The 2020 Democratic Presidential Nomination Campaign

Biden will be 78 by the time he would be sworn in as President.Sanders 79.What to say.Biden should answer for his opposition to busing and school district policy which enabled poorer minority kids to attend schools with more wealthy white kids.Now, Sanders.This "Sanders issue" has always troubled me.Frankly, Sanders seems really out of date on immigration. He is still screaming a lot of crap against "open borders". He is still full of crap on trade (I say this as a big Sanders supporter from the past, despite my concerns about many of his policies).I prefer somebody like Booker myself.Sanders is good when it comes to speaking out against troubles people face, but he contradicts himself when he starts talking about immigrant rights. He still acts like there are prominent conservatives who speak out in favor of "open borders", though this is mostly a thing of the past (the CATO Institute aside). Also, his (anti)trade views have been discredited.I hope Sanders crashes early, so give Biden his big lead.Then find a good progressive opponent, and crush him (crush Biden).Edited by Admin, : Change title from "Biden is at 39%.Sanders down to 14%. CNN poll." to "The 2020 Democratic Presidential Nominee Campaign"Edited by Admin, : Change title to "The 2020 Democratic Presidential Nomination Campaign"

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It's not like she lied, the DNA really is there, just not as prominent as some were led to assume and being "Native" is more than just DNA.

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I seem to recall the DNA analysis had the possibility of a great great great grandparent being native.(that makes her at least 98% white, and every grandparent at least 90% white)She used a family rumor ("lore" she called it) as a basis for using a racial designation - "native American" - on job applications (and some feel that it helps one get hired for certain jobs). I don't know the details.I don't know most of the details, and never cared too much about looking at the details. I do not know how often she made comments about her supposed native heritage.Is there a page showing all of her comments on the issue (and the context)?

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She was proud of having the ancestry. Maybe a bit too proud owing to political concerns, but she acknowledged the heritage is way back, and more telling, she not only accepted the native nation's statement that being "native" was considerably more than a few strands of chemistry, she repeated that statement to the press in acknowledgement.

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I was only bothered by the "one drop rule" smell to her commentary (just after, or just as, she released the test results). It seemed like a case of massive ignorance (I assumed "one drop" type of stuff - for identification and labels - was a thing of the past for EVERYBODY), and I know she wasn't saying anything bad about natives. The issue is no longer about (long outdated) white supremacy at all. It is just an issue of amazing ignorance.Not much (or any?) media criticism seems to get it, imo.(The native leaders have to deal with the difficult issue of tribal membership, which is complicated by so many people who have partial native ancestry, but their problem isn't my problem)To have a certain amount of DNA that makes it possible for a single "pure" Native American ancestor 6 generations back (that means it is at the "great great great great" stage where there are 64 Great Great Great Great Grandparents) means that 63 of your 64 Great Great Great Great Grandparents were white (I am not sure the other 63 were all "white" exactly, and I have not looked at the test, but I would not be shocked if it was that extreme).I found her tone and comments just stupid.

2013 was something of a fluke, but the most progressive candidate in world history somehow won.The eventual winner (The Mayor) was hardly a blip until late in the race. He was at around 5% for most of the Democratic campaign.Anthony Weiner, Christy Quinn, and Bill Thompson (the African-American Democratic nominee who almost beat Bloomberg in the 2009 general election) were the front runners for the Democratic primary nomination. Weiner melted down due to sexual scandals. Quinn (whom the incumbent Mayor Bloomberg basically hand-picked as his hopeful successor) was then the heavy favorite, but Thompson had a real shot.But Quinn supported "Stop and Frisk", and a judge decided it violated the state constitution late in the campaign. Bill de Blasio surged as a vocal opponent of a policy that some large minority groups hated (he also happened to have a black wife and a teenage son from the wife). He needed a lot of momentum to beat Bill Thompson (with his strong support in the African American community) and even a win in the first round Democratic primary would still require him to win an uphill 1 on 1 runoff.De Blasio needed to avoid a runnoff.What enabled de Blasio to win was the relatively low-bar 40% of the first round Democratic primary vote requirement.He just did cross 40.0%, while Thompson got around 27%. It took a while for the votes to be counted.It was amazing that he came from nowhere (despite early support from progressives, he seemed to be nowhere) at just the right time.He was sworn into office in early 2014.The economy improved and crime dropped, while subway/bus fares were cut in half (for people below a certain income level) if a monthly or weekly pass was purchased. (I am assuming the $31 weekly pass is now $15.50?) He raised income taxes on those making over $500,000 (or $1 million) about 0.5% to make that historic change. He raised city spending on the homeless to more than every other place in the country combined. Now it is like $2 billion a year.De Blasio is similar to Bernie Sanders when it comes to the middle class, but de Blasio is much better when it comes to helping the poor and the homeless. De Blasio is clearly more pro-immigration.

