Campaign and Election News – Covering Key Races Around the Country
Weekly Open Thread: What Races Are You Interested In?
174 thoughts on “Weekly Open Thread: What Races Are You Interested In?”
Great song!!
My discussions with user NewMex9999 w/r/t McGovern and Nixon in the 3/10 thread have made me think a bit about the nature of the Democratic coalition. Without the common taunts from many Republicans against both groups, would Liberals and Labor choose to organize in the same party?
After all, many of those in Labor are socially conservative, pro-war, are not as protective about civil liberties, etc.
Richard Nixon used such issues to drive a wedge into the former New Deal coalition. I could see someone like Mike Huckabee taking up the same anti-business mantle. And with more businesses supporting socially liberal causes like gay rights, that could lead to new coalitions, longer term.
So I ask, here in the USA, what ties Liberals and Labor together?
After the victory of LePage in the republican primary this race get without valid poll. If no-one poll fast this race, the republicans will give the first (bad) “coup”.
early for an open thread isn’t it? Not complaining though.
I think this deserves some discussion:
Personally I am rooting for the guy!
Look at this interview he did with a South Carolina TV station, it is really bizarre. I’m not really sure that he’s a Republican plant, but this whole situation is so strange. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
campaign has been doing some analysis into Greene’s victory and there are some very odd things they uncovered:
In Spartanburg County, Ludwig said there are 25 precincts in which Greene received more votes than were actually cast and 50 other precincts where votes appeared to be missing from the final count.
Just when I thought freshman Republican Lynn “Great White Hope” Jenkins was going to skate by on her first re-election bid with a Some Dude-level challenger, she’s suddenly drawn an opponent who may prove to be a tougher opponent: Sean Tevis.
In 2008, Sean Tevis got into politics with a race against conservative Republican state House leader Arlen Siegfried. No one really gave him much of a chance, but thanks to a smart, web-savvy and actually funny series of web cartoons about politics and government, Tevis raised well over $100,000 (benchmark-wise, $25,000 would be considered good for this tier of race) and he managed to outperform Obama by 8 points on his way to a narrow 52-48 loss in a very conservative district. Considering the state of the Kansas Democratic Party’s bench, this made Tevis a certifiable phenom.
The only drawback of the Tevis candidacy is that he lives in Olathe in KS-03, not KS-02. I would guess that’s going to be a fairly minor issue since Tevis lived in KS-02’s Lawrence for 10 years previously. The youthful-looking, tech-savvy Tevis also said he was moving back to Lawrence, and if there’s one place in the state where his brand of campaign will juice the base, attract volunteers, and spike turnout, it’s in the state’s only good-sized, progressive college town. The other reason is more practical: KS Dems have coalesced around Stephene Moore in KS-03 but lack a good candidate in KS-02.
But the thing that got me was this:
Tevis, who builds websites for a living, said he came up with something he thinks the voters will love. “I came up with a really good idea last year and I’ve been working on it ever since,” he said.
The only hint his website gives is that it is cooler than a picture of Darth Vader riding a cat. And this is why we love Sean Tevis.
Public Policy Polling finds on Friday that Democrats have a 46%-43% advantage over Republicans in generic “which party will you vote for?” House ballot polling. (650 voters robo-polled June 4-7.)
This after ABC/Washington Post found Democrats at a 47%-44% advantage (1,004 adults live-interview polled June 3-6.)
And after Gallup found Democrats and republicans tied at 46% (average for polling in the week ending June 6). Economist/YouGov, meanwhile, finds Democrats ahead 45%-44% (carefully sampled online poll of 1,000, May 29-June 1.)
wants to know where to poll next weekend. He wants to poll at least 1 (maybe 2) besides Virginia.
These people like to call everyone Republicans. They identified Crist as a Republican last week, and tonight, Mike Beebe is a Republican.
That there truly is a Republican wave building in the House, there is a very good chance the Dems will lose the House, it looks that bad. But this is such a crazy cycle, it seems like our Senate fortunes grow everyday. We will lose three seats for sure (ND, ARK, DEL) and probably a fourth (IND). But those losses could be offset by wins in Ohio, Missouri, and Florida (Christ would caucus with the Dems).
Imagine a Republican controlled House with a Senate with 56 or 57 Dems. Wow.
