Warren 2016?

Elizabeth Warren’s victory speech cemented my cry of “Warren 2016.” I have been hoping for months that she would win the senate race because I look at her and I see a potential president. I see a brilliant woman and brilliance is so often lacking in our politics.

The video is worth watching but if you want to read the transcript it’s available. 

She owns the made up you didn’t build that scandal that came from Obama paraphrasing her you didn’t get rich on your own sentiments. She says “An amazing campaign. And let me be clear: I didn’t build that. You built that!” She embraces in it a way that disarms it. She says with that essentially -yeah I said they didn’t get rich by themselves, because we all do things with the support of others.

And she thanked a lot of people while committing to work hard for the people who worked hard for her.

“And to our Congressional delegation, to all of our mayors and legislators, council members and sheriffs, to the nurses, to the firefighters, to the teachers, to the janitors, to the carpenters, to laborers, to the men and women of the building trade, and to all of our brothers and sisters in the labor movement, to the LGBT community, to the women’s groups, to the environmental groups, to the ministers – I’m so grateful, to the credit unions, to the more than 700 small businesses supporting us, to the student organizers, to the Democratic committee, all of you – all of you – have had my back, and I promise you I’ll have your back.”

Brothers and sisters in the labor movement. Women’s groups. LGBT. Environmentalists  She has acknowledged and committed to fight for the groups that fight for democratic presidential nominees. Assuming she keeps her promise to fight for them, I think they will be ready to fight hard for her in 2016. I think they will be ready to knock on doors and call people and give time and energy to a campaign for her. And crucial to beating the GOP’s superior cash from the billionaires she wants to pay their fair share? That energy. That people power that she has the potential to turn out.

She closed by committing to serve in the image of Ted Kennedy. She said  “50 years ago, he said that he would dedicate all his strength and will to serve you in the United States Senate. For 47 years, he lived up to that promise. Tonight, I pledge to do the same.”

Maybe she will serve a lifetime in the senate like Teddie. Or maybe she will be our first female president.

 

What’s on My Ballot? The Rest

The rest of what is on my ballot… It’s a lot so it is after a cut

Did the GOP Winning in the States in 2010 Lose Romney the Election?

In 2010 the GOP swept state legislatures and went wild.

Let’s look at four states where the GOP did things that made people very, very angry.

Virginia-

In Virginia, they passed a law requiring mandatory ultrasounds for any woman seeking an abortion. Even if she was a rape victim. It made Governor Bob McDonald into governor ultrasound and cost him his chance to be the VP pick. It also made women all over Virginia very angry and afraid for their freedoms.

Virginia is a swing state and it certainly can’t hurt the Obama campaign’s chances there for the state to be full of women who don’t trust the GOP one bit.

Michigan-

In Michigan, the GOP in the state pushed through a harsh emergency manager law. It essentially allows the state to dissolve local governments and replace them with an all powerful dictator. The law is leaving many people with no local representative that the voted for and is disproportionately effecting minorities.  It’s repeal is on the ballot on election day. 

The turn out to repeal a law that takes away your local government and gives you a dictator who can dissolve your town’s very existence will surely be enormous and favor the president’s re-election efforts.

Wisconsin-

In Wisconsin, Scott Walker made a bid to strip collective bargaining rights from all state workers. There was outrage and protests in the state capital for weeks. Democrat state legislatures fled the state to delay the vote. The law was ultimately stopped.

While the effort to get rid of Walker as well was unsuccessful, (Partially I believe because Feingold didn’t throw his hat into the race) there is a lot of ground structure and labor organization there that benefits Obama.

Ohio-

In Ohio, they passed a law stripping labor rights. There was a huge fight back and it made the ballot through a signature campaign and by a 22 point margin worker’s rights were restored. Obama’s campaign staff was on the ground for the fight and it helped them to establish an astounding ground game in the all important state.

What’s on My Ballot? Part Two

Moving on down my ballot

Associate Justice

Supreme Court, 5th Supreme Court District

John Michael Guidry #24 Democrat Toni Manning Higginbotham #25 Republican Jeff Hughes #26 Republican Timothy E. “Tim” Kelley #27 Republican William “Bill” Morvant #28 Republican Mary Olive Pierson #29 Democrat Jeffry Lamonte Sanford #30 No Party Jewel E. “Duke” Welch #31 Republican

 

The paper has two articles, here and here, on the wide field of candidates in this race.

Guidry has his own website, as does Higginbotham, Hughes, Morvant, and Welch

Sanford has what appears to be a 1999 geocities site.. 

On searching Kelley, I didn’t find a website for his campaign but I did find a blurb on votesmart (mostly empty), a very brief entry on Judgepedia, an old interview, and a blog entry complaining about him. 

Pierson has a public facebook page but seems to lack a webpage. There isn’t a ton of information on her page either..

All together the candidates in the race have a reasonable amount of information available but with eight of them in the running I expect some people to find the decision overwhelming and make a snap judgement.

For justices, it is especially hard because their websites tend to be vague about their opinions on a wide range of issues saying that their personal positions are irrelevant to the letter of the law. We all know from watching Scalia that that’s pretty far from the truth.

Judge, Court of Appeal

1st Circuit, 2nd Dist., Subdist. 1, Div. B

Gideon T. Carter, III #36 Democrat “Mike” McDonald #37 Republican Trudy M. White #38 Republican

Carter has a website. 

McDonald, as the incumbent, has his own website of course. 

The incumbent seems to have a challenger within his own party from White. It appears from her facebook page to be a challenge based in state worker issues and teacher issues.

Mayor-President

Metro Council, City of Baton Rouge

Melvin “Kip” Holden #51 Democrat Gordon Mese #52 No Party “Steve” Myers #53 No Party J. Michael “Mike” Walker, Sr. #54 Republican

Holden,  Myers, and Walker  all have websites.

 

Mese has a facebook page on which he types in caps a lot. There are a lot of very, very dramatic statements on it.

Myers also has a lot of facebook polls which have been showing up in the ad section of my facebook.

There is quite a bit of info out there in the mayor’s race and I think it is one of the easiest local races to be in the know about as far as effort involved by the individual.

Coming up in the next part? The metro council race, which is where the lack of information in local races starts…

 

Biden’s Not Stupid – Pre-Debate Thoughts

Biden is not an idiot.

Sure, he says stupid gaffes some times but that proves nothing about his intelligence. We all say stupid things sometimes. The difference is most of us don’t have a slew of cameras following around. Making mistakes is a part of being human and a trait that other politicians work elaborately to hide.

Live-ish Blogging the Presidential Debate

I will be live-ish blogging the presidential debate right here. I say live-ish not live because I couldn’t find a widget to work with my blog quite the way I wanted and wordpress limits embedding quite a bit so it will be live-ish in that I will be just working from the post edit screen and updating from there frequently. As a result to see changes it will be necessary to refresh the page.