened to anywhere from 8 to 9 points, according to FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average.

But until very recently, voters didn’t seem all that convinced that Biden could win. In poll after poll, comparatively more voters said they thought Trump would win reelection in November. Now, though, that view may be shifting.

Over the past two and a half months, the share of voters who said they expect Trump to win has fallen from about 45 percent to around 40 percent in polling by The Economist/YouGov, as the chart below shows, while Biden’s share has slowly ticked up to where Trump’s numbers are. (Roughly a fifth of respondents still say they’re “not sure.”)

Trump’s decline may not seem that dramatic — and it’s not; it’s only a few points lower — but it’s notable because prior to June, he had trailed on this question only once since The Economist/YouGov first asked it in December.1

But it’s not just the Economist/YouGov polling that supports this finding. USA Today/Suffolk University found a more substantial drop in Trump’s numbers. In late June, 41 percent of voters said they expected Trump to win, whereas 50 percent said the same in the pollster’s late October 2019 survey. Conversely, 45 percent said Biden would win in June, an improvement from the 40 percent who picked the Democratic nominee in October. Republican pollster Echelon Insights has also observed a downward trend in Trump’s numbers: In a survey completed last week, 33 percent of likely voters said they expected Trump to win, which was down from 39 percent in the pollster’s June survey. Meanwhile, the share who thought Biden would win ticked up to 43 percent in July from 40 percent in June.

On the whole, it seems voters are now less confident in Trump’s reelection chances, and the main driver of that shift may be independent voters. In USA Today/Suffolk’s June survey, 47 percent of independents picked Biden versus 35 percent who chose Trump, a reversal from the October 2019 poll, when 54 percent of independents expected Trump to win compared with 30 percent who said the Democratic nominee would win. And looking across the Economist/YouGov data since early May, the share of independents who expect Trump to win has slid as well, from the low 40s to the mid-to-high 30s.

As for Democrats and Republicans, they mostly say their respective nominee will win, although that wasn’t always the case in 2016, as many Republicans thought Hillary Clinton would win. Nonetheless, that doesn’t seem to be happening in 2020. The Economist/YouGov and USA Today/Suffolk surveys found that Democratic voters are largely confident in Biden’s chances, while most Republicans believe that Trump will win. However, since May, the Economist/YouGov polls show an increase in Democrats’ belief in Biden’s chances and a slight downtick in Republicans’ faith in Trump’s.

Betting markets also point to diminished confidence in Trump’s reelection chances. From mid-March to late May, the president usually led Biden in RealClearPolitics’ average of betting odds: Trump’s chances hovered mostly around 50 percent, while Biden’s stood in the low 40s. But in early June, Biden’s odds surged and outstripped Trump’s; now the markets give Biden about a 60 percent chance of victory, while Trump’s chances have fallen into the mid-30s.

This change isn’t necessarily surprising, as betting markets mostly follow the polling averages. But it’s also not difficult to intuit why more Americans might think Trump will lose the election now than before. The president has consistently received poor marks for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic as well as for his handling of nationwide protests precipitated by the police killing of George Floyd in late May. And Trump’s overall job approval rating has now dipped to around 40 percent in FiveThirtyEight’s tracker. Simply put, past incumbent presidents with those sorts of marks have failed to win reelection.

This is coupled with the fact that Biden’s national lead has grown, and his margin over Trump is now larger than Clinton’s edge at any point during the 2016 cycle. Looking at the Electoral College, Biden also holds sizable leads in key battleground states, which could make it difficult for Trump to win despite those states’ tending to lean more Republican than the country as a whole.

If anything, Trump’s surprise victory in 2016 is likely the biggest reason why more people don’t take a dimmer view of his reelection odds. After all, he was behind in the polls four years ago and yet went on to win, so it’s understandable that even though the margins are larger now, some Americans might be taking an attitude of “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Tellingly, a Monmouth University survey of Pennsylvania voters earlier this month found that about a quarter of respondents believe there’s a “secret” Trump vote, although there’s little evidence to support the idea that “shy” Trump voters exist.

All in all, though, voter expectations and election betting markets suggest that Americans increasingly view Biden as at least an even bet to win in November. None of this means Biden will actually defeat Trump, but these shifts do suggest that the conventional wisdom is catching up to what the state and national election polls have been telling us about the race. The electoral environment could very well change in the next three months, but these indicators are all starting to coalesce around the idea that Trump is a real underdog to win reelection.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Geoffrey Skelley

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statetalks · 3 years ago

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Are There More Democrats Or Republicans In The Usa

If A Party Gets What It Wants In The Pursuit Of Delivering Something Most People Want Most Of The Time So Be It

This mayor joining the GOP says theres no Democratic Party anymore’

Theres nothing morally wrong with being the party of corporate interests. Theres nothing wrong, for that matter, with viewing politics as the preserve of the few, not the many. Whats wrong is lying about it. Whats wrong is treating the opposition as if it does not have a legitimate claim. Whats wrong is setting off a conflagration of white-power fury that consumes nearly everything, even the republic itself, in order to slake a thirst for power. The day Joe Biden decided to run for president was the day this white-power fury burned through Charlottesville, screaming, Jews will not replace us. That day, according to published reports, is the day Biden chose to fight to restore the soul of America.

Maybe hes full of it. Maybe Biden and the Democrats dont really believe what they say when they talk about everyone being in this together. Thats certainly what the Republicans and their media allies believe. A critic said Thursday that we can expect to see from Biden lofty rhetoric about unity, while acting below the radar to smash norms to implement the Left-wing agenda. The same day, a Times reporter asked the White House press secretary why the administration has not offered a bipartisan fig leaf to the Republicans, given the president putting so much emphasis on unity. Maybe the Democrats dont mean what they say. Maybe its just politics-as-usual.

Investor George Marcus And His Wife Judith Gave $9610125 Mostly To Democrats

Total donations: $9,610,125

Net worth: $1.5 billion

George Marcus is the founder of real-estate brokerage Marcus & Millichap Company, according to the companys website. Marcus is also the chairman of Essex Property Trust, a multi-family real-estate investment trust, and he serves on the board of California-based commercial bank Greater Bay Bancorp.

The Marcuses gave $10,400 to Republicans in 2018, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The rest went to Democrats.

Republican Presidents Of The 20th Century

Theodore Roosevelt, 26th, 19011909: The “Trust Buster” is considered one of America’s greatest presidents. He was charismatic and larger than life. He was also the youngest of all the presidents, entering office at age 42. In contrast to later Republican presidents, Roosevelt fought hard to limit the powers of large oil and railroad companies.

William H. Taft, 27th, 19091913: Taft may be best known for supporting “Dollar Diplomacy,” the idea that US foreign policy should provide stability with the ultimate goal of promoting American commercial ventures. He was the only president who served as a justice of the Supreme Court .

Warren G. Harding, 29th, 19211923: Harding served just one day shy of three years, dying of a heart attack while in office. His presidency saw the end of World War I but was marked by scandals involving bribery, fraud, and conspiracy.

Also Check: Are More Democrats Or Republicans On Welfare

If There Are P Republicans Then In Terms Of P What Percentage Of Wheeling County

There are one or more reasons why you chose that person to be your friend. While democrats believe in supporting a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, republicans in a little more than 50 years there will be no majority race in the us. Not one nra member, tea party member, nor republican conservative was involved in these shootings and. There is a good reason for this asymmetry, write grossmann and hopkins. Republicans are more skeptical of the theory of evolution, though by a surprisingly slim margin with 39 percent of them rejecting it as compared to 30 percent of democrats.

There should a strong federal government. The supreme court should have jurisdiction over the legislative branch. There was almost no partisan imbalance among in terms of dollar value, less than a third of individual donations went to democrats. What republican and democrats believe. There are many benefits to timing your practice, including

On the other hand, the republican party is pretty much younger than the democratic party. Instead, they’ve told a lie to people they stiffed on education and have bled them dry just a bit more. Clearly, there is a problem with democrats and guns. Since 1945, democratic presidents have put forward 39 percent more policy proposals than republican presidents, and 62 percent more domestic policy proposals. Who can tell from this story?

Widest Perception Gap At Political Extremes

In one of the largest national studies of Americas polarization ever conducted, More in Commons Hidden Tribes report identified seven political tribes:

The Hidden Tribes of America

The Perception Gap study builds on these insights. It finds that the most partisan, politically active Americans a group we call the Wings have deeply distorted perceptions of the other side. The two groups with the widest Perception Gaps are the Progressive Activists and the Devoted Conservativesthe most ideological and committed groups of Democrats and Republicans.

And which is the most accurate segment? Surprisingly, its the Politically Disengaged. They are fully three times more accurate in their estimates of political opponents than members of either of these Wing groups. The V-shaped Perception Gap shows that the less invested you are in politics today, the less distorted your perception of politics.

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At Least 60 Afghans And 13 Us Service Members Killed By Suicide Bombers And Gunmen Outside Kabul Airport: Us Officials

Two suicide bombers and gunmen attacked crowds of Afghans flocking to Kabul’s airport Thursday, transforming a scene of desperation into one of horror in the waning days of an airlift for those fleeing the Taliban takeover. At least 60 Afghans and 13 U.S. troops were killed, Afghan and U.S. officials said.

Are There More Democrats Than Republicans In The United States

I have been thinking about the Democratic Party and whether or not its members are more numerous than the opposing faction.

Evidence to suggest this is the case:

This party is expected to win the popular vote for president seven out of eight times since 1992. Please don’t say “this hasn’t happened yet”. If this bothers you, say 6 out of 7. The party has received 51.9 percent of the votes cast in presidential elections from 1992 to 2016 for it or its opponent, the Republican Party. This shows that 2012 was the mean election in popular vote as of 2016. Party registration in states that register by party says this same thing. Trump’s approval has not gone above 50 percent ever as president on 538. A plurality of Americans consistently supported impeachment by 2 to 5 points while it was happening.

This suggests that the partisan lean the American electorate is about D+4. I believe that it might be closer to D+5 now for various reasons and the fact that 2012 was the mean result. This can get a little bit fuzzy because of independents.

If we look at opinion polling, Gallup has collated party affiliation polls back to 2004. The most recent poll at the time of writing gives a D+11 advantage. Looking just at the net Republican/Democrat advantage, ignoring Independents, we can create the graph below – with positive percentages representing a Democrat lead, and negative percentages representing a Republican lead.

To give a theoretical perspective on this:

Read Also: How Do Republicans Really Feel About Trump

The Republican Party General Policy And Political Values

The Republican Party is often referred to as the GOP. This abbreviation stands for Grand Old Party. Its logo is an elephant. The Republican Party is known to support right-leaning ideologies of conservatism, social conservatism, and economic libertarianism, among other -isms. Thus, Republicans broadly advocate for traditional values, a low degree of government interference, and large support of the private sector.

One main standpoint of the Republican Party platform is a strong focus on the family and individual freedom. Generally, the Republican Party therefore often tends to promote states and local rights. That means that they often wish for federal regulations to play a lesser role in policymaking. Furthermore, the GOP has a pro-business-oriented platform. Thus, the party advocates for businesses to exist in a free market instead of being impacted by tight government regulations.