2 problems: This is Bryan Baird, not Brian Baird, and he will not turn 25 until March.
must be polling Louisiana because they posted this on Twitter:
ppppolls Looks like Bobby Jindal’s going to break our approval rating record
20 minutes ago via web
Go check out my diary on MN-6, the Land of Bachmann! There are tons of sexy maps! (And I busted my ass for 6 months on it so if anything, just read it because Im so pitiful that I need to advertise in the Open Thread about it.)
Stutzman has been nominated to succeed disgraced ex rep Mark Souder.
I’m tired of the “bipartisan”, “let’s keep personal lives out of politics”, “there is no concrete evidence to prove she had an affair” types who are buying into the Nikki Haley lying through her teeth denials victim ploy. Here is a Goebbels “repeat a big lie often enough and people will fall for it” routine, if I’ve ever seen one.
There are two actual people who have gone on the public record affirming that they had quickie sex flings with our darling Nikita, paragon of family values. There is a sense among her defenders that this kind of thing happens all the time in politics and we shouldn’t take it seriously until a sex tape surfaces or something.
Well, let’s just make a list of all the many politicians who have been similarly falsely accused of sexual improprieties in the past:
1. Nikki Haley by Folks.
2. Nikki Haley by Marchant.
3. Uhhh….
4. ????
5. Ensign falsely accused, no…, Gibbons, no…., Sanford, no…., Foley, no…., Vitter, no…., Spitzer, no…., Souder, no …., Gingrich, no…., Clinton, no…., Edwards, no…., Craig. no…., Fossella, no…. Man, this is hard work! There has to have been some other politician who was falsely accused of sexual impropriety, doesn’t there?!?!
6. Wait a minute, I got it! Andrew Jackson’s wife Rachel was falsely accused of sexual improprieties in the 1824 election. See, there are other politicians who have been given the same treatment as poor Nikki.
And while we are at it, could someone please fill me in on her husband’s service record? Was he overseas when any of these “alleged” improprieties occurred? That would put some GOP super-patriotic gloss on Miss Holier-Than-Thou Trailer Trash Queen giving her all in support of our fighting men.
I am waiting for the Sanford affair to come out next. Nikki was and is a staunch supporter of the Appalachian Trailblazer. I detected some hint when all that came down that maybe Nikki and the LuvGuv might have been a little more than just policy pals.
Certainly a horndog like Mark “Letting off steam in other countries with my male friends” (we call it sex tourism in the real world) Sanford wouldn’t pass up a free piece of loose ass like Nikki being passed around among the low-life chauvinist pig Palmetto politicos, even if she does looks a bit like an escaped mental patient.
Of course, Jenny Sanford is standing by Nikki 100% and we can put a lot of store in her opinion because we all know just how perceptive and insightful Jenny is when it comes to detecting infidelity in those closest to her.
In the meantime, Nikki is proclaiming how she is not letting these accusations get in the way of her work on the important issues her campaign espouses for South Carolina like preventing gay marriage, passing the flag-burning amendment, prayer in the schools, keeping unions out, allowing personal ownership of bazookas, repealing HCR, arresting more pot smokers, cutting rich people’s taxes, busy, busy, busy in the public interest of the average South Carolinian.
Very well written and accurate, IMO. Good primer for distant observers with an interest in this race.
Another interesting race to watch is SC-1. Will the Thurmond legacy out-vote the conservative African-American who led the runoff? National media will be tuned in for sure.
The SC-3 runoff features a Ice Cream Truck driver/used car salesman who home schools his kids, versus a tea party state representative. Should be interesting as well.
Alvin Greene is more qualified to be a senator than Rand Paul
When asked if she’d vote to raise the federal income tax, she paused for 8 seconds. I dont think it seems that bad in the video, it seems just long enough to think about an answer or something, WRONG issue to pause and give a shitty answer on.
I may be pulling for Cunningham now, that is a major gaffe.
The woman said she was calling on behalf of National Research, for whatever that’s worth. The poll concentrated on the New York State Attorney General Democratic (her copy said “Democrat”) primary, which I don’t yet know nearly enough information about and am totally undecided on. It seemed that the firm had been hired by former New York State Insurance Superintendent Eric Dinallo (I got that description from Wikipedia: New York attorney general election, 2010, a name that my probably Southern interviewer had trouble pronouncing (she also messed up “Cuomo,” “Nassau [County],” and “Albany” and pronounced “insurance” with an accent on the first syllable at times, which of course is fine and not something I “corrected,” but probably unfamiliar to most New Yorkers), and who I’d never heard of.