Democrats need to start talking about the economics of solar and wind.There is big news from a small Iowa town (just outside of Omaha, Nebraska), South Sioux City. I just read a Sioux City Journal article in my local Nebraska paper today. I did a google search and found there was also an AP article (from just a day ago) too.U.S. News and World Report also took notice of the AP story.People should try to read both the AP article and the local Mason Dockter article.I can't get any article to load on my computer (except part of a U.S. News and World Report snip), but my (slow) computer won't paste it.The article mentions that a $1.8 million battery will be added to the solar (and also the wind?) power production that already is on-line. It will have the appearance "of a semi trailer without wheels" and will have a location right next to the city's 2.3 megawatt solar panel site. It will be a "large-scale battery" which will have 1.5 megawatt storage capability.The actual 1,200 panel site site is 21-acres and 2.3 megawatt production is roughly 5% of the city's roughly 45 megawatt needs. (I don't know the population of this city)Here are snips from the Mason Dockter article (I will have to type it from my local Lincoln Journal Star newspaper from today)

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The city's 2-year-old solar park provided roughly 5 percent of the city's 45 megawatt electricity usage. That electricity costs roughly two-thirds the expense of electricity purchased from elsewhere, Hedquist said.

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A year ago, the city also approved an agreement with NextEra Energy that could bring 15 megawatts - the equivalent of 33 percent of the city's power needs - via the Cottonwood Wind Energy farm in south-central Nebraska's Webster County.

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Here is the link to the article.South Sioux City to add 1.5MW battery to store solar power | Local news | siouxcityjournal.comSouth Sioux City to add 1.5MW battery to store solar power | Local news | siouxcityjournal.comThe city already gets about half of its electricity from renewable sources (which includes hydroelectric). The wind deal would bring that up to 80%!In two years, an "anticipated gasifier plant, which can turn wood waste into methane, which in turn is used to generate electricity", will be up.A five-megawatt natural gas plant is also being proposed.Rod Koch is the South Sioux City mayor that is big on wind and solar, and this seems to be a city that will be seen as a "demonstration" for green energy's potential. My google searches were full of references to this "demonstration city".Iowa already gets about 40% of its energy from wind. Nebraska is far behind, despite being a state with an even smaller population. Nebraska has around 2 million people, Iowas has about 3 million. Both have the same amount of wind blowing through.Solar power is cheaper than fossil fuels in raw price per megawatt, but I wonder what the price per megawatt will be when the battery price is added. Solar can become "base load" with a battery, but at what price? We know it is 33% cheaper when it is ONLY part of the total energy mix (as it does not require a battery). Very valuable at any rate.Very economic.(Additionally, we had a poster, "Jon", who said there was not enough land-area to produce enough solar power, but it looks like 420 acres would be enough land to produce all of the solar power South Sioux City needs for the grid).Democrats need to talk economics, even if they actually do understand the environmental issues at stake.Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.