Chart 1 And Table 2: Nationwide Party Registration Trends Since 2000

More Republicans registered to vote than Democrats

Since 2000, the nationwide proportion of registered Democratic and Republican voters in party registration states have both gone down, while the percentage of registered independents has steadily grown. The latter has nearly reached the nationwide percentage of registered Republicans, which has long been second nationally to the Democrats. Altogether, the combined number of registered Democrats and Republicans, which was 77% in October 2000, is now down to 69%, while the proportion of registered independents over the same period has increased from 22% to 28%.

Note: Based on active registered voters in states where the number of active and inactive registrants is listed. In the election-eve 2000, 2008, and 2016 entries, Independents include a comparatively small number of registered miscellaneous voters who do not fit into a particular category. Percentages do not add to 100 since the small percentage of registered third party voters is not included.

Richard Wingers monthly newsletter, Ballot Access News, for election-eve party registration numbers in 2000, 2008, and 2016; the websites of state election offices for July 2018.

Also Check: How Many Log Cabin Republicans Are There

Gallup: Democrats Now Outnumber Republicans By 9 Percentage Points Thanks To Independents

“I think what we have to do as a party is battle the damage to the Democratic brand,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Jamie Harrison said on The Daily Beast‘s latest New Abnormal podcast. Gallup reported Wednesday that, at least relatively speaking, the Democratic brand is doing pretty good.

In the first quarter of 2021, 49 percent of U.S. adults identified as Democrats or independents with Democratic leanings, versus 40 percent for Republicans and GOP leaders, Gallup said. “The 9-percentage-point Democratic advantage is the largest Gallup has measured since the fourth quarter of 2012. In recent years, Democratic advantages have typically been between 4 and 6 percentage points.”

New Gallup polling finds that in the first quarter of 2021, an average of 49% of Americans identify with/lean toward the Democratic Party, versus 40 percent for Republicans.

That’s the largest gap since 2012:

Greg Sargent

Party identification, polled on every Gallup survey, is “something that we think is important to track to give a sense to the relevant strength of the two parties at any one point in time and how party preferences are responding to events,”Gallup senior editor Jeff Jones told USA Today.

More stories from theweek.com

More Than Half Of Young Americans Are Going Through An Extended Period Of Feeling Down Depressed Or Hopeless In Recent Weeks; 28% Have Had Thoughts That They Would Be Better Off Dead Or Of Hurting Themself In Some Way

Fifty-one percent of young Americans say that at least several days in the last two weeks they have felt down, depressed, or hopeless19% say they feel this way more than half of the time. In addition, 68% have little energy, 59% say they have trouble with sleep, 52% find little pleasure in doing things. 49% have a poor appetite or are over-eating, 48% cite trouble concentrating, 32% are moving so slowly, or are fidgety to the point that others notice and 28% have had thoughts of self-harm

Among those most likely to experience bouts of severe depression triggering thoughts that they would be better off dead or hurting themself are young people of color , whites without a college experience , rural Americans , and young Americans not registered to vote .

In the last two weeks, 53% of college students have said that their mental health has been negatively impacted by school or work-related issues; overall 34% have been negatively impacted by the coronavirus, 29% self-image, 29% personal relationships, 28% social isolation, 25% economic concerns, 22% health concernsand 21% politics .

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Past Jumps In Party Affiliations

The bump in Democratic affiliation following Biden’s inauguration mirrors that of former President Barack Obama’s first term, Jones said.

“That was really the high point that we’ve seen; kind of the 2006-2009 period, when really the majority of Americans either identified as Democrats outright or were independents but they leaned toward the party,” he said. “Our data on this only goes back to the ’90s, but it’s pretty much the only time we consistently had one party with the majority of Americans on their side.”

Republican advantages, though rarer and more short-lived, followed the Gulf War in 1991 when George H.W. Bush was in office and the 9/11 terrorist attacks during President George W. Bush’s term, according to Gallup. More people also reported GOP affiliation after the 1994, 2010 and 2014 midterm elections.

Whether the Republican Party can regain advantage during the 2022 midterm elections may rely on the successes of the Biden administration, according to Jones.

“A lot of it is going to depend on how things go over the course of the year. If things get better with the coronavirus and the economy bounces back and a lot of people expect Biden can keep relatively strong approval ratings, then that will be better for the Democrats,” Jones said. “But if things start to get worse unemployment goes up or coronavirus gets worse then his approval is going to go down. It’s going to make things a lot better for the Republican Party for the midterm next year.”

They Deliberately Destroy Moral Standards To Consolidate Power

Yale historian Timothy Snyder argues compellingly in The Road to Unfreedom, as well as in many talks, that oligarchs consolidating power and wealth benefit from creating an atmosphere of uncertainty, disbelief in facts, making it seem like political parties and leaders are uniformly corrupt, so there is nothing that can be done. It is what it is. If this was not so relevant for previous administrations, now we must admit that this is what it is. An administration that surpasses previous ones in corruption is possible because of a groundwork laid over decades of practices that make democracy, equity, and social good far secondary to wealth and power.

Read Also: How Did Republicans Do In The Primaries

Where Republicans And Democrats Differ The Most

But a more telling metric may be the difference between Democrats’ and Republicans ratings. How much more did one party favor a state than the other party? The graphic below shows how much higher the win percentage was among people of that party.

For example, Californias win percentage was 79% among Democrats, but 24% among Republicans, a difference of 55 percentage points. Likewise, Kentuckys win percentage was 68% among Republicans, only 34% among Democrats, for a difference in 35 points .

See the difference in scores for Republicans and Democrats for all 50 states below:

Histories Of The Parties

The Democratic party started in 1828 as anti-federalist sentiments began to form. The Republican party formed a few decades later, in 1854, with the formation of the party to stopping slavery, which they viewed to be unconstitutional.

The difference between a democrat and a republican has changed many, many times throughout history. Democrats used to be considered more conservative, while the republican party fought for more progressive ideas. These ideals have switched over time.

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Florida Vs California: How Two States Tackled Covid

The researchers theorized that one reason for the change is that Democrats were in charge of states where people who had the virus first arrived in the country but Republicans were less stringent about safeguards, which could have contributed to their states’ ultimately higher incidence and death rates.

“The early trends could be explained by high Covid-19 cases and deaths among Democratic-led states that are home to initial ports of entry for the virus in early 2020,” the researchers wrote. “However, the subsequent reversal in trends, particularly with respect to testing, may reflect policy differences that could have facilitated the spread of the virus.”

The study, which which was published in the peer-reviewed American Journal of Preventive Medicine, examined Covid-19 “incidence, death, testing, and test positivity rates from March 15 through December 15, 2020,” when there were 16 million confirmed cases in the U.S. and 300,000 deaths. It focused on per-capita infection and death rates in the 26 GOP-led states and 24 Democratic-led states and Washington, D.C., and made statistical adjustments for issues such as population density.

But “policy differences” between the Republican and Democratic leaders emerged as a big factor for the reversal of the states’ fortunes, the study suggests.

One of the most concerning things last year is the politicization of public health restrictions,” Lee said. “Theyre not opinions, theyre based on evidence.

In Her New Book Congress And Us Veterans: From The Gi Bill To The Va Crisis Stevens Assistant Professor Lindsey Cormack Evaluates How The Parties Legislate And Communicate Veterans Policies

Gravitas: US Election 2020 | How Republicans & Democrats are wooing Indian Americans

More than 18 million veterans live in the United States today, according to the latest census, and with worldwide presence and ongoing wars, the military enlists 1.2 million active and 800,000 reserve military personnel across the branches. As a nation, we look up to those who serve. Its a uniting opinion, and 95% of Americans believe its the duty of government to support veterans when they return to the homefront.

The role of devising policies that benefit former soldiers now falls to Congress, and so the creation and communication of veterans policies, like most things in Washington, is subject to the realities of party politics. Republicans are viewed as the party of veterans, public opinion and voting data says so. But in her new book, Stevens Assistant Professor Lindsey Cormack questions how that came to be, as her research shows that congressional Democrats, more often than not, are the ones working to enhance veteran benefits.

On a continuum of legislative behavior, we have one end populated by the dedicated workhorses who draft legislation, hammer out compromises, and get into the weeds of complicated policy questions, Cormack writes in her book. On the other end, there are show ponies that care more about pumping out media sound bites or trying to get the next viral video on YouTube.

Moreover, there is a difference between Republican members of Congress expressing support for veterans benefits and actively legislating to accomplish it.

Recommended Reading: Which Republicans Might Vote For Impeachment

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg Donated Over $95 Million Nearly All Of It To Democrats

Total donations: $95,098,168

Net worth: $52.4 billion

Michael Bloomberg, 77, is the founder and CEO of financial media company Bloomberg LP.

Bloomberg will spend $500 million on the 2020 election in hopes of defeating Trump, Politico reported in February. On November 7, The New York Times reported that he was actively preparing to enter the Democratic primary.

Americas Top 10 Richest Families

Walton Republican The family owns the Walmart corporation. The Walton family fortune is estimated to be about $130 billion. Koch Republican Businessmen, owners of Koch Industries, a manufacturing company. Koch brothers have a net worth of about $41 billion each . Republican Own the Mars candy company. The three children of founder Forrest Mars are worth about $78 billion together. Cargill-MacMillan Republican The Cargill-MacMillan family owns 90 percent of the largest privately-owned corporation in the U.S. The family, as a whole, is worth about $49 billion. Cox Democrat The Cox family owns a number of auto consumer sites and services . They have an estimated net worth of $41 billion. Johnson Republican The Johnson family is known for their cleaning products and hygiene products. They are valued at $30 billion. Pritzker Both Founders of Hyatt. The family has a combined value of $29 billion in 2017. Johnson Republican Overseers at Fidelity, ensuring the cash of millions of Americans. The family has a combined net worth of $28.5 billion. Hearst Republican The Hearst family owns one of Americas largest media companies. The family is valued at $28 billion. Duncan Republican The Duncan family works mostly with oil and pipelines. The family is valued at about $21.5 billion.

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Democrats Got Millions More Votes So How Did Republicans Win The Senate

Senate electoral process means although Democrats received more overall votes for the Senate than Republicans, that does not translate to more seats

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The 2018 midterm elections brought significant gains for Democrats, who retook the House of Representatives and snatched several governorships from the grip of Republicans.

But some were left questioning why Democrats suffered a series of setbacks that prevented the party from picking up even more seats and, perhaps most consequentially, left the US Senate in Republican hands.

Among the most eye-catching was a statistic showing Democrats led Republicans by more than 12 million votes in Senate races, and yet still suffered losses on the night and failed to win a majority of seats in the chamber.

Constitutional experts said the discrepancy between votes cast and seats won was the result of misplaced ire that ignored the Senate electoral process.

Because each state gets two senators, irrespective of population, states such as Wyoming have as many seats as California, despite the latter having more than 60 times the population. The smaller states also tend to be the more rural, and rural areas traditionally favor Republicans.

