As The Ticket pointed out here a couple of weeks ago, Barack Obama's poll numbers have sadly sagged among most sectors of American voters -- young people (down to 57%), Easterners (52%), women (47%), independents (41%), seniors (38%), whites (36%).Life being short, as they say, I’m not going to make an exhaustive attempt to criticize Malcolm’s continuing battle with common sense as he tried to report on empirical polling data (at least, not this time...no word, of course, on how many people of which group are Republican or Democratic supporters).
Only among blacks has his support stayed very strong (91%).
The trouble, with severely challenging midterm elections coming up 14 days from right now, is that without Obama on a ballot somewhere, African Americans haven't demonstrated an eagerness or even willingness to flock to the polls as they did for him in 2008.
Last November that racial absence cost the Democrats the New Jersey governor's race, hurt in Virginia's and likely the Massachusetts Senate race too that went to Republicans for the first time since the Korean War.
So, what's a black president to do?
Instead, I’ll merely point out that, according to here, Virginia is one of two remaining states in this country that denies the right to vote — for life — to anyone with a criminal conviction (Kentucky is the other).
Also…
The only means by which an individual can regain the right to vote is by going through a lengthy application process to prove to the governor that he or she is worthy of the right to vote; even then the governor can deny that application for any reason or no reason at all.After enduring the 2007-2008 presidential primary season, I now know that we above that Mason-Dixon Line really have no right to preach to anyone in another geographic location of this country about racial tolerance. However, I don’t believe we can just “whistle Dixie” and ignore this either.
The result: hundreds of thousands of Virginians are denied the right to vote, even though they have completed their entire criminal sentence and are living and working in the community. The laws that disenfranchise citizens who have been convicted of a crime were shaped in many respects by Jim Crow laws and continue to disproportionately affect people of color: one in every six African Americans in Virginia is permanently disenfranchised under this law. African Americans make up only one-fifth of Virginia's population, but over half of those who are disenfranchised.
And I’ll overlook for now Malcolm’s implied racism (can hardly wait to see a “Top of the Ticket” post from him about white politicians reaching out to
Just a few years prior to (now), the anger was directed at a Republican president and Congress that failed to bring spending under control. That spending was a fraction compared to what is going on now, but people had a right to expect better of the Republicans when we were in charge.Actually, as noted here…
…only 10 percent of $2 trillion swing into deficit is due to Obama policies; the rest, about 53 percent of the new deficit, is attributed to Bush’s tax cuts and spending increases (including the extension…of Iraq and Afghanistan). Nonetheless, by 2020, spending will equal 26 percent of GDP because of Social Security — that Bush promised to but never did reform — and Medicare — to which he added benefits — while taxes will bring in only 19 percent of GDP.(Oh, and speaking of Former President Nutball, I give you this – I have no personal grudge against the Texas Rangers baseball team, but if they advance to the World Series, I’m sure a certain 43rd president will find a way to try and hog the spotlight once again, taking credit for something he doesn’t deserve, he being a former figurehead of a team owner.)
I’m not going to waste our time trying to dissect all of the dog whistle red meat dished out by Christie that was dutifully echoed by Mikey The Liar; if you wish to test your gag reflex, you can read the Courier Times story as well as I can.
But only a Republican apparently can inhabit that parallel universe allowing them to think that Christie is actually competent at anything, given that he wasted an opportunity to obtain $400 million in matching federal school reform money here, and even worse as far as I’m concerned, pulled the plug on a $8.7 billion commuter tunnel project from New Jersey to New York here.
Oh, and did I mention that Christie offered former DC schools chancellor Michelle (“Watch Me Fire 96 Teachers At Once”) Rhee the job of New Jersey education commissioner (here)?
Note to all Dems – this is what happens when we sit out an election (and to prevent anything like this awful mistake from happening in our beloved commonwealth, vote straight Democratic on November 2nd – in the meantime, please click here to help Patrick Murphy and send Mike Fitzpatrick back to private life for good).
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