The city is in Nebraska (Since Sioux City was in Iowa, I assumed that South Sioux City was too).It has about 13,000 people as of 2017.That makes it just about 0.6% of the total Nebraska population.420 acres is about 2/3 of a mile.That means that Nebraska would need about 100+ miles of solar panels to be 100% of the grid.Out of 100,000 (?) square miles total area.It would need to be around 300 square miles of panels if the population was as much as the national average.Does not seem like land area is a big deal, but perhaps I am missing something. The solar panel (plus land?)price is 33% cheaper than fossil fuels, according to the article I read. Perhaps subsidies are part of the lower, but 33% cheaper is still impressive. I wonder what the price would be without the federal help.Nebraska is not a particularly sunny state either.Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.

This was utility scale, not rooftop solar.It was a 21 acre site.Here is a darn good June 5,2019 article.It is long, but covers potential cost issues

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BUSINESS
California has too much solar power. That might be good for ratepayers
By SAMMY ROTH
JUN 05, 2019 | 4:00 AM

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California has too much solar power. That might be good for ratepayers

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The Beacon solar farm in California's Kern County generates electricity for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

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California set two renewable energy records last week: the most solar power ever flowing on the state’s main electric grid, and the most solar power ever taken offline because it wasn’t needed.

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There’s no contradiction: As California utilities buy more and more solar power as part of the state’s quest to confront climate change, supply and demand are increasingly out of sync. The state’s fleet of solar farms and rooftop panels frequently generate more electricity than Californians use during the middle of the day ” a phenomenon that has sent lawmakers and some climate advocates scrambling to find ways to save the extra sunlight rather than let it go to waste.

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But for ratepayers, an oversupply of solar power might actually be a good thing.

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New research published in the peer-reviewed journal Solar Energy suggests California should embrace the idea of building more solar panels than it can consistently use, rather than treating oversupply as a problem to be solved. It sounds counterintuitive, but intentionally overbuilding solar facilities ” and accepting they’ll often need to be dialed down in the absence of sufficient demand ” may be the best way to keep electricity prices low on a power grid dominated by renewable energy, the research found.

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In a study published in March, New York-based researchers Richard Perez and Karl Rábago argue that solar power has gotten so inexpensive that overbuilding it will probably be the cheapest way to keep the lights on during cloudy or overcast days ” cheaper than relying entirely on batteries. Solar power can meet high levels of daytime electricity demand without energy storage, the researchers say, as long as there are enough solar panels on the grid during times when none of them are producing at full capacity.

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“It’s not like solar is going to be available all the time,” said Perez, a solar energy expert at the State University of New York at Albany. “At night you will need storage, and on cloudy days you will need storage. But you will need much less of it.”

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California has set a target of 60% renewable energy on the power grid by 2030, as well as a longer-term goal of 100% climate-friendly energy, a broader definition that could include hydroelectricity or nuclear power. A dozen other states and U.S. territories have adopted or are considering similar 100% clean energy goals, and they’ll be watching California’s progress as they try to figure out how to make those goals a reality.

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The Golden State’s success depends in part on achieving its goals without sending energy prices soaring. California already has some of the country’s highest electricity rates, although low levels of energy use mean monthly bills are relatively low.

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Perez and Rábago coauthored their study with analysts at Clean Power Research, a company with offices in California and Washington state. The study built on an earlier Clean Power Research report, which showed that in Minnesota ” a state not known for abundant sunlight ” the cheapest way to run the power grid with solar panels, wind turbines and batteries involved building so many solar panels that their output would have to be “curtailed,” or reduced below what they’d otherwise be capable of producing, by around 30%.

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Under a range of high-curtailment scenarios, the report found, electricity would be slightly cheaper than it is today in Minnesota ” a conclusion that Perez and Rábago found to hold true for many power grids.

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Models run by the California Public Utilities Commission, examining the state’s options for reducing planet-warming emissions while maintaining reliable and affordable electricity, have also found that a surplus of solar power makes sense.

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“What the models said was dramatically overbuild solar, and either export it when you have excess production or curtailment,” said Edward Randolph, who leads the regulatory agency’s energy division. “Curtailment makes economic sense.”