This year, because Democrats were defending more seats, including California, they received more overall votes for the Senate than Republicans, but that does not translate to more seats.

The rise of minority rule in America is now unmistakable

Origins Of The Color Scheme

The colors red and blue are also featured on the United States flag. Traditional political mapmakers, at least throughout the 20th century, had used blue to represent the modern-day Republicans, as well as the earlier Federalist Party. This may have been a holdover from the Civil War, during which the predominantly Republican north was considered “blue”. However, at that time, a maker of widely-sold maps accompanied them with blue pencils in order to mark Confederate force movements, while red was for the union.

Later, in the 1888 presidential election, Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison used maps that coded blue for the Republicans, the color perceived to represent the Union and “Lincoln‘s Party”, and red for the Democrats. The parties themselves had no official colors, with candidates variously using either or both of the national color palette of red and blue .

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Reality Check #4: The Electoral College And The Senate Are Profoundly Undemocraticand Were Stuck With Them

Because the Constitution set up a state-by-state system for picking presidents, the massive Democratic majorities we now see in California and New York often mislead us about the partys national electoral prospects. In 2016, Hillary Clintons 3-million-vote plurality came entirely from California. In 2020, Bidens 7-million-vote edge came entirely from California and New York. These are largely what election experts call wasted votesDemocratic votes that dont, ultimately, help the Democrat to win. That imbalance explains why Trump won the Electoral College in 2016 and came within a handful of votes in three states from doing the same last November, despite his decisive popular-vote losses.

The response from aggrieved Democrats? Abolish the Electoral College! In practice, theyd need to get two-thirds of the House and Senate, and three-fourths of the state legislatures, to ditch the process that gives Republicans their only plausible chance these days to win the White House. Shortly after the 2016 election, Gallup found that Republican support for abolishing the electoral college had dropped to 19 percent. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a state-by-state scheme to effectively abolish the Electoral College without changing the Constitution, hasnt seen support from a single red or purple state.

source https://www.patriotsnet.com/are-there-more-democrats-or-republicans-in-the-usa/

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stephenmccull · 4 years ago

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Covid Fears Keep Many Latino Kids out of Classrooms

EAST LOS ANGELES — For the past year, 13-year-old twins Ariel Jr. and Abraham Osorio have logged on to their online classes from their parents’ flower shop. Ariel nestles in a corner among flowers, bows and stuffed animals. Abraham sets up on a small table in the back, where his dad used to work trimming flowers and keeping the books.

This story also ran on La Opinión. It can be republished for free.

It’s not ideal for learning: It’s loud. It’s cramped. It’s bustling with people. Still, when the twins’ mother, Graciela Osorio, recently had the chance to send her kids back to Brightwood Elementary in Monterey Park, California, she decided against it.

“After what we went through with their father, I’d rather keep them at home where I know they are safe,” said Graciela, 51. “There’s only a month left. It doesn’t make sense that they return for such a short time.”

The boys’ father, Ariel Osorio Sr., 51, died of covid-19 in January, four weeks after a trip to Mexico to visit his mother. He fell ill quickly and wasn’t able to say goodbye to his children.

“I miss his presence,” Abraham said. “I’m used to seeing him sit in his chair working, but not anymore.”

Latinos have been hit disproportionately hard by covid, and many families are opting out of in-person learning.

In California, Latinos make up 39% of the state’s population but account for 47% of covid deaths, according to the state Department of Public Health. Nationally, their risk of death from covid is 2.3 times higher than that of whites.

Latinos are vulnerable to the highly transmissible coronavirus because they are more likely than non-Hispanic whites to work essential jobs that expose them to the public, said David Hayes-Bautista, a professor of public health and medicine at UCLA and co-author of a January study on this topic. They are more likely to lack health insurance, which may make them less likely to seek medical care, he said. And they are more likely to live in multigenerational households, which means the virus can spread quickly and easily within families.

“Many of them are essential workers and the breadwinners for their families and don’t have the luxury of telework, of physical distancing and self-isolation,” said Alberto González, a senior health strategist at UnidosUS, a Latino advocacy group in Washington, D.C.

The Osorio family has lived in a multigenerational household since Ariel died, and Graciela had to keep other family members in mind when deciding whether to send her boys back into the classroom.

In February, Graciela and the twins moved in with her 74-year-old mother, Cleotilde Servin, in East Los Angeles. Ten people now share the roughly 1,000-square-foot home, squeezing by one another in the kitchen every morning.

Graciela’s mother and the other adults in the home have been vaccinated, but the children haven’t. Even though she instructs her sons to wear their masks and doesn’t allow them to visit friends, she’s terrified of what could happen if her kids caught the virus at school and brought it home.

“My mother is active and takes vitamins, but it still worries me,” Graciela said. She got covid from her husband and gave it to her sister and niece. “I don’t want anyone else to get sick,” she said.

State and local education officials don’t have recent data on in-person attendance by race, but an EdSource analysis of California Public Health Department data from February shows that white students were more likely to attend school in person than other students. The analysis showed that 12% of Latinos were attending in-person classes at least some of the time, compared with 32% of whites and 18% of all students.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest in the country, serves more than 600,000 students and reopened for in-person learning in mid-April. Only some campuses are open, mostly elementary schools, and are running on hybrid schedules, combining on-campus classes with distance learning.

“We’ve upgraded the air filtration systems in every classroom, reconfigured school facilities to keep all at a school appropriately distanced, doubled the custodial staff, and we’ll provide weekly covid testing at school for every student and staff member,” district superintendent Austin Beutner said in his weekly recorded video update on March 22.

In a statement released May 4, Beutner said 40% to 50% of elementary school students are now back in schools in “more affluent” communities compared with roughly 20% in low-income communities.

“We see the greatest reluctance for children to be back in schools from families who live in some of the highest-needs communities we serve,” he said.

Brightwood Elementary is a K-8 school with 870 students, about half of whom are Asian American and 40% Latino, said principal Robby Jung. Just 15% of students are back on campus, he said, and, of those, about one-third are Latino.

For the Osorio family, the overriding reason the eighth grade twins are not back at Brightwood is fear.

Like so many other Latino families — roughly 28,000 Latinos have died of covid in California — they are reeling from the grief and trauma that the disease has already wrought, and the fear of what it could do if it struck again.

“The boys are seeing a therapist to deal with their dad’s death,” Graciela said. “I know I should probably talk to someone, too.”

With the memory of her husband’s death still so fresh that she can’t speak of him without crying, Graciela is still adjusting to the emotional toll, and to the day-to-day realities of running a flower shop by herself.

Originally from Guerrero, Mexico, she started Gracy’s Flower Shop with her husband in 1997. Ariel took care of the finances at home and at the shop and was the better English speaker of the two.

“Now being alone with the boys, it’s more difficult to keep up,” she said.

During the covid lockdowns, the boys joined the couple at the shop. Her husband sat next to their children while they attended school online, helping with their homework and acting as the main contact for the school.

“They were always with us,” Graciela said. “They grew up in the flower shop, so they didn’t have a problem setting up their school stations there.”

Brightwood reopened its doors April 12, offering in-person learning two days a week for a few hours a day, with the rest of the sessions online. Graciela said the limited schedule doesn’t work with her role as the family breadwinner.

“I would have to take them to school, pick them up for lunch and then bring them back,” she said. “I can’t do that. I have to work.”

But mostly she’s keeping them off campus because she doesn’t want to lose another family member. She said she knows online classes aren’t the same as in-person instruction “but they have been keeping their grades up,” she said. “I thank God I have good boys. They listen. They understand why I kept them home.”

The last day of school is May 28. Ariel and Abraham said they’re looking forward to high school in the fall. Still dealing with their father’s death, the boys, who are shy and reserved by nature, are torn between returning to school in person or continuing their classes online.

“We might go back,” Abraham said. “For now, we keep each other company.”

This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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gordonwilliamsweb · 4 years ago

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Covid Fears Keep Many Latino Kids out of Classrooms

This story also ran on La Opinión. It can be republished for free.

The boys’ father, Ariel Osorio Sr., 51, died of covid-19 in January, four weeks after a trip to Mexico to visit his mother. He fell ill quickly and wasn’t able to say goodbye to his children.

“I miss his presence,” Abraham said. “I’m used to seeing him sit in his chair working, but not anymore.”

Latinos have been hit disproportionately hard by covid, and many families are opting out of in-person learning.

The Osorio family has lived in a multigenerational household since Ariel died, and Graciela had to keep other family members in mind when deciding whether to send her boys back into the classroom.

In a statement released May 4, Beutner said 40% to 50% of elementary school students are now back in schools in “more affluent” communities compared with roughly 20% in low-income communities.

“We see the greatest reluctance for children to be back in schools from families who live in some of the highest-needs communities we serve,” he said.

For the Osorio family, the overriding reason the eighth grade twins are not back at Brightwood is fear.

“The boys are seeing a therapist to deal with their dad’s death,” Graciela said. “I know I should probably talk to someone, too.”

Originally from Guerrero, Mexico, she started Gracy’s Flower Shop with her husband in 1997. Ariel took care of the finances at home and at the shop and was the better English speaker of the two.

“Now being alone with the boys, it’s more difficult to keep up,” she said.

“They were always with us,” Graciela said. “They grew up in the flower shop, so they didn’t have a problem setting up their school stations there.”

“I would have to take them to school, pick them up for lunch and then bring them back,” she said. “I can’t do that. I have to work.”

“We might go back,” Abraham said. “For now, we keep each other company.”

This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

Covid Fears Keep Many Latino Kids out of Classrooms published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

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dipulb3 · 4 years ago

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Yes, Andrew Yang could be New York City's next mayor

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Yes, Andrew Yang could be New York City's next mayor

The answer, to the astonishment of many, is yes. And with each passing day, time is running out for Yang’s rivals — a diverse field loaded with governmental, civic and business leaders — to chase him down.

In a year of death, drudgery and economic destruction, Yang, a tech entrepreneur whose moonshot 2020 presidential primary bid amassed more goodwill than votes, has distinguished himself from the pack with an uncomplicated message: He wants to make New York fun again. The defining clarity of his campaign has, for now, largely obscured the most powerful argument against it — that even for those who admire Yang’s ambition and joyful candidacy, the 46-year-old is still a political newcomer and ill-suited to lead the city out of its worst crisis since bankruptcy beckoned in the 1970s.

His time in the private sector, launching start-ups and then running a presidential campaign, he argued, made him New York’s best bet to juice the kind of recovery that delivers for both workers and their corporate bosses.

“There are a number of people who’ve been in government for years in this field, but many of us have felt let down by city agencies over the past number of months,” Yang said. “So you have to ask yourself, do you really think that someone who’s been embedded in these bureaucracies is going to be the best person to lead us out of this crisis?”

The stakes are stark — and Yang has sought to become a better-rounded candidate in his second campaign. His advocacy for a universal basic income and warnings that automation could decimate the American workforce, the pillars of the presidential run, have largely taken a backseat to talk about creating more affordable housing, attracting investments from business titans, who have threatened to flee if their tax burden rises, reviving the arts and restoring public safety.

