Tag Archives: democrats

The trouble with a one party state

California is now a one party state.  This has been the big issue of the 2016 election.  It smacks of communist party rule, and is degenerative to society in so many ways.  During my campaign, I want to address Democratic Party dominance, how its entrenched their position in the state, and how its damaging society as a whole.

First is the legal entrenchment.  In 2010, California adopted the open primary rule, meaning only the top two vote getters in the primaries get to advance to the general election.  So this year, we didn’t get to vote for any Republicans except the president.

That Kamala Harris would become our next Senator was a foregone conclusion and a coronation.  There was no GOP candidate, only a runner up Democrat who ran to her left.

This scenario has left Republicans folding their tents and given the Democrats the keys here, they don’t even run campaigns anymore.  This leaves us with a political machine which has no debate.  Only one big machine, with ladders and favors to apparatchiks.  My 37th district has a congresswoman who’s a 4th generation dynasty of appointees.

One could say that, well, this is because California is a diverse electorate which does not fall for racists.  But they would be wrong.  As I’ve pointed out before, Trump made inroads to Blacks and Latinos that have flummoxed the Republican party for decades.  He basically cracked the race code.  Those cracks were evident earlier, when Democrats thought blacks would join them in fighting against Prop 8 (outlawing gay marriage) but they wound up being its most fervent supporters.  And I think that all peoples and races share some basic core values which make them natural Republicans.  Issues like Family, Law and Order, Work Ethic, Public service.

So why are so many voting Democrat?  The answer is social – the other dimension a one-party state entrenches power.  For this I have mostly anecdotal evidence.  But it’s assumed around Los Angeles that nobody, and I mean NOBODY, could vote for Donald Trump.  All the worst lies about him are assumed to be true, people around here are literally suicidal that he’s won.

You’d say, well who cares, but the fact is that you can’t support Donald Trump, you can’t even give him a fair hearing, without constantly getting into arguments.  Conversations start with “at least we all hate Trump, right?” or “I can’t believe how anybody could vote for that rapist”.  And when they see you not nodding in enthusiastic agreement, then the argument starts.

It’s not just annoying.  It’s damaging to democratic society.  Indeed it bares light on the Democrats’ strategy that goes all the way back to the Antebellum days – they treat their base like a plantation, and instead of resorting to reasoned arguments turn to slanders and violence on anyone who doesn’t support them.

So part of our early strategy in this run is to come out of the closet as Trump supporters and Republicans.  We need to come out, stand proud, and even if some of us didn’t vote for Trump, at least demand a fair hearing for him.  I share an opinion with a number of friends and acquaintances that, regardless of who we voted for, we still accept the other candidate and want to give them a fair hearing.

We can start with that simple premise.

 

Considering a congressial run in the GOP

FINALLY! A Secular non-tea-party Republican has run a successful campaign!

I know. Record screeching to a halt. What?  Yes.  Trump’s victory forever changed the GOP.  It dissolved both the Tea Party and the Evangelicals in one blow.  Yes, of course he made overtures to them during his campaign.  And he will fulfill promises to them.  But both Tea Party conservatives and hard evangelicals campaigned as hard against him with their #nevertrump as any Democrat.

Meanwhile, in his simple populist message Trump made inroads to Black and Latinos that have flummoxed the Republican party for decades.  He basically cracked the race code.  And I want to build on that.  Trump’s victory is a blow to PC culture which might actually grant us a real discussion among each other as Americans.  And I think that all peoples and races share some basic core values which make them natural Republicans.  Issues like family, Law and Order, Work Ethic, Public Service.

It’s these issues Trump laid the groundwork for.  If we can build on this, and really push forward a new Republican agenda of enlightened classic liberalism, we could go into the 21st century making it the greatest one yet.  And we can go into it with a consensus that really represents America.

Once again, California is a perfect starting point for this visionary future.