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The argument for overbuilding solar power isn’t new, nor is it especially controversial among researchers who study the logistics of transitioning from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources. Utility regulators have always built extra power into their planning, requiring enough electric generating capacity on the grid to ensure there will almost always be sufficient power on hand to meet energy demand.

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Traditionally, that reserve margin has come from fossil fuels. Overbuilding renewables is a similar concept.

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Some experts, though, are skeptical about the sheer scale of overbuilding contemplated by Perez and Rábago.

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Wade Schauer, a Sacramento-based researcher at the energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie, said Perez and Rábago didn’t take into account the costly transmission lines that may be needed to accommodate an overbuild of solar, or the landowner opposition that has frustrated solar farm developers in California and elsewhere. The researchers also assumed energy storage costs will remain “laughably high,” Schauer said ” an assumption that makes batteries look less attractive compared with overbuilding solar.

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California set two renewable energy records last week: the most solar power ever flowing on the state’s main electric grid, and the most solar power ever taken offline because it wasn’t needed.

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That was only half of the article.

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Maybe one living and one recently dead. Justin Amash has stated publicly that Trump has committed impeachable offenses. John McCain who was certainly not hyper-partisan and stood up where it counted in significant votes.

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Amash was the first Ron Paul-clone to ever get elected (in 2010). A solidly anti-war, pro-immigration libertarian.He called John McCain "racist" for calling a past Iranian President a "monkey".McCain has a history of bashing gays and making racist comments about non Europeans (like Asians, Iranians, etc.). And he was a dangerous warmonger (and I mean really dangerous).McCain was fairly pro-immigration and very pro trade, but that does not excuse his very real problem with racism.

Tonight's debate was powerful.I seemed to notice this issue (though I spent few words detailing why it was so important, and now I wish I said more) in my OP.Here was how I started my OP:

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Biden will be 78 by the time he would be sworn in as President.
Sanders 79.

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What to say.

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Biden should answer for his opposition to busing and school district policy which enabled poorer minority kids to attend schools with more wealthy white kids.

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This article gets to an important lesson in economic growth, and the fact that something that (almost?) works for a while DOES NOT WORK FOREVER due to the fallout from lack of investment in people.(the issue of segregation and racism playing a major role in the economic situation - overall smaller economic size - isn't really covered, nevertheless there is surely something of an implicit obviousness in the story)I still have the paper but it seems the entire article is readable online.The South’s Economy Is Falling Behind: ‘All of a Sudden the Money Stops Flowing’ - WSJThere is a graph showing regional (per 4 regions) per capita income.There is also a map of the 50 states showing a color-coded level of income relative to the national average.There are a ton of photographs including one of the 108 year old Jessie Winston, one of the first black workers hired at Natchez’s tire plant (after blacks were FINALLY allowed to work there) .

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By Sharon Nunn

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Photographs by Seth Herald for The Wall Street Journal

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Updated June 9, 2019 5:58 pm ET

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NATCHEZ, Miss.”The American South spent much of the past century trying to overcome its position as the country’s poorest and least-developed region, with considerable success: By the 2009 recession it had nearly caught up economically with its northern and western neighbors.

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That trend has now reversed. Since 2009, the South’s convergence has turned to divergence, as the region recorded the country’s slowest growth in output and wages, the lowest labor-force participation rate and the highest unemployment rate.

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Behind the reversal: The policies that drove the region’s catch-up”relatively low taxes and low wages that attracted factories and blue-collar jobs”have proven inadequate in an expanding economy where the forces of globalization favor cities with concentrations of capital and educated workers.

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“Those policies worked before, then they became fundamental constraints on the [South’s] long-term growth,” said Richard Florida, an urbanization expert at the University of Toronto.

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Higher taxes and education spending aren’t a cure-all, as many northern states now suffering population loss have found. Nor is the South alone in its economic troubles: Automation and globalization have wiped out millions of good-paying factory jobs around the country, especially in the Rust Belt.