Here and around the country, the pandemic has laid bare old inequities and exacerbated others. More than 30,000 New Yorkers, a heavily disproportionate number of them from working poor, minority communities, are dead. Many multiples more are grieving. Even as the candidates spell out their post-Covid plans, the virus continues to spread, with new cases hovering at a dangerously high plateau. The city has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs, countless small businesses, and even with the shot of financial adrenaline provided by the recent federal aid package passed by Democrats in Washington, the city’s robust public sector — bus drivers, sanitation workers, subway operators — could still, in the absence of astute leadership, face devastating cuts. Yang’s campaign likely hinges on undecided New York City Democrats, the largest bloc in every poll of the race to date, embracing a fundamental trade-off — by choosing an exuberant cheerleader over candidates with deeper understandings of the city’s infinitely complicated levers of power.

His rivals remain publicly confident that they won’t. There are debates to come and millions of dollars of television ads to roll out. At about the same stage in 2013, the last open mayoral primary, Anthony Weiner was the favorite and future Mayor Bill de Blasio looked like an afterthought.

Candidate Maya Wiley, a civil rights lawyer and former counsel to de Blasio, suggested in a recent interview with Bloomberg News that Yang’s advantage in name recognition would fade alongside his lead in the polls.

“My daughter had a Howard Dean Beanie Baby and that didn’t help him,” Wiley quipped. “T-shirts don’t win elections.”

‘A happy warrior’

The challenge for Wiley and others, in what could charitably be called an eight-deep field of candidates, is to figure out a path up or around him.

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, a former police captain who advocated for reforms during his time on the force before serving as a state lawmaker, is widely regarded as best-positioned to overtake Yang, something even his top advisers acknowledged in a recent press briefing. Wiley and New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, along with former nonprofit executive Dianne Morales, are the liberal favorites, though only Wiley and Stringer appear to be in touching distance. Kathryn Garcia, a former sanitation commissioner with a deep knowledge of city government, has lagged behind.

So too have Ray McGuire, the former Citigroup executive, and Shaun Donovan, who served as commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development under Mayor Michael Bloomberg before going to work for the Obama administration. Both have independent expenditure groups ready to boost them as election day nears.

“Right now, there are so many candidates and so little attention being paid to the campaign because of other things that are going on — the pandemic, everything in Washington and (with the scandals surrounding Gov. Andrew Cuomo) — it’s impossible for any candidate to communicate positions on issues to a large number of voters,” said Kenneth Sherrill, a professor emeritus of political science at Hunter College.

The draw of Yang, he added, was easy to name.

“This guy’s a happy warrior,” Sherrill said. “People may well just be craving happiness. And I’m not talking about a comedian. I’m not talking about a clown. I’m not talking about a demagogue — just somebody who likes people and likes life.”

Yang has mostly worn his frontrunner status lightly, pivoting — like the more seasoned politician he is now — from questions about the prospect of taking on such a heavy responsibility. But the historic implications of his campaign, which could end with Yang becoming the city’s first Asian-American mayor, have been heightened by a citywide surge in anti-Asian violence.

“It’s something that’s affected everyone. But it certainly hits home for Asian Americans, who feel like our race is putting us in a position to worry more about being able to go on the subway or walk down certain streets at night,” Yang said. “So I feel these issues very personally, but I think a lot of Americans do. It’s just a really devastating time for the Asian American community.”

On the boardwalk at Coney Island on Friday afternoon, as some of those other candidates came and went to mark the landmark’s formal re-opening, Yang took questions from a smattering of reporters and few inquisitive cameramen.

He said he was “thrilled” by the freshly approved New York State budget, which includes new aid to schools, a tax hike on the wealthy and financial aid to undocumented workers who had been excluded from federal legislation. The legalization of marijuana, which passed separately but almost concurrent to the budget, also got his stamp of approval. On the issue of his Nathan’s hot dog order, he confessed to keeping it simple — ketchup and mustard, self-applied, declaring himself “a little sauerkraut dubious.”

He then paid tribute to the rapper and actor DMX, a beloved New York native, whose death had been announced earlier in the day. When the would-be gotcha question came — what was his favorite DMX song? — Yang named “Ruff Ryders’ Anthem” and talked affectionately of the “bad action movies” he starred in.

“Like, good bad action movies,” Yang clarified after being accused by a photographer of suggesting “Belly” was not, in fact, good. “Like action movies that were in the target and I was very much the target during that era.”

That brand of gleeful, accessible campaigning was the trademark of Yang’s unexpectedly strong presidential campaign, transforming him from a no-name gadfly to a regular on the debate stage. But the issues facing New Yorkers, in this race, are much different. Yang leads in the polls — and his every utterance is coming under harsh scrutiny from the other candidates, the press and skeptical voters.

Lis Smith, the veteran New York political operative who helped lead Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, said the “biggest hurdle” Yang has to overcome is proving — again and again — that he could take a punch and stay on his feet.

“Could he withstand the scrutiny of being a frontrunner?,” Smith said. “The simple answer, so far, is yes.”

The backlash intensifies

Yang’s flirtations with a bid to become New York’s 110th mayor began almost immediately after he exited last year’s Democratic presidential primary. He seemed to be shying away from the prospect, though, when he signed on for a brief stint as a Appradab political commentator and founded a nonprofit.

By mid-December, though, the chatter picked up. Private conversations became public knowledge. Yang spoke to local leaders, like Rep. Grace Meng of Queens and the Rev. Al Sharpton, and eventually enlisted some of the city’s top political operatives to chart his path.

Then, on January 13, he made it official.

“Seeing my city the way it is now breaks my heart,” Yang said in a video directed by filmmaker Darren Aronofsky. In it, he introduced a signal endorsement, from newly elected Rep. Ritchie Torres, chatted with his wife, Evelyn, about his favorite sports teams (Mets over Yankees; the Knicks, in spite of himself) and school funding, ticked through his signature policy proposals and greeted passersby who, months later, still clamor for selfies and snips of conversation.

But Yang’s appeal on the street and its evidence in the polls also set off a backlash.

On Twitter, he is under constant scrutiny from critics who question his knowledge of the city and commitment to its civic life. He was mocked for taking pictures in a “bodega” that looked more like a supermarket. And piled-on again after posting a snap from a subway line that didn’t run to his stated destination. (His campaign subsequently told reporters that he transferred lines en route.)

More substantially, Yang struck a nerve early on when he revealed that, at the height of the pandemic last year, he and his family left the city for their second home — a couple hours away, upstate.

And his recent suggestion on Twitter that the city more strictly enforce rules against unlicensed street vending angered advocates who worry a new crackdown would target immigrant workers. Yang has also said he wanted to increase the number of licensed vendors, which could put him at odds with brick-and-mortar shops. (On Monday, he backed off “the sentiment as it was described on that thread” and said he didn’t view the issue as a “zero-sum game” between vendors and retailers.)

Under sometimes harsh examination from local media and activists, Yang’s big ideas — guaranteeing a basic income for the half-million New Yorkers in greatest need, establishing a public bank, appointing a police commissioner “whose career is not primarily in law enforcement” — can sound less inspired than half-baked. His plans to fuel an economic revival with public-private partnerships and skepticism over tax hikes on big businesses and the wealthy, coupled with distrust of his idiosyncratic ideological bearings, have made Yang an enemy of the city’s ascendant progressive and leftist political organizations.

The speed and sharpness of the attacks from his rivals has also accelerated as the election nears.

Stringer recently accused Yang of peddling “municipal Reaganomics.” Adams, in perhaps the most heated back-and-forth to date, slammed his business record and falsely claimed Yang had “never held a job in his entire life.” A spokeswoman for Wiley, responding to his call for de Blasio to slow the spending of federal stimulus funds, labeled Yang a “mini-Trump.”

Asked on Friday about that particular turn of phrase, Yang half-laughed.

“I genuinely don’t know how to respond to that,” he told Appradab. “I just find that very confusing. Genuinely.”

Yang’s campaign has also aggressively pushed back on the assertion that handing him the city’s top political job during a period of historic uncertainty could imperil its recovery.

“What is a risk,” top Yang strategist Chris Coffey said, “is doing the same thing over and over again and getting the same results.”

The wild cards

Whether Yang can maintain his lead — and bring in new voters — as the other candidates crack open their war chests could boil down to a few key strategic decisions by the remaining, undecided political movers in a city where the old machers, like the county parties, have mostly been relegated to the sidelines.

The big labor unions have largely split their support among Adams, Stringer, Wiley and Garcia. Progressive groups seem to be hesitating, though, stuck between Wiley, Stringer and their affection for Morales. A number of increasingly influential, young, liberal city-based state lawmakers backed Stringer early on, but it is unclear if their support will help fuel a consolidation on the left.

That uncertainty has been heightened by the introduction of ranked-choice voting, a system that typically rewards candidates who, even when they are not a voters’ top pick, can maintain some level of popularity — and acceptability — across various constituencies. But there is no indication, at this point, that the candidates trailing in the polls are prepared to alter course and consider strategic cross-endorsements.

If they do, the shift could happen in the coming weeks, after three of the handful of remaining outside influencers pick their horse. At the top of the list is The New York Times editorial board; the United Federation of Teachers, which has a losing record in recent elections but has seen its membership unified by the backlash over school re-openings; and the Working Families Party.

Emboldened by its staying power despite Cuomo’s best attempts to unravel it, the WFP is one of the few progressive organizations with the name brand and grassroots power to drive support to one (or more) of the leading liberal candidates.

“During a pandemic year, where candidates aren’t campaigning traditionally, we need to have a real path to victory,” WFP state director Sochie Nnaemeka told Appradab. “We cannot solely make our endorsement about value signaling. It has to be about who is the best vehicle for the progressive movement, for working people in the city to have representation at City Hall.”

Yang’s campaign, meanwhile, is projecting optimism while digging in for a dogfight.

“No one here is going to say there is no way for us to lose this race. There absolutely is,” Coffey, his strategist, said during a recent briefing. “But I’d rather be us than anyone else.”

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yasbxxgie · 5 years ago

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Donald Trump says he is “not a big believer in global warming.” He has called it “a total hoax,” “bullshit” and “pseudoscience.”

But he is also trying to build a sea wall designed to protect one of his golf courses from “global warming and its effects.”

The New York billionaire is applying for permission to erect a coastal protection works to prevent erosion at his seaside golf resort, Trump International Golf Links & Hotel Ireland, in County Clare.

A permit application for the wall, filed by Trump International Golf Links Ireland and reviewed by POLITICO, explicitly cites global warming and its consequences — increased erosion due to rising sea levels and extreme weather this century — as a chief justification for building the structure.

The zoning application raises further questions about how the billionaire developer would confront a risk he has publicly minimized but that has been identified as a defining challenge of this era by world leaders, global industry and the American military. His public disavowal of climate science at the same time he moves to secure his own holdings against the effects of climate change also illustrates the conflict between his political rhetoric and the realities of running a business with seaside assets in the 21st century.

