No, there is no Reagan, but Clinton is no Carter either. She lacks the advantage of actual incumbency, has to defend the record of an unpopular incumbent, and doesn’t have a nice guy image. Rubio probably gets us close enough.
And the idea that those are “southern strategy” issues is pure nonsense. The issues of national security, crime and illegal immigration resonate pretty widely. If Democrats truly believed it was just appeals to racism they wouldn’t have tripped all over themselves to agree with Republicans, just not as harshly(although on crime the Dems may have actually sought to out-tough the Republicans).
LOL. Is this a prediction? Clinton is no Carter, and that’s probably a good thing, politically.
Immigration and crime were definitely part of the Southern strategy (Willie Horton plus other fearmongering). Crime is way, way lower now than in the 80s, and therefore isn’t nearly as big a political issue. The Democrats position on National Security is much easier to defend than the GWB-repeat advocated by Jeb! and Rubio.
In one way: she’s stronger. She’s also less likeable and less honest.
Again, if true, why did Democrats respond by also going for the Southern Strategy?
Shootings are also down, hasn’t stopped Democrats from seeing a gun crisis. Statistics are useless in elections. It’s perception, and the perception is that crime is going up in a lot of Democratic cities.
Perhaps, but approval for the President’s strategy against ISIS is in the 30s.
It’s very unusual for Presidents to be more dovish than the populace, but that seems to be happening here. I realize the public doesn’t want ground troops, but they want results and the President has no plan to get results. He just has a plan to make sure that Democrats don’t get labelled “soft on terror” which isn’t working all that well.
In Ohio, a bi-partisan group suggested a new way of drawing districts.
Honestly, I have no idea why Republicans supported the amendment as they had a stranglehold on state government in Ohio for the next 10 years (except Governor).
But, they did and issue 1 passed with a vote of 2 million to 800 thousand.
I was pretty proud of the bi-partisan notion of the amendment which acknowledged at least, in theory, no party should control the state by virtue of gerrymandering.
So, I agree with Shodan. Sometimes, those in power support generally fair ideas. Sometimes they do not.
I hope in Ohio it works, but to ever think that one single group “always breaks the rules to get what they want” is not fair.
Now, does this excuse other actions? No.
Was it a Republican strategy to use voter ID laws to suppress votes? Come on, absolutely, yes it was.
Did the Democratic party decry the “up or down vote” cry of the Republicans when Bush was in office and then suddenly shift when Obama wanted people appointed and called it obstructionism? Absolutely, yes, they did.
But no, neither party is the “ultimate evil who tries to gain power at all costs”. They both can do it. The one ultimate truth about power is people want it and those who have it, use it; and they tend to use it to keep it.
I supported the President’s actions in putting special forces in Syria too. But my poll does show that Americans do tend to have a more hawkish view than the President. The disapproval of his policy is based almost entirely on his lack of results against ISIS.
Okay, so we have approval for every specific action Obama has taken, but overall heavy disapproval of his ISIS policy. The logical implication is that the public wants more, not less. If they wanted less, they’d disapprove of bombing and special forces and drone strikes.
There have been polls that show that the public strongly opposes another ground war, too. Things are shitty on the ground in Syria – that can drive poll numbers on things like this (as in “things are not going well, therefore I disapprove”). It doesn’t mean that the public wants more action, or even different action.
In any case, even if the public wants more involvement, this would be wrong, and would weaken us.
It’s true that the public doesn’t want a ground war, although I bet Democrats would be quite supportive if Obama wanted to do it and made an effort to sell that policy. They’ve supported every other military action he’s taken.
Democrats reacted with extreme hostility to almost all military action taken by Bush starting around 2002, and have been quite supportive of Obama’s elective wars. Democrats trust him, and if he said, “We need a ground war” they’d accept that, most of them anyway.
I’m pretty positive it’s coming, although the President might try to get out of calling it “committing ground troops” given that he’s already doing it without saying he’s doing it. But whether he admits he’s waging a ground war or not, we will be doing it and Democrats will back him 70% or more.
I think you’re totally wrong about what Democrats would accept.
Thankfully I think you’re totally wrong here too. We’ll see, but I think Obama is smart enough to recognize that another war of choice (which is what this would be) would greatly weaken America.
Any war is a war of choice. Don’t let him frame the argument that way; it’s an attempt to excuse Bush’s invasion of Iraq via equivocation. Wars of *aggression *are the issue.
We’re already in a war of choice. Just not a ground war with masses of troops war of choice. It is, however, an Afghanistan-style war of choice. Just not an Iraq-style war of choice.
Politico posted a great article on the success of the Republican Governors Association:
And in 2016, while the Republicans are likely to lose some ground in Congress, they are likely to actually gain another governor or two.
One of the reasons cited by the article is that Republican donors are willing to devote resources to state elections, whereas Democratic donors tend to focus on the federal. So the RGA outraised the DGA 2-1 even as the Democrats federally outraise the Republicans. And the numbers would probably be even more stark if not for Scott WAlker drawing so much money towards his defeat.