It was an interesting interview, and I thought the questions were well-composed, though somewhat difficult for my interviewer to read at times. I didn’t write down the questions but would be happy to answer any questions you might have about the content of the interview.
She asked whether I’d be willing to participate more in their research by email, and I declined because I do not want more political spam than I already get.
It’s a little spooky that pollsters ask for me by name, lately. Do you think they’re simply looking up my phone number in the directory, where I’m listed, or getting it from some Democratic Party registration list?
Scott Brown won election because enough “independent” (uninformed and clueless) voters wanted to “get some balance into government” by electing a Republican. Their sense of “bipartisanship” was offended by having not one Republican in any high office in the state.
You know how that works: one party tries, often blundering or feckless, occasionally even corrupt, to do the right thing, while the other is committed to wreak havoc on the democratic body politic by slavishly serving the wealthy and the corporate interests no matter what the cost, but the “independent” (independent of common sense and good judgment) sees some vague “principle” of “balance” in the “Two Party System” as a positive value in and of itself.
Scott Brown capitalized very effectively on this feeling in Massachusetts to get himself elected. His central campaign theme was that Massachusetts was a “one-party state” and the other party should get a chance. Kind of like the 1933 election in Weimar Germany where, you know, the SD and the Center had been in office for so long and it was time to give the other guys a chance.
In any case, before Brown’s election Patrick was lagging badly in the polls because the Bay State voters had traditionally given a series of feckless GOP’ers the governorship just to satisfy that longing for “bipartisanship” and avoid the dreaded “one-party state” label. They were going to give Patrick the heave-ho out of their usual misguided sense of “fairness”, but they got it out of their system with the election of the completely vapid, superficial, useless, and disingenuous Brown.
Patrick suddenly and without seeming explanation revived in the polls and is now in the lead. I predict he will stay there and win re-election.
I suspect we’ll see a repeat of the following comment from JamesL shortly….
What is the highest approval rating anyone can think of for a PPP poll? I would think it would be Mike Beebe, since PPP doesn’t poll the other 2 states with extremely popular govs, ND and IN. Beebe’s was 63% in their last poll. Anyone can think of anything higher, because they said Jindal will break it.
What is the highest approval rating anyone can think of for a PPP poll? I would think it would be Mike Beebe, since PPP doesn’t poll the other 2 states with extremely popular govs, ND and IN. Beebe’s was 63% in their last poll. Anyone can think of anything higher, because they said Jindal will break it.
Labor seems like an interest group. But when you actually look at their policy views the Labor movement is actually more. Most Labor priorities apply to all. They gain more power by increased membership and organization. But they wield their current power to the benefit of all people (in their mind). In this regard, I tend to think of them less as an interest group.
Also, let’s not confuse the Labor movement with union workers. They are 2 very different things. When union voters in the rust belt/appalachia seem to splinter away from the Labor coalition candidates, its not usually over the Labor coalition candidatess views on the Labor movement. It can be for any number of reasons.
What defines a liberal is way yo hard to answer. maybe the question is what defines the Liberal movement?
Perhaps in this day and age it’s not obvious what the connection between liberalism and organized labor might be.
At the risk of going too far off-topic, the whole liberal notion of the well-functioning society is founded on the idea that it is or ought to be possible for large numbers of people to sustainably improve their quality of life and standard of living. (I’m not talking about a handful of tycoons, whether they be exceptionally skilled or extremely lucky; I’m talking about a mass of people here.)
When the bargaining power of workers is weak, those who already have capital can leverage their advatanges more easily to command a greater and greater share of a society’s resources, a dynamic that feeds on itself. Over time they can build themselves into an aristocratic rentier class, who are generally fond of being able to keep the rest of the populace down.
To put it mildly, the institutions of a society set up this way do not lend themselves to facilitating broad-based prosperity. Only in the property-uber-alles sense can an arrangement like this be called a “free society.”
Without a labor force that can bargain better terms for itself, you’re not going to end up with a people that truly govern themselves.
All of this is of course a big-picture type overview that can be overshadowed in the short run by all sorts of stuff, including the cultural preferences of different types of workers. And there’s lots of folks out there who focus on one tree or another and lose sight of the forest.
Great song!!
My discussions with user NewMex9999 w/r/t McGovern and Nixon in the 3/10 thread have made me think a bit about the nature of the Democratic coalition. Without the common taunts from many Republicans against both groups, would Liberals and Labor choose to organize in the same party?