“It's diabolical," said former South Carolina Republican Rep. Bob Inglis, an advocate of conservative solutions to climate change. “Donald Trump is working to ensure his at-risk properties and his company is trying to figure out how to deal with sea level rise. Meanwhile, he’s saying things to audiences that he must know are not true. … You have a soft place in your heart for people who are honestly ignorant, but people who are deceitful, that’s a different thing.”

Neither Trump’s spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, nor Alan Garten, the general counsel of the Trump Organization, the umbrella company for Trump’s business ventures, responded to requests for comment.

For years, owners of seaside assets, investors, and industries like reinsurance have been busily adapting to and hedging against climate change – a reality widely acknowledged by the world’s top business leaders.

“If you’re being responsible you are protecting your property and investing in these things,” said Cynthia McHale, director of the insurance program at Ceres, a nonprofit that works with businesses and institutional investors to promote sustainability. “It’s certainly best practice.” But McHale added that many commercial developers of seaside properties fail to account for climate change in their decisions because they are focused on short time horizons.

Trump snatched up the golf resort from a distressed buyer in February 2014, after a winter in which an unusual number of severe storms hit the west coast of Ireland. The businessman immediately took an active hand in advancing and promoting his Irish investment.

In April of 2014, Tony Lowes, director of Friends of the Irish Environment, said Trump called him to offer the group help in opposing a proposed offshore wind project in a nearby, environmentally sensitive area. The group, which has since come out against Trump’s proposed wall, declined the businessman’s offer.

The next month, Trump gave an interview about the golf resort, also known as Trump Doonbeg, on Irish radio, vowing to invest up to €45m in the property. “If I didn’t have confidence in Ireland I would never have made this big investment,” he said. He also promised to “reshape it and make it one of the greatest golf courses in the world.”

But Trump has encountered obstacles to that vision. Days before he concluded his purchase, a single storm eroded as much as eight meters of frontage in some parts of the golf course. Since acquiring the property, Trump has been trying to build coastal protection works to prevent further erosion.

Earlier this month [2016], after failing to win special approval from the national government for the structure, Trump re-submitted a planning application with the Clare County Council seeking permission to build the wall, which would consist of 200,000 tons of rock distributed along two miles of beach. As part of the application, Trump International Golf Links submitted an environmental impact statement — prepared by an Irish environmental consultancy — which argues that erosion is likely to accelerate as sea levels rise more quickly.

The statement acknowledges one Irish government study that assumes a steady rate of erosion through 2050, but argues that the study fails to account for the effects of climate change: “If the predictions of an increase in sea level rise as a result of global warming prove correct, however, it is likely that there will be a corresponding increase in coastal erosion rates not just in Doughmore Bay but around much of the coastline of Ireland. In our view, it could reasonably be expected that the rate of sea level rise might become twice of that presently occurring. … As a result, we would expect the rate of dune recession to increase.”

The bigger problem, though, according to the impact statement, will be the erosion caused by larger, more frequent storms. “As with other predictions of global warming and its effects, there is no universal consensus regarding changes in these events,” it states. “Our advice is to assume that the recent average rate of dune recession will not alter greatly in the next few decades, perhaps as far into the future as 2050 as assumed in the [government study] but that subsequently an increase in this rate is more likely than not.”

Later, the statement argues that rising sea levels make taking action unavoidable. “A Do nothing/Do minimum option will have the least impact on [natural] processes but the existing erosion rate will continue and worsen, due to sea level rise, in the next coming years, posing a real and immediate risk to most of the golf course frontage and assets,” states the conclusion of an analysis of various options for responding to the erosion.

Trump’s company has warned not only the county council of the perils of climate change, but also local residents. An appendix to TIGL’s planning application includes a scan of a brochure that the company has distributed to residents to make the case for building the proposed coastal protection works. The heading of one page — emblazoned with a “Trump Doonbeg” logo — is “Need for Coastal Protection.” The page lists four bullet points, the last of which is, "Predicted sea level rise and more frequent storm events will increase the rate of erosion throughout the 21st century."

The statements in the filings contradict positions publicly held by Trump, who has weighed in repeatedly on climate change in recent years – mostly to dismiss it outright. In 2012, he tweeted, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive,” though he has since insisted the tweet was a joke. In 2013, he tweeted, “We should be focused on clean and beautiful air-not expensive and business closing GLOBAL WARMING-a total hoax!” In January 2014, he tweeted, “This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temps, and our GW scientists are stuck in ice.”

In some recent comments, Trump has continued to defy the widely held scientific consensus about man-made climate change, but his statements have become more complicated, if not entirely clear.

“I’m not a believer in global warming. And I’m not a believer in man-made global warming,” Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt in September [2016]. “It could be warming, and it’s going to start to cool at some point. And you know, in the early, in the 1920s, people talked about global cooling.”

That same month, Trump appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and said, “I consider climate change to be not one of our big problems. I consider it to be not a big problem at all. I think it’s weather. I think it’s weather changes. It could be some man-made something, but you know, if you look at China, they’re doing nothing about it. Other countries, they’re doing nothing about it. It’s a big planet.”

Asked by a Washington Post editorial writer in March, “Don’t good businessmen hedge against risks, not ignore them?” Trump responded, “I just think we have much bigger risks. I mean I think we have militarily tremendous risks. I think we’re in tremendous peril. I think our biggest form of climate change we should worry about is nuclear weapons.”

The Pentagon, however, describes climate change as “an urgent and growing threat to our national security.”

Earlier this year [2016], Trump tapped North Dakota Rep. Kevin Cramer, who also does not accept the scientific consensus on climate change but has expressed support for a modest carbon tax, as an energy adviser. Next Thursday, Trump is scheduled to travel to North Dakota to address a gathering sponsored by an oil industry group, an audience that will likely be receptive to climate skepticism.

But Trump — who recently vowed to “at a minimum” renegotiate December’s Paris climate deal — finds his position at odds with the two-thirds of the American public who described themselves as a “great deal” or “fair amount” worried about global warming in a March Gallup poll.

The New York billionaire has not been shy about abandoning past positions on issues like gun control and abortion as his views and his political considerations have evolved. And as he pivots to the general election, his stated position could come into line with the position taken by his business.

“It’s conceivable that he might swing around on this,” Inglis said. “Of course it would be a smart political move for him or for anyone because that’s where the public’s already going. That’s where millennials are going. That’s where the future is.”

#climate change #global warming #donald trump #rising sea levels #sea level rise #politico #trump doonbeg #trump international golf links & hotel ireland #trump organization #county clare #ireland

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theliberaltony · 5 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup.

Poll of the week

On Sunday, Oct. 6, President Trump publicly called for withdrawal of U.S. troops from northeastern Syria. Since then, as U.S. troops have hastily withdrawn from their position, Turkish, Russian, and Syrian government forces have advanced into the region. The American withdrawal has been met with bipartisan disapproval from Congress, where two-thirds of Republicans in the House voted with Democrats to condemn the president’s decision. Even some of Trump’s staunchest Republican allies opposed the move. South Carolina Senator Linsey Graham, who normally votes with the president, called the withdrawal a “stain on the honor of the United States.”

But while the measure has been unpopular among Republican lawmakers, rank-and-file members of the party may not be as opposed. There have only been four polls so far since Trump announced he would withdraw troops from Syria, and while all four showed that mainly Americans oppose the withdrawal, there was a stark partisan split — Republican voters aren’t broadly opposed to Trump’s decision.

First up, a YouGov/CBS News poll conducted Oct. 8-11 found that a plurality of Americans (41 percent) said they didn’t know enough about the situation to determine whether they supported removing troops from the region, while 24 percent approved of withdrawing troops and 34 percent disapproved of the move. But among Republicans, 41 percent approved of the decision to withdraw troops. (The majority of Democrats opposed it.)

A Morning Consult/Politico poll conducted Oct. 11-13 found that a 41 percent plurality of Americans opposed withdrawing troops, but unlike the YouGov/CBS News poll, this poll did not give respondents the option of saying they hadn’t heard enough to know how the felt. A majority of Republicans (56 percent) supported removing troops from the region, while the majority of Democrats (60 percent) opposed it.

A YouGov/Economist poll conducted Oct. 13-15 asked respondents whether they supported removing U.S. troops and “leaving Syrian Kurds who fought against ISIS vulnerable to attack from the Turkish military.” That poll found a majority (52 percent) of Americans were opposed. Seventy-six percent of Democrats opposed military withdrawal, but a majority of Republicans (57 percent) supported it.

And lastly, a USA Today/IPSOS poll conducted Oct. 16-17 asked respondents whether withdrawing troops was the right decision because “the U.S. has too many military commitments abroad” or the wrong decision because it will “upset stability in a dangerous region.” Twenty-seven percent said it was the right decision, while 37 percent said it was the wrong decision. A 41 percent plurality of Republicans thought withdrawal was the right decision while only 15 percent of Democrats said the same.

This isn’t the first time Trump has announced plans to remove troops from Syria. But the public wasn’t as opposed before. YouGov/Economist started asking Americans whether they’d support removing troops from Syria in April 2018 after Trump called for withdrawal. At that time, slightly more Americans were in favor (36 percent) than opposed (28 percent). And even after Trump called for the removal of troops again in December, Americans were still about evenly split (39 percent approved; 37 percent disapproved). But this time around, Trump’s decision to remove troops from the region is not as popular. As the table below shows, net support for withdrawing troops has decreased since last year, especially among Democrats and independents. But support among Republicans has stayed relatively high since December.

Support for withdrawing troops from Syria fell … mostly

Net support for removing troops from Syria over time, by party, according to YouGov/Economist polls

NET Support Date Do you approve of the U.S. … ALL DEM. IND. REP. April 8-10, 2018 Withdrawing troops +8 +3 +18 -4 Dec 23-25, 2018 Immediately withdrawing troops +2 -32 +11 27 Feb 2-5, 2019 Immediately withdrawing troops -1 -35 +7 29 Oct 13-15, 2019 Withdrawing troops, leaving Syrian Kurds vulnerable -24 -66 -19 31

Source: YouGov/Economist Polls

However, we don’t want to read too much into Republican support for Trump’s decision to remove troops from Syria. And that’s because many Americans are still getting up to speed on the situation. Remember, in that YouGov/CBS News poll, a plurality of Americans said they didn’t know enough to say whether they supported removing troops from the region. And according to that Morning Consult/Politico poll, 40 percent of registered voters had heard either “nothing at all” or “not much” about the Turkish offensive (including 45 percent of Republicans, and 34 percent of Democrats). A third of voters also said they have heard little or nothing about the U.S. troop pullout. And that USA Today/Ipsos poll also found that 42 percent of Americans — including 45 percent of Republicans — had either not heard about the U.S. decision to withdraw troops or knew little about it.

