Posts Tagged ‘Election News’
Just as this kooky political campaign season has halted, so has the crazy torrent of money ($3 Billion by some estimates) spent on advertisements, rallies, dinners, and debates.
Many believe this river of money is corrupting our democracy (Thanks in part to a recent supreme court ruling).
How can a candidate stand a chance, let alone win, if they don’t have a war chest worthy of a small nation?
Exhibit A: Meg Whitman’s campaign for Governor of California. Her previous roll as CEO of eBay gave her plenty of cash, $120 million to be exact, to throw at her campaign… her LOSING CAMPAIGN.
Have trouble with BIG numbers? Michael Crowley of Time Magazine explains that
$120 million is enough to buy a half-dozen F-16 fighter jets and about 25 Ferraris—and still grab Christie Brinkley’s recently listed $16 million five-bedroom home in the Hamptons.
Even more impressive is how her spending compares with the top political race, that for the White House.
Throw in the $25 million in donations, and Whitman has spent more than Al Gore’s entire 2000 presidential campaign did.
With Mrs. Whitman spending three times as much as her opponent, Democrat Jerry Brown, how could she lose?
That’s a question she’ll be asking herself as she lost to Mr., make that Governor, Brown.
How is that possible. Democracy in America notes how voters reacted to the candidates personalities with Governor Brown coming
across as unscripted and spontaneous. By contrast, Ms Whitman began seeming like a rote and robotic Powerpoint presentation. Her money, and especially her never-ending and negative attack ads, made her look worse, not better.
Over at Swapland, Michael Scherer sums up Mrs. Whitman’s defeat nicely noting that
capitalism ain’t got nothing on democracy. Voters want to know the person. Candidates are not products.
So next time you tell yourself that in today’s world of slush money and Senators of fortune the people don’t have a choice, remember money will buy you most things, but NOT everything.
Thanks to Mother Jones
The standard process for being elected is to woo voters into liking you. However, the Republican Party seems to be trying a BOLD new strategy: win votes by being hated!
What is this nonsense we speak of?
Last Monday, Kevin Drum of Mother Jones, highlighted the interesting poll results shown above.
As you can see Americans trust and feel more connected to Democrats, yet they plan to vote Republican. This didn’t make a lick of sense to us.
Luckily a man much smarter than us (not that is saying much) has this nugget of wisdom on why some may like Democrats and yet vote Republican:
The Democrats control the presidency and both houses of Congress, and so it’s a completely reasonable stance to prefer them to the Republicans yet still think they’ve gone too far and need a check on their power. …read more.
When you thought you’d heard it all when it came to politicians and their favorite pastimes (getting involved in scandals), along came Eric Massa and his tickle fights.
While we at USDemocrazy have explored the Democrats’ problems before and have an understanding of scandals (blogging about them, not participating), the big one that broke this week about former New York Democratic Representative Eric Massa has so many facets, we just couldn’t resist dissecting it today. …read more.
Scott Brown (left) annd Martha Coakley
This coming Tuesday is an important day for USDemocrazy. We’re going to see Avatar for the sixteenth time!
But apparently it’s also a big day for blue people that have nothing to do with James Cameron: the Democrats.
Tuesday there will be an election for a Massachusetts Senate seat occupied by the late Ted Kennedy. This election is tightly tied to health care reform, an issue Mr. Kennedy was very passionate about.
Here’s the contenders: Democrat Martha Coakley vs. Republican Scott Brown. And it’s going to be a close one, folks.
Why is this a big election for health care reform? Says the Wall Street Journal:
If Brown wins, ObamaCare dies. He would be the 41st vote to prevent any compromise legislation from coming to the floor of the Senate.
And if ObamaCare dies, then Mr. Obama himself won’t look so great. Hence why he has been right there with Coakley, campaigning hard for a Democrat to keep the seat. (check out above video that doesn’t include hecklers) …read more.
Image taken from fruitfly.wordpress.com
We here at USDemocrazy are quite familiar with reruns. By reruns, we mean our editors mercilessly rerun the same gripes about our alleged bad speling.
But this week, we have come across a rerun of the political sort.
The Associated Press reported over the weekend that former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani may be seeking to re-ignite his political career. …read more.
Okay,be ready. Be very very ready. Because you are going to hear alot of talk around the country in the months ahead about a Stimulus package to help our gasping economy. Our job at USDemocrazy is to try to explain this stimulus thing just as soon as we figure it out ourselves.
It will take time to get down to all the details but let us start with this first fact… there are 11 zeros involved. The stimulus package being bandied about is $825,000,000,000.00!!!
Everybody in Washington and around the country has different ideas how to spend this stimulus cash. They all want a piece of the Stimulus pie. Here are some Highlights include funding for infrastructure, energy programs and healthcare.
We at USDemocrazy will be keeping an eye on the Stimulus Pie for you. We will be reporting back with more explanations and stories as we stumble into them… and stumble we will…
We are pleased to announce that USDemocrazy.net is now live! Nobody knew exactly what would happen when we launched over the weekend but we’re happy we haven’t crashed UMBC’s servers (yet!). Take a look at our welcome video below, then head over to USDemocrazy.net to explore your state!