After all, many of those in Labor are socially conservative, pro-war, are not as protective about civil liberties, etc.
Richard Nixon used such issues to drive a wedge into the former New Deal coalition. I could see someone like Mike Huckabee taking up the same anti-business mantle. And with more businesses supporting socially liberal causes like gay rights, that could lead to new coalitions, longer term.
So I ask, here in the USA, what ties Liberals and Labor together?
http://www.google.com/hostedne…
RSA is beating Mexico 1-0, just over 15 min to go!
http://www.google.com/hostedne…
After the victory of LePage in the republican primary this race get without valid poll. If no-one poll fast this race, the republicans will give the first (bad) “coup”.
early for an open thread isn’t it? Not complaining though.
I think this deserves some discussion:
Personally I am rooting for the guy!
Look at this interview he did with a South Carolina TV station, it is really bizarre. I’m not really sure that he’s a Republican plant, but this whole situation is so strange. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
And watch State Rep. Bakari Sellers describe his meeting with Greene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
campaign has been doing some analysis into Greene’s victory and there are some very odd things they uncovered:
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/s…
Just when I thought freshman Republican Lynn “Great White Hope” Jenkins was going to skate by on her first re-election bid with a Some Dude-level challenger, she’s suddenly drawn an opponent who may prove to be a tougher opponent: Sean Tevis.
In 2008, Sean Tevis got into politics with a race against conservative Republican state House leader Arlen Siegfried. No one really gave him much of a chance, but thanks to a smart, web-savvy and actually funny series of web cartoons about politics and government, Tevis raised well over $100,000 (benchmark-wise, $25,000 would be considered good for this tier of race) and he managed to outperform Obama by 8 points on his way to a narrow 52-48 loss in a very conservative district. Considering the state of the Kansas Democratic Party’s bench, this made Tevis a certifiable phenom.
The only drawback of the Tevis candidacy is that he lives in Olathe in KS-03, not KS-02. I would guess that’s going to be a fairly minor issue since Tevis lived in KS-02’s Lawrence for 10 years previously. The youthful-looking, tech-savvy Tevis also said he was moving back to Lawrence, and if there’s one place in the state where his brand of campaign will juice the base, attract volunteers, and spike turnout, it’s in the state’s only good-sized, progressive college town. The other reason is more practical: KS Dems have coalesced around Stephene Moore in KS-03 but lack a good candidate in KS-02.
But the thing that got me was this:
The only hint his website gives is that it is cooler than a picture of Darth Vader riding a cat. And this is why we love Sean Tevis.
Source: http://primebuzz.kcstar.com/?q…
http://www.theatlantic.com/pol…
About da*n time….
wants to know where to poll next weekend. He wants to poll at least 1 (maybe 2) besides Virginia.
Drop him a note on where to poll or questions to ask on Virginia. https://www.blogger.com/commen…
But for any nerds (like me) who like a good manga or anime 😉
I think politics in Texas has been sidelined briefly thanks to the NCAA conference realignment.
Colorado going to the Pac-10
Nebraska going to the Big-10
Now reports confirming that UT, Texas Tech, OU, & OSU are going to go the Pac-10.
Texas A&M on the fence about whether to go to the Pac-10 or the SEC.
Left out in the cold right now are Baylor, Missouri, Kansas, K State, and Iowa State.
Maybe Baylor could go to the Mountain West, Conference USA or WAC.
http://capitaltonight.com/2010…
These people like to call everyone Republicans. They identified Crist as a Republican last week, and tonight, Mike Beebe is a Republican.
That there truly is a Republican wave building in the House, there is a very good chance the Dems will lose the House, it looks that bad. But this is such a crazy cycle, it seems like our Senate fortunes grow everyday. We will lose three seats for sure (ND, ARK, DEL) and probably a fourth (IND). But those losses could be offset by wins in Ohio, Missouri, and Florida (Christ would caucus with the Dems).
Imagine a Republican controlled House with a Senate with 56 or 57 Dems. Wow.
http://tdn.com/news/local/arti…
2 problems: This is Bryan Baird, not Brian Baird, and he will not turn 25 until March.
must be polling Louisiana because they posted this on Twitter:
ppppolls Looks like Bobby Jindal’s going to break our approval rating record
20 minutes ago via web
Go check out my diary on MN-6, the Land of Bachmann! There are tons of sexy maps! (And I busted my ass for 6 months on it so if anything, just read it because Im so pitiful that I need to advertise in the Open Thread about it.)