There are some early signs, though, that even as they learn more, Republican voters may not sour on Trump’s decision. The Morning Consult/Politico poll also conducted an “informed ballot” test to see whether respondents’ answers changed after they were presented with arguments from both sides. The pollster told respondents that opponents of Trump’s decision said it amounts to “abandoning the Kurds” and that it “could lead to ISIS gaining ground in the area,” and said supporters of the president argued that “it’s time to keep the U.S. out of foreign wars.” After being presented with this information, 60 percent of Republicans supported Trump’s decision to remove troops from Syria, a slight increase from the 56 percent who backed the move without being given these arguments first.

If Republican voters continue to support Trump’s position, though, Republican politicians may have to fall in line.

Other polling bites

Last week, Trump took aim at Fox News’s pollster after their latest poll showed results that were unfavorable to him, including growing support for impeachment. “Whoever their Pollster is, they suck,” he tweeted, following up again on Monday with another tweet calling the poll “incorrect.” His assessment appears to be based on an article from the New York Post that attributed the poll to Braun Research and attempted to re-weight the poll under the assumption that the partisan breakdown of respondents was not in line with real-world party affiliations. While Braun did conduct fieldwork for the poll, Fox News polls are conducted under the joint direction of a Democrat working for Beacon Research and a Republican with Shaw & Company Research, and they are among the more accurate polls around. Reweighting polls based on party identification, which has come to be known as “unskewing,” is generally a methodologically flawed way of interpreting polling data, and it has led to misleading results in the past.

A FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll, which asked respondents to rate each candidates’ debate performance on a four-point scale, found that Sen. Elizabeth Warren was ranked highest by those who watched the debate. But South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg saw the largest increase in the share of voters who were considering voting for him before and after the debate — an increase of 4.5 percentage points.

According to a poll from the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, 57 percent of Americans either “strongly” or “somewhat” agree that the Supreme Court “gets too mixed up in politics.” A majority of Americans, however, still think that the court acts “in the best interests of the American people” and that it has “about the right amount of power.”

Over a quarter of American adults are now religiously unaffiliated, according to a Pew Research Center study, up from 17 percent in 2009.

According to a poll conducted last weekend by Public Policy Polling for the Chicago Sun-Times and ABC7 Chicago, 49 percent of Chicagoans either “strongly” or “somewhat” support a teachers strike, while 38 percent opposed it. The strike was announced Wednesday evening, and classes in Chicago were canceled as of Thursday.

A YouGov poll asked Americans about the NBA’s priorities in light of backlash from Chinese companies, following theHouston Rockets’ general manager Daryl Morey tweeting support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters. Two-thirds of respondents said the NBA should prioritize freedom of speech for its employees more, 8 percent said it should prioritize its business interests more, and about a quarter said they don’t know.

According to a recent poll from Siena College, a quarter of New Yorkers support a bill in the New York State legislature to divide New York State in two states. Two-thirds of New Yorkers said they oppose the bill. The bill stipulates that one of the two states would be New York City and the surrounding areas, while the other would be the remaining 53 counties in the state.

Bolivians go to the polls on Sunday to elect a president. In late 2017, the country’s highest court scrapped term limits altogether, paving the way for current president Evo Morales to run for his fourth consecutive term. In order to win in the first-round election, Morales must get above 40 percent of the vote and have a 10-point lead over his second-place rival. While Morales is leading, some recent polls have left him just shy of 40 percent, indicating that he may not be able to avoid a runoff election, but others have put him at just over the 40 percent mark.

Trump approval

According to FiveThirtyEight’s presidential approval tracker, 41.6 percent of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing as president, while 54 percent disapprove (a net approval rating of -12.4 points). At this time last week, 42.0 percent approved and 53.7 percent disapproved (for a net approval rating of -11.7 points). One month ago, Trump had an approval rating of 41.8 percent and a disapproval rating of 53.7 percent, for a net approval rating of -11.9 points.

Generic ballot

In our average of polls of the generic congressional ballot, Democrats currently lead by 6.3 percentage points (46.6 percent to 40.3 percent). At this time last week, Democrats led by 6.1 percentage points (46.2 percent to 40.1 percent). At this time last month, voters preferred Democrats by 6.8 points (46.8 percent to 40 percent).

Check out our impeachment polls tracker.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Dhrumil Mehta

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patriotsnet · 3 years ago

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Are There More Democrats Or Republicans In The Usa

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/are-there-more-democrats-or-republicans-in-the-usa/

Are There More Democrats Or Republicans In The Usa

If A Party Gets What It Wants In The Pursuit Of Delivering Something Most People Want Most Of The Time So Be It

This mayor joining the GOP says theres no Democratic Party anymore’

Investor George Marcus And His Wife Judith Gave $9610125 Mostly To Democrats

Total donations: $9,610,125

Net worth: $1.5 billion

The Marcuses gave $10,400 to Republicans in 2018, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The rest went to Democrats.

Republican Presidents Of The 20th Century

Also Check: Are More Democrats Or Republicans On Welfare

If There Are P Republicans Then In Terms Of P What Percentage Of Wheeling County

Widest Perception Gap At Political Extremes

In one of the largest national studies of Americas polarization ever conducted, More in Commons Hidden Tribes report identified seven political tribes:

The Hidden Tribes of America

You May Like: How Did The Democrats And Republicans Switch

At Least 60 Afghans And 13 Us Service Members Killed By Suicide Bombers And Gunmen Outside Kabul Airport: Us Officials

Are There More Democrats Than Republicans In The United States

I have been thinking about the Democratic Party and whether or not its members are more numerous than the opposing faction.

Evidence to suggest this is the case:

This party is expected to win the popular vote for president seven out of eight times since 1992. Please don’t say “this hasn’t happened yet”. If this bothers you, say 6 out of 7.

The party has received 51.9 percent of the votes cast in presidential elections from 1992 to 2016 for it or its opponent, the Republican Party. This shows that 2012 was the mean election in popular vote as of 2016.

Party registration in states that register by party says this same thing.

Trump’s approval has not gone above 50 percent ever as president on 538.

A plurality of Americans consistently supported impeachment by 2 to 5 points while it was happening.

To give a theoretical perspective on this:

Read Also: How Do Republicans Really Feel About Trump

The Republican Party General Policy And Political Values

Chart 1 And Table 2: Nationwide Party Registration Trends Since 2000

More Republicans registered to vote than Democrats

Richard Wingers monthly newsletter, Ballot Access News, for election-eve party registration numbers in 2000, 2008, and 2016; the websites of state election offices for July 2018.

Also Check: How Many Log Cabin Republicans Are There

Gallup: Democrats Now Outnumber Republicans By 9 Percentage Points Thanks To Independents

New Gallup polling finds that in the first quarter of 2021, an average of 49% of Americans identify with/lean toward the Democratic Party, versus 40 percent for Republicans.

That’s the largest gap since 2012:

Greg Sargent

Related stories from McClatchy DC

Denham supports DACA; Carlson does not, and the Fox commentator is not shy about telling the California Republican that he’s on the wrong side of that dispute. (One chyron from Denham’s appearance read, “Tucker takes on pro-amnesty Republican.”)

“He’s a tough interviewer,” Denham said while walking out of the detention center, suggesting the dispute was nothing more than a good-faith argument between two men who simply see an issue differently.

That may be, but it doesn’t make Denham’s behavior normal: Republican congressmen don’t pick many fights with leading media personalities such as Carlson, much less send a press release afterward touting the appearance. (Denham even returned to the show a month later.)

But for Denham, unabashed advocacy for policies such as DACA is how he tries to separate himself from his party — something his team knows is a necessity in a district like this. Just in the last few weeks he led an effort, against the wishes of party leadership, to force a House vote on DACA.

And just a few hours before his visit to this detention center, in fact, his office — in a video it posted to Facebook — announced it had helped to locate and process a local high school student’s DACA paperwork.

“If you have a challenge with the United States government that we can help you out with … we hope you’ll let us work for you as well,” Denham said in the video.

Denham isn’t some kind of remarkable maverick within the Republican Party: He supported Trump in 2016, if reluctantly; he voted for the Obamacare repeal and the GOP tax cut bill; and even on a subject such as immigration, he talks as much about securing the border as he does making sure that the DACA kids (who are now young adults) are allowed to stay.

But he has deliberately pursued a course this year that strays from the path Trump has paved and that most Republicans are following. He’s trading his party’s sharp-edged cultural agenda for a more traditionally Republican, live-and-let-live approach.

“He’s not a bomb-thrower on the right or the left,” said Mike Lynch, a Democrat consultant from the district. “And he does his homework. Generally, when you talk to him about an issue, he knows what he’s talking about.”

When Lynch and I had lunch in Modesto, he showed me a picture on his phone of his front yard in 2016, which held yards signs for both Clinton and Denhan. A self-described moderate Democrat, Lynch was the chief of staff for former Democratic Rep. Gary Condit. He says he has voted for a Republican because, in part, he sees Denham as one of the few members of his party making a genuine effort for immigration reform.

Denham has successfully distinguished himself from Republican leaders in the past, winning his district by about 3.5 points in 2016 while Trump lost it by 3 points.

By every indication, he’ll need to repeat the feat in 2018: A poll commissioned last summer by pro-Democratic Super PAC California 7 Project found that Trump had just a 44 percent approval rating in the district.

And the poll estimated that of the persuadable voters in the district — people who might back either party — 43 percent of them were neither Republican nor Democrat.

Denham speaks Spanish (his wife’s father is from Mexico), and aides say he likes to converse with constituents who tell him they don’t speak English, only to find the congressman shift into his second language.

One of Denham’s former Democratic opponents, the Spanish-speaking Virginia Madueno, rated Denham’s Spanish a “B minus.”

“He can hold his own,” said Madueno, who has known the congressman for years. “He can definitely hold his own.”

Madueno — at the time still running to replace him in office — criticized Denham’s health care vote and said he was in the grip of wealthy special interests. But she acknowledged that, in her view, the congressman was also “charismatic.”

“A lot of people like Jeff Denham,” she said.

Latino outreach isn’t Denham’s only move to the middle of the electorate. Any conversation with the congressman about electoral priorities includes a lengthy discussion of water, an issue of special importance in the drought-stricken state. And a discussion about water soon segues to talk about the need for pragmatic representation focused not in Washington but here in the district.

“All things local,” Denham said. “You know, a lot of people here aren’t focused on what the national message is, or what the next Tweet was that came out. More people are focused on what are you doing right here in home and are you working with your local electeds.”

***

It gets repetitive to talk to Democratic strategists in Washington and across country when the conversation turns to November’s races and the message they want their candidates to emphasize. Nearly every assessment is the same: Avoid Trump, talk about health care.

They think this way for two reasons: First, the relentless attention paid to the president means people are hyper-aware of just about everything he does, so voters gain little from the extra information in a campaign ad.

Second, criticism of Trump tends to emphasize his personal shortcomings; voters care more about the status of their pocketbooks. It’s always the economy, especially in a blue-collar district like the 10th.

That’s why Denham’s opponent, Harder, is fixating on healthcare. In April, he and the rest of the then-Democratic field visited a modest church outside of Modesto, where the urban landscape of the city gives way to sprawling farmland and orchards. They were there for a bilingual candidate forum, where Harder — seated behind a table — would give answers that were immediately translated into Spanish for the 150 mostly Hispanic men and women in attendance.