In his Victory, the Death of the Democrats

The Republicans reel from the dissolution of these wings which they depended on for their mass base.  But they will recover.  And they will come out stronger than before, ready to handle this century of challenges.  Already a new generation of anti-PC secularist militants sympathetic to Trump are organizing.  Mind you, these are not your leftist secularists.  We do not begrudge people their religion, we don’t attack their beliefs, in fact we enshrine their right to behave as they see fit.

The Democrats, unfortunately, are still saddled by their militant wings, which are pulling the party ever more into irrelevance.  One would think their base would see the error of their ways after Trump’s election, and drift away from identity politics and branding everyone and everything as a racist.  They are not, and in fact are doubling down on their politics.

But this is the symptom of a party that has been in power too long and has not needed to become self conscious.

I was a lifelong Democrat.  I worked for the Democrats in a number of campaigns, I see how they behave, especially in my home state of California.  I consider myself of the vein of such Democrats as Chuck Schumer, Jim Webb, and Jerry Brown.

But with Trump’s election, I’m flipping to the Republican party.  Because Trump effectively took over those wings of the Democrats, and now they are part of a GOP conversation.  I want to be a part of this dynamic conversation they are having.  The Democrats stopped having a conversation, and I fear there is not much for them as a party at this point.

This will be the first of many articles about my stances on various issues.  The major question at this point is how to run as a GOP candidate in California, which is effectively a one party state.  I would like to discuss how it became a one party state, how damaging this setup is to our politics and our society, and how we can reverse this trend.

Did you actually think we’d get what we want now?

Yeah, Maddow’s comment did feel pretty good. But did you really think re-electing Obama meant sending a mandate about all the things you and I would like to see in government?
A couple things prompted this. First, a friend posted this Borowitz Report today making fun of Boehner for already refusing to work with the president. Which, let’s face it, Boehner’s appeal to bipartisanship was about a sincere as, well, you come up with a crazy analogy.
But the other one is named Joe Donnelly.
We tend to think that the Democrats we elect are like the delegates we see on the convention floor – gay-friendly, multi-cultural, greener than the Amazon, working men and women standing up for each other. It is a nice picture but it’s not the Democratic Party that governs. Joe Donnelly may be a Blue Dog Democrat, but even then – the first thing he puts on the table is allowing the Bush Era Tax Cuts to stay. That’s telling. It may not be a smoking gun, but it gives an indication of what the Democratic Party’s core values are, and what they’re not.
They’re not the party that’s going to stop wars (In fact, my own representative, Jane Harman, may just be taking over the CIA directorship. But that’s a tangent). They’re not the party that’s going to end oil subsidies. And they’re not the party that’s going to force the rich to pay for their wars and their subsidies.
Sure, they’ll come out in support of pet issues like gay rights and GMOs and what not. That’s free votes. And heck, they can even do something slightly progressive once in a while like pass health care reform. But when it comes to the core values of our government – the maintenance and expansion of capitalism, the protection of the wealthy – they’re right in there with the politicians we call our enemies.
So, practically, what does this mean, what do I predict? I predict the Bush-era tax cuts will stay. They’ll blame the Republican congress for it, they’ll all piss and moan till they pass the same budget this year that they did last year. So will oil subsidies. Calls and clamors for the “fiscal cliff” and “the looming deficit crisis” will continue. And while Obama’s demand that the rich pay their fair share sounds powerful now, it won’t withstand the political pressure of the bourgeois press to gut Social Security and Medicare. And let’s let alone that the employment options people had as recently as six years ago aren’t coming back. These issues were drowned out by concerns about legitimate rape and global warming, but they are long-term issues that will become louder in the next election cycle.
And those are the real bread and butter issues that our government is discussing. Unfortunately, those are the issues that your more knee-jerk progressives prefer to ignore in favor of the isolated politics of “let me have my organic food and weed and let people marry whoever they want.” And that worries me – this sick kind of progressivism in this country, some call it “social liberal/economic conservative” but I call it being okay with barbarism.