Stutzman has been nominated to succeed disgraced ex rep Mark Souder.
http://www.indianasnewscenter….
I’m tired of the “bipartisan”, “let’s keep personal lives out of politics”, “there is no concrete evidence to prove she had an affair” types who are buying into the Nikki Haley lying through her teeth denials victim ploy. Here is a Goebbels “repeat a big lie often enough and people will fall for it” routine, if I’ve ever seen one.
There are two actual people who have gone on the public record affirming that they had quickie sex flings with our darling Nikita, paragon of family values. There is a sense among her defenders that this kind of thing happens all the time in politics and we shouldn’t take it seriously until a sex tape surfaces or something.
Well, let’s just make a list of all the many politicians who have been similarly falsely accused of sexual improprieties in the past:
1. Nikki Haley by Folks.
2. Nikki Haley by Marchant.
3. Uhhh….
4. ????
5. Ensign falsely accused, no…, Gibbons, no…., Sanford, no…., Foley, no…., Vitter, no…., Spitzer, no…., Souder, no …., Gingrich, no…., Clinton, no…., Edwards, no…., Craig. no…., Fossella, no…. Man, this is hard work! There has to have been some other politician who was falsely accused of sexual impropriety, doesn’t there?!?!
6. Wait a minute, I got it! Andrew Jackson’s wife Rachel was falsely accused of sexual improprieties in the 1824 election. See, there are other politicians who have been given the same treatment as poor Nikki.
And while we are at it, could someone please fill me in on her husband’s service record? Was he overseas when any of these “alleged” improprieties occurred? That would put some GOP super-patriotic gloss on Miss Holier-Than-Thou Trailer Trash Queen giving her all in support of our fighting men.
I am waiting for the Sanford affair to come out next. Nikki was and is a staunch supporter of the Appalachian Trailblazer. I detected some hint when all that came down that maybe Nikki and the LuvGuv might have been a little more than just policy pals.
Certainly a horndog like Mark “Letting off steam in other countries with my male friends” (we call it sex tourism in the real world) Sanford wouldn’t pass up a free piece of loose ass like Nikki being passed around among the low-life chauvinist pig Palmetto politicos, even if she does looks a bit like an escaped mental patient.
Of course, Jenny Sanford is standing by Nikki 100% and we can put a lot of store in her opinion because we all know just how perceptive and insightful Jenny is when it comes to detecting infidelity in those closest to her.
In the meantime, Nikki is proclaiming how she is not letting these accusations get in the way of her work on the important issues her campaign espouses for South Carolina like preventing gay marriage, passing the flag-burning amendment, prayer in the schools, keeping unions out, allowing personal ownership of bazookas, repealing HCR, arresting more pot smokers, cutting rich people’s taxes, busy, busy, busy in the public interest of the average South Carolinian.
Very well written and accurate, IMO. Good primer for distant observers with an interest in this race.
http://www.thestate.com/2010/0…
Another interesting race to watch is SC-1. Will the Thurmond legacy out-vote the conservative African-American who led the runoff? National media will be tuned in for sure.
The SC-3 runoff features a Ice Cream Truck driver/used car salesman who home schools his kids, versus a tea party state representative. Should be interesting as well.
Alvin Greene is more qualified to be a senator than Rand Paul
http://crooksandliars.com/susi…
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo…
When asked if she’d vote to raise the federal income tax, she paused for 8 seconds. I dont think it seems that bad in the video, it seems just long enough to think about an answer or something, WRONG issue to pause and give a shitty answer on.
I may be pulling for Cunningham now, that is a major gaffe.
The woman said she was calling on behalf of National Research, for whatever that’s worth. The poll concentrated on the New York State Attorney General Democratic (her copy said “Democrat”) primary, which I don’t yet know nearly enough information about and am totally undecided on. It seemed that the firm had been hired by former New York State Insurance Superintendent Eric Dinallo (I got that description from Wikipedia: New York attorney general election, 2010, a name that my probably Southern interviewer had trouble pronouncing (she also messed up “Cuomo,” “Nassau [County],” and “Albany” and pronounced “insurance” with an accent on the first syllable at times, which of course is fine and not something I “corrected,” but probably unfamiliar to most New Yorkers), and who I’d never heard of.