It’s a key voter bloc in a district where about one-quarter of the electorate might be Latino.

Even here, however, Harder wanted to talk about health care, telling the crowd the story of his little brother, born premature and with a pre-existing condition, and how many like him wouldn’t have been able to receive care if the GOP’s bill had become law.

When I talked to him after June 5, Harder said his pre-primary ads featured so much talk about health care that they even began to worry his family.

“Health care was pounded again and again and to the point where my mom said, ‘Josh, people think all you care about is health care,’” Harder said. “And I said, ‘That’s OK!”

Harder is 31 years old, educated at Stanford University before receiving an M.B.A. from Harvard, and used to be a venture capitalist before teaching business classes at Modesto Junior College. Clean-shaven with short dark hair, he looks even younger than his age, though he promises that voters won’t hold that against him.

In the run up to June’s primary, Denham aides plainly wanted Harder to become the Democrats’ pick because of the contrast in experience.

They’ll accuse Harder of being more at home in San Francisco than Modesto, a potentially brutal criticism in an area that sees its coastal neighbor drawing ever more money, attention and resources at its perceived expense.

And they’ll push back on criticism that the health care bill would have been a disaster. Denham repeats endlessly that the problem with healthcare in the district is rooted in the unavailability of doctors, especially those who will accept patients on Medi-Cal. (California’s version of Medicaid.)

Local Democrats add that the push from some in-state liberals for a massive single-payer healthcare system could further complicate Harder’s criticism.

But, if it seems unlikely that a newcomer could defeat a strong Republican incumbent with a reputation for independence, recent political history suggests otherwise. Just eight years ago, in the summer of 2010, Democrats had convinced themselves that many of their incumbents could survive the coming storm even though they too had voted for a controversial health care bill, Obamacare.

They were wrong.

“It was a very high-profile vote that allowed my independent representation of North Dakota to be called into question,” said Earl Pomeroy, a Democrat who voted for Obamacare in 2010 and lost in November of that year.

Pomeroy had served in Congress for 18 years, overcoming the state’s strong Republican lean by crafting an image as an independent lawmaker. One vote, and he lost re-election by more than a dozen points. He sees the parallels in California’s 10th district, and the risk to Denham.

“In a Hillary district, an incumbent that voted to repeal the ACA better hope the voters are thinking about something else,” Pomeroy said.

***

As much as both Denham and Harder both want to minimize Trump’s role in this race, they won’t be able to block the Trump effect fully. What voters think about the president will shape the midterm elections, from who turns out to vote to how people regard the GOP’s legislative accomplishments.

“So many of the constituents feel he has aligned himself with Trump, although he’ll never quite say it,” said Rebecca Harrington, a Democrat and member of the local Hispanic community who attended a meeting with the Small Business Administration that Denham helped organize. “Yet when it comes down to voting and how things are addressed, his policies seem to align with Trump. And that is the problem and that is what’s caused so many people to be in an uproar.”

In 2016, Denham called then-candidate Trump’s words “disturbing,” “inappropriate” and “outlandish.”

In 2018, he’s more circumspect. After I asked Denham what criticism he would offer of the president, he stood in silence for 20 seconds, his mouth slightly agape as he searched for the right response.

“I wouldn’t say it’s much of a criticism, but it’s certainly a challenge that when he does Tweet out his ideas, they take us by surprise sometimes,” Denham said, breaking the silence.

“But if it’s his style, I’m willing to work with it.”

Read full story here

#Democrats

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edgysocial · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on http://edgysocial.com/russians-at-home-and-in-america-expect-trump-to-deliver-but-on-what-depends/

Russians At Home And In America Expect Trump To Deliver -- But On What Depends

While the American people may be divided over Donald Trump’s presidency, most Russians at home and in the U.S. support Trump. Russia quite uniformly celebrated the new U.S. president’s inauguration on a grand scale, and though the excitement was slightly toned down this past week ― with more moderate hopes and embraces of Trump’s first steps as head of state in light of the upcoming Trump-Putin phone call and rumors of an easing of sanctions ― there is still a sense that Trump is on the right side.

As I watched the inauguration in New York, I followed reactions both here and back home in Russia. In assessments of Kremlin circles, I found expectations high for the new president because Russia’s establishment and state-owned channels are very hopeful that Trump will lift the sanctions and improve relations with Moscow. The Russian-American diaspora, however, was more subdued. Most of the Russian-Americans I spoke to tended to support Trump but less so because of his stance on Russia or how proposed policy would alter U.S.-Russia relations. Like many American citizens, they cared about his domestic agenda. If anything, most Russian-Americans in my sample seemed to dislike Putin, except for those working in Russian government related jobs.

As each group awaits Trump’s next move, whether it be on Russian sanctions or on terrorism, here are a few perspectives from Russians at home and in America on the new U.S. president.

Pro-Kremlin Circles in Russia

“Finally Russia has a politician who is more popular than Vladimir Putin! It’s 45th U.S. President Donald Trump…” wrote Alexander Shmelev, a known blogger and former editor-in-chief of the pro-Kremlin online publication Vzglyad, on his Facebook the day after Trump’s inauguration.

And he indeed had reasons for such a comment. While the Kremlin held relatively high expectations about Obama’s first term back in 2008 as well, the nationwide celebration that took place this time was unprecedented in scale.

‘Finally Russia has a politician who is more popular than Vladimir Putin!’ Alexander Shmelev

To honor Trump’s triumph at the polls, multiple Russian cities crafted special election and inauguration products, many of which made the rounds in Russian news outlet reports and in tweets. In the Chelyabinsk region, according to TASS, a special limited edition of a commemorative coin dedicated to Trump (and in some cases reportedly misspelling America with a Russian transliteration of “Amerika”) was printed. A company from the city of Tula launched a limited batch of refined sugar with the image of Trump against the background of the American flag, and reportedly sent several of them to the U.S. Ambassador John Tefft in Moscow. Novgorod city factory created a special lace handkerchief. And a Moscow artist created a “chupa-Trump” ― a lollipop in the shape of the head of Trump “with taste of barberry.” There was also a burger (reportedly served without Mexican sauce), cell phone decorations and discounts pegged to Trump’s victory.

#РИА_Видео Чупа-Трамп со вкусом барбариса: московский художник создал леденец к инаугурации 45-го президента США pic.twitter.com/vV9sPbSiMa

— РИА Новости (@rianru) January 20, 2017

Inauguration Day ceremonies were broadcast by several Russian TV channels. A special all-night party for Russia’s political establishment was held in the very center of Moscow by two notorious pro-Kremlin activists, Konstantin Rykov and Maria Katasonova, with some people wearing “V for Vendetta” masks. Rykov, who served as a Putin’s United Russia Party affiliated MP and is described as a “Kremlin web propagandist,” also posted on his Facebook: “See you in the evening. Washington will be ours.” While Rykov is known for his provocative posts on social networks, it is interesting to see pro-Kremlin commentators pointing out their links to Trump. The party was supported and broadcasted by pro-Kremlin Tsargrad TV, a channel founded and financed by Orthodox oligarch Konstantin Malofeev (known as a key figure linking pro-Russia rebels in east Ukraine with the Moscow political establishment during the Russian-Ukrainian conflict).

The evening also featured a set of portraits of Putin, Trump and Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right French Front National. Le Pen’s presence at the party in the form of a portrait may suggest that the Kremlin expects to see her as the next president of France in this year’s elections. According to Russian independent journalist Ilya Varlamov, when asked by journalists attending the event about their expectations from Trump’s presidency, participants named lifting sanctions, increasing Russian-U.S. collaboration in Syria and a new era of improvement in Russian-American relations.

Sergey Markov, a pro-Kremlin political analyst who attended the party, told me he went because the U.S. embassy in Moscow did not organize any celebration in honor of the new president, which he usually attends on such occasions. (I confirmed with ex-Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul that at least one such celebration took place for Obama’s inauguration in 2009). Markov continued: “I interpreted the lack of celebration of the inauguration of the new president as a sabotage by the State Department. It may indicate that the U.S. establishment is hostile to Trump and plans to impeach him in one or two years.”

So high is the current fascination with Trump in Russia, that by some reports of the event attendees, when the U.S. anthem started playing during the live broadcasting of Trump’s inauguration, all of the participants uniformly stood up. (Markov, however, did not confirm that such uniform standing up actually took place.) Other pro-Kremlin activists and journalists didn’t shy away from the celebration either, strongly endorsing Trump and his inauguration speech on social media:

Alexey Pushkov, Federation Council Commission on Information Policy:

Аfter Mr.Trump inauguration his meeting with President Putin will be the most important event in world politics.A defining moment in history

— Алексей Пушков (@Alexey_Pushkov) January 20, 2017

Vladimir Soloviev, one of Russian TV’s key propagandists:

(“A powerful speech. Well done, Trump.”)

Сильнейшая речь. Трамп молодец.

— Vladimir Soloviev (@VRSoloviev) January 20, 2017

Margarita Simonyan, a Russian journalist, editor of the Kremlin-funded RT:

(In general, congratulations!)

В общем, конгретьюлейшнз!

— Маргарита Симоньян (@M_Simonyan) January 20, 2017

Moscow city councilman Ernest Makarenko:

(“Done! Trump is the President! The U.S. is ours!”)

Все! Трамп – президент! США наши! pic.twitter.com/aMsQ1AJWv6

— Эрнест Макаренко (@ErnestMakarenko) January 20, 2017

Alexander Dugin, Russian pro-Kremlin political scientist known for his fascist views whose influence rose during the Russian-Ukrainian conflict:

(“Trump’s inaugural speech is fantastically beautiful. I could not believe my ears. It’s kind of an American thing. This is a historic moment. A full stop at the end of the liberal world…”)

2/ Dugin can't contain love for Trump's inaugural "I couldn't believe my ears..this is the end of the liberal order" https://t.co/zDkNokgaRt pic.twitter.com/EoQdhLZ3UO

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) January 23, 2017

The pro-Kremlin TV channel Rossiya 24 reportedly even launched a countdown to Trump’s inauguration. And Russia’s chief propagandist Dmitry Kiselev in his weekend show also embraced Trump and hinted at possible Trump-Russia links. “When President Trump thanks all people of the world in his inaugural address, Putin probably responds to him: ‘My pleasure,’” said Kiselev in his opening line. In Kiselev’s view, Trump should be thankful to Russia since no other country supported or “rooted” for his candidacy so strongly in this presidential race. Plus, Kiselev concluded, Putin most definitely expected all “this idiocy in the U.S.-Russia relationship to end.” In his usual tradition of racist comments, Kiselev also compared the two first ladies, saying: “Michelle, standing in her short-sleeved dress next to Melania, looked as if she were Melania’s housekeeper, who had just taken off her white apron and was present there for no known reason.”

Broadcasts in favor of Trump from state-owned Russian TV channels began well before the inauguration, but this pattern continued as the country watched him be sworn in.