It was an interesting interview, and I thought the questions were well-composed, though somewhat difficult for my interviewer to read at times. I didn’t write down the questions but would be happy to answer any questions you might have about the content of the interview.
She asked whether I’d be willing to participate more in their research by email, and I declined because I do not want more political spam than I already get.
It’s a little spooky that pollsters ask for me by name, lately. Do you think they’re simply looking up my phone number in the directory, where I’m listed, or getting it from some Democratic Party registration list?
Scott Brown won election because enough “independent” (uninformed and clueless) voters wanted to “get some balance into government” by electing a Republican. Their sense of “bipartisanship” was offended by having not one Republican in any high office in the state.
You know how that works: one party tries, often blundering or feckless, occasionally even corrupt, to do the right thing, while the other is committed to wreak havoc on the democratic body politic by slavishly serving the wealthy and the corporate interests no matter what the cost, but the “independent” (independent of common sense and good judgment) sees some vague “principle” of “balance” in the “Two Party System” as a positive value in and of itself.
Scott Brown capitalized very effectively on this feeling in Massachusetts to get himself elected. His central campaign theme was that Massachusetts was a “one-party state” and the other party should get a chance. Kind of like the 1933 election in Weimar Germany where, you know, the SD and the Center had been in office for so long and it was time to give the other guys a chance.
In any case, before Brown’s election Patrick was lagging badly in the polls because the Bay State voters had traditionally given a series of feckless GOP’ers the governorship just to satisfy that longing for “bipartisanship” and avoid the dreaded “one-party state” label. They were going to give Patrick the heave-ho out of their usual misguided sense of “fairness”, but they got it out of their system with the election of the completely vapid, superficial, useless, and disingenuous Brown.
Patrick suddenly and without seeming explanation revived in the polls and is now in the lead. I predict he will stay there and win re-election.
I suspect we’ll see a repeat of the following comment from JamesL shortly….
http://www.swingstateproject.c…
What is the highest approval rating anyone can think of for a PPP poll? I would think it would be Mike Beebe, since PPP doesn’t poll the other 2 states with extremely popular govs, ND and IN. Beebe’s was 63% in their last poll. Anyone can think of anything higher, because they said Jindal will break it.
What is the highest approval rating anyone can think of for a PPP poll? I would think it would be Mike Beebe, since PPP doesn’t poll the other 2 states with extremely popular govs, ND and IN. Beebe’s was 63% in their last poll. Anyone can think of anything higher, because they said Jindal will break it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
Rick Barber scares me.
Labor seems like an interest group. But when you actually look at their policy views the Labor movement is actually more. Most Labor priorities apply to all. They gain more power by increased membership and organization. But they wield their current power to the benefit of all people (in their mind). In this regard, I tend to think of them less as an interest group.
Also, let’s not confuse the Labor movement with union workers. They are 2 very different things. When union voters in the rust belt/appalachia seem to splinter away from the Labor coalition candidates, its not usually over the Labor coalition candidatess views on the Labor movement. It can be for any number of reasons.
What defines a liberal is way yo hard to answer. maybe the question is what defines the Liberal movement?
Perhaps in this day and age it’s not obvious what the connection between liberalism and organized labor might be.
At the risk of going too far off-topic, the whole liberal notion of the well-functioning society is founded on the idea that it is or ought to be possible for large numbers of people to sustainably improve their quality of life and standard of living. (I’m not talking about a handful of tycoons, whether they be exceptionally skilled or extremely lucky; I’m talking about a mass of people here.)
When the bargaining power of workers is weak, those who already have capital can leverage their advatanges more easily to command a greater and greater share of a society’s resources, a dynamic that feeds on itself. Over time they can build themselves into an aristocratic rentier class, who are generally fond of being able to keep the rest of the populace down.
To put it mildly, the institutions of a society set up this way do not lend themselves to facilitating broad-based prosperity. Only in the property-uber-alles sense can an arrangement like this be called a “free society.”
Without a labor force that can bargain better terms for itself, you’re not going to end up with a people that truly govern themselves.
All of this is of course a big-picture type overview that can be overshadowed in the short run by all sorts of stuff, including the cultural preferences of different types of workers. And there’s lots of folks out there who focus on one tree or another and lose sight of the forest.
http://media.markforgov.com/20…
So, he can’t go to the GOP Convention b/c he’s scared of a blow-out loss, but he can go to the Dem convention to be a dick?