Non-Government-Affiliated Russians

Most regular Russians who do not work for the state or state-owned media maintain a good opinion of Trump as well. In a poll released in October by a network of pollsters conducted in 45 countries representing nearly three-fourths of the world’s population, Russia was the only country to prefer Trump to Hillary Clinton. According to a recent poll, over 70 percent of the Russian general population “expect good things from Donald Trump’s presidency.”

There is a slight divide among the Russian liberals and conservatives in their attitudes towards Trump. A smaller number of Russians have a less favorable opinion of the new American president, namely the Russian liberal opposition, mostly due to the fact that Trump’s policy is unpredictable and they don’t yet know what he truly represents. By contrast, ordinary Russian nationalists who continuously endorsed Trump throughout the electoral cycle remain optimistic. Russian conservative publicist Yegor Kholmogorov (also known for advocating punching women in the face) wrote on Facebook:

‘Well, it was certainly a triumph.’ Yegor Kholmogorov

“Well, it was certainly a triumph. At the inauguration Trump made an outrageously Trumpist speech. There was really a feeling that this is not a billionaire, but a trade union leader … who beat the strikebreakers all of his life and spoke to protesters … One hundred percent of nationalism. One hundred percent of populism. One hundred percent of industrial socialism and progressivism. As if 100 years of debauchery did not exist.”

When I spoke to my friends in Russia on social networks, they most often suggested to “wait and see.” Most of them are moderately optimistic about Trump’s ability to rebuild the relationship with Russia.

Russian-American Diaspora in the U.S.

In addition to friends in Russia, I also spoke with a dozen of Russian-Americans, approximately equally divided among Democrats and Republicans, to get a sense of their attitude toward the new U.S. president. My sample was biased towards younger people from big cities, which usually means people with more liberal views, but the results are still quite telling. Overall, I found that the “Trumpomania” that spread inside Russia does not seem to have resonated with the Russian-American diaspora, at least not at the same level. According to the 12 people I spoke to, there were no accounts of special Trump-related celebrations taking place in the Russian-American diaspora. The political divide here is more representative of the broader American population, with younger people living in big cities leaning towards Democrats. Yet the support for the GOP is still higher: a study of the Russian-speaking diaspora in the United States conducted in October 2016 found that 53.3 percent of intended voters planned to vote Trump, while 24.4 percent supported Clinton and the remaining were undecided. This divide reflects a stronger Republican-leaning among Russian-Americans, likely due to their historical aversion to socialism with which they tend to associate the Democratic camp.

Even so, the Democratic-leaning Russian-Americans I spoke to were wary of Trump.

Kolin Zein, a 40-year old musician from New York City, said:

I do not support Trump, mainly due to his rhetoric, which is too reminiscent of Putin’s. Among my acquaintances of Russian-speaking New Yorkers, opinions are divided: about one-third of my friends fiercely supported Donald Trump, one-third were strongly against him, the rest, like myself, are waiting for his real actions, not slogans.

‘I do not support Trump, mainly due to his rhetoric, which is too reminiscent of Putin’s.’ Kolin Zein

Nadia Taiga, a 45-year-old entrepreneur and art consultant from Chicago, told me:

This is a dangerous time bomb. Trump’s vocabulary, phraseology, tone and behavior do not allow for optimistic forecasts. His election gave people a subconscious permission to follow his example ― where you can no longer respect others, [and instead] be rude, lie and so on. Hence, one can expect increase in crime, violence and confrontation in the society.

Among the people I surveyed, the Republicans who supported Trump largely voted along party lines.

Alex Dmitriev, a 42-year-old IT manager from Chicago, estimated that the Russian-speaking community where he lives supported Trump for the most part, including 90 percent of older people and 60 percent of the middle-aged population. According to him, the main reason for this is because the community is of a predominantly Russian-Jewish origin and was hoping that Trump would improve U.S. relations with Israel. Dmitriev himself said he was more concerned about Trump’s populist and dividing rhetoric, which he said he perceives as very dangerous. Yet older people in his family supported Trump, he said, reproducing the divide that split many other U.S. families.

Sima Berezanskaya, a Russian-American actress, journalist and TV presenter in her 60s who is very popular at the Russian-American station Davidzon Radio, said that she supports Trump because she no longer recognizes the United States as the country she previously believed it to be. She points out the generational divide where younger Russian-Americans tend to vote for Democrats, but the older generation uniformly prefers Trump. In her own circles, the majority of Russian-Americans supported Trump. She said that the U.S. with its political correctness is transforming into a socialist country, where a working white minority increasingly has to support the non-working majority of the population. Trump, in her opinion, is the man who knows the value of money and will be able to spend it productively while also shifting the balance in favor of the working population.

Sima Berezanskaya said political correctness is transforming the U.S. into a socialist country, but Trump knows the value of money and will be able to spend it productively while also shifting the balance in favor of the working population.

Sergei, a 36-year-old financial engineer in Chicago, named two main reasons he supported Trump. The first one is his belief in Trump’s ability to challenge the politically correct narrative of the mainstream media that he said often underreport the reality in favor of a more objective coverage. Second, he said he thinks Trump will be able to decrease inequality without increasing state redistribution of resources and feeding the non-productive population groups.

Alexander, a taxi driver from Brighton Beach, N.Y. in his early 60s, said he mostly voted for Trump to vote against Hillary Clinton. He is concerned with the Democratic foreign policy, which he said fueled Islamic extremism and contributed to the refugee crisis in Europe. He said he misses the early 1990s when the middle class still could afford a decent apartment, even in one of Trump’s own buildings.

Stanislav, a 49-year-old IT support engineer who lives in Staten Island, said he expects Trump to reduce bureaucracy and taxes, to repeal Obamacare and return industrial jobs in America back to the country. Stanislav does not support Putin, but he also said he believes that Trump finding compromises with Russia at this point is a more viable strategy.

The partisan divide between Russian-Americans manifests itself in very different perceptions of last weekend’s Women’s March. The liberal Russians strongly embraced it.

Nadia Taiga said:

I did not go to the march. Yet many of my Russian friends in New York City, Washington, Los Angeles and Chicago attended the marches. All my friends that were there said they were thrilled being a part of such a powerful and inspiring event.

‘All my friends that were there said they were thrilled being a part of such a powerful and inspiring event.’ Nadia Taiga

By contrast, Trump’s supporters (both men and women) from the Russian diaspora uniformly referred to the “ugly” nature of the protest, referencing pictures of genital-like costumes worn by some of the participants and Madonna’s speech, which they felt was inappropriate. For more culturally conservative Americans, it may be harder to accept such loose morals. For example, Stanislav said: “Have you seen those pictures of women dressed like genitals? I am an old school man, and I feel disgusted.”

Most Russian-American Trump supporters I spoke to also did not support Putin and rejected claims about Trump-Russia links as possible fake stories spread by the “lying liberal media” and the “Democratic establishment.”

For example, Sergei said:

I do not support Putin because he suppresses the normal political life in Russia. But I do not trust the information that allegedly Trump was assisted by the Russian hackers. I did not see persuasive evidence of intelligence service about the hackers, and I do not trust simple words. Rather, I think it is an attempt to damage Trump by the Democrats and the political establishment for their goals. Plus hacking the Democrats and showing all their dirty laundry is not really breaking the election, just a petty prank maybe illegal yet quite moral. Therefore, the whole story about hackers is like a story about Obama’s birth certificate ― a cover operation and yanking your chain.

Similarly, many Russian-Americans from Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach neighborhood, known for its large Russian-speaking community, I surveyed said they support Trump and the GOP, but do not like Putin.

‘I do not support Putin because he suppresses the normal political life in Russia. But I do not trust the information that allegedly Trump was assisted by the Russian hackers.’ Sergei

The only two people I spoke to who were supportive of Vladimir Putin’s policies and hoping that Russia-U.S. relationship will improve in the near future, were both employed in the international organizations with connections to the Russian state.

Aleksandra Efimova, a 39-year-old Russia-American, who is a vice president of the Midwest region of the U.S.-Russia Chamber of Commerce and a chairman at Moscow Committee of Chicago Sister Cities International, described Obama’s eight years as disastrous with regards to relationship with Russia. She said she expects Trump to find common ground with Putin on solutions to terrorism and to promote U.S.-Russian collaboration on trade, culture and science.

Elena Branson, a Russian-American who is a president of the Russia Center New York (which receives grants from the Russian government and organizes events in the Russian Consulate in New York) called the allegations of Russia backing Trump during the election a campaign to discredit Russia and Trump, yet indicated she was hoping for U.S.-Russia relations to improve under the new president.

While the expectations for Trump’s first steps differ among Russians within and outside the United States, so far the majority seem to be keeping their hopes high. The actions taken in these first 100 days will show how justified those expectations are.

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Are There More Democrats Or Republicans In The Usa

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/are-there-more-democrats-or-republicans-in-the-usa/

Are There More Democrats Or Republicans In The Usa

If A Party Gets What It Wants In The Pursuit Of Delivering Something Most People Want Most Of The Time So Be It

This mayor joining the GOP says theres no Democratic Party anymore’

Investor George Marcus And His Wife Judith Gave $9610125 Mostly To Democrats

Total donations: $9,610,125

Net worth: $1.5 billion

The Marcuses gave $10,400 to Republicans in 2018, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The rest went to Democrats.

Republican Presidents Of The 20th Century

Also Check: Are More Democrats Or Republicans On Welfare

If There Are P Republicans Then In Terms Of P What Percentage Of Wheeling County

Widest Perception Gap At Political Extremes

In one of the largest national studies of Americas polarization ever conducted, More in Commons Hidden Tribes report identified seven political tribes:

The Hidden Tribes of America

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At Least 60 Afghans And 13 Us Service Members Killed By Suicide Bombers And Gunmen Outside Kabul Airport: Us Officials

Are There More Democrats Than Republicans In The United States

I have been thinking about the Democratic Party and whether or not its members are more numerous than the opposing faction.

Evidence to suggest this is the case:

This party is expected to win the popular vote for president seven out of eight times since 1992. Please don’t say “this hasn’t happened yet”. If this bothers you, say 6 out of 7.

Party registration in states that register by party says this same thing.

Trump’s approval has not gone above 50 percent ever as president on 538.

A plurality of Americans consistently supported impeachment by 2 to 5 points while it was happening.

To give a theoretical perspective on this:

Read Also: How Do Republicans Really Feel About Trump

The Republican Party General Policy And Political Values

Chart 1 And Table 2: Nationwide Party Registration Trends Since 2000

More Republicans registered to vote than Democrats

Richard Wingers monthly newsletter, Ballot Access News, for election-eve party registration numbers in 2000, 2008, and 2016; the websites of state election offices for July 2018.

Also Check: How Many Log Cabin Republicans Are There

Gallup: Democrats Now Outnumber Republicans By 9 Percentage Points Thanks To Independents

New Gallup polling finds that in the first quarter of 2021, an average of 49% of Americans identify with/lean toward the Democratic Party, versus 40 percent for Republicans.

That’s the largest gap since 2012:

Greg Sargent