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But these trends have fallen especially hard on the South, which is more rural than the rest of the country and has fewer big cities. In part because of its legacy of racial segregation the region has, relative to others, underinvested in human capital. Thus the South, the only region to have enjoyed such a dramatic rise in the postwar period, is the only one to experience such a retreat in the past decade.

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In the 1940s, per capita income in the states historians and economists generally refer to as the South”Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky”equaled 66.3% of the national average, according to historical data reconstructed by University of Kent economist Alex Klein and The Wall Street Journal. By 2009, that had climbed to 88.9%. That was the high-water mark. By 2017 it fell back to 85.9%.

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Against the Northeast, the country’s wealthiest region, the South’s decline began sooner and has been steeper. The South’s per capita income peaked at 79.1% of the Northeast’s level, and has since fallen to 71.6%.

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(Those numbers would look slightly better under the U.S. Census Bureau’s broader definition of the South, which adds in Texas, Florida, Maryland and Delaware, though the general trend remains the same.)

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Rural Adams County in the southwest corner of Mississippi exemplifies the typical story of the South’s rise and fall. It once attracted thousands of higher-paid factory jobs, particularly in the 1930s, when a big tire and rubber plant arrived. But the major factories began closing in the 2000s; the tire plant shut down in 2001. “Friends and family that have been here for 20 years . were packing up and leaving,” says Chandler Russ, who grew up in Adams.

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The income gains the county notched against the rest of the country from the 1950s to the 2000s have completely reversed.

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The county population peaked in 1982 at 39,172, and has declined about 20% since. Factory jobs, 18.5% of the county’s total in 1992, were just 5% in 2017. Per capita income is now 56.8% of the national average.

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Today Mr. Russ runs its economic development office, working to attract better paying jobs. It’s an uphill battle. A slim supply of college graduates makes it difficult to attract high-paying employers, which in turn gives the county’s smartest students little reason to stay. “Our brightest and best that go to college and get a good education don’t come back,” said Glenn Green, a prominent local Realtor. He has sold fewer pricier homes in recent years as the engineers, plant managers, and other higher-paid workers who used to staff the big plants have left.

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Within the South, individual cities and states have had widely diverging experiences. So-called Sunbelt cities like Charlotte and Atlanta have attracted both wealthier white-collar workers and retirees from richer regions, and less-educated workers from poorer, rural areas. Thanks to these cities, the entire region rebranded itself as the New South.

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And neighboring states such as Texas, with its own unique economy, often got lumped in. But unlike the rest of the South, Texas is relatively urban, with five major metro centers. It has a thriving tech sector and ample reserves of oil and gas which have boomed in recent years thanks to the fracking revolution.

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“The ”New South’ is a narrative that is more applicable to the urban centers,” says James Ziliak, an economist at the University of Kentucky specializing in poverty. Much of the region consists of smaller towns and rural communities whose fortunes rose, then often fell with that of a single local industry.

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As the divide between rural and urban incomes widens nationwide, the South has been particularly affected, since a third of its population lives in rural areas, compared with under 20% for the overall U.S.

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The South’s economy was historically poorer because it was heavily dependent on agriculture, one legacy of the dominance of cotton and slavery. In 1880, about 90% of southern workers were employed in farming, compared with about 66% nationally, according to Sukkoo Kim of Washington University.

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To diversify and lure manufacturing, southern states, starting with Arkansas in 1947, began passing right-to-work laws that weakened unions and kept taxes lower than in the wealthier North. And they spent less, especially on education: an average of $1,869 per student in 2009 dollars, in 1960, compared with $2,741 nationwide, according to the Education Department. In part, this reflected the long shadow of slavery. In the Jim Crow era white taxpayers and politicians resisted spending that benefited blacks, according to historians.

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Mississippi was an early adopter of this industrial push. In the 1930s, it passed the nation’s first state-sponsored economic development plan to encourage northern industries to move south, using low taxes, low wages and other incentives. Manufacturers flooded in. By 2009, per capita income had climbed to 76.3% of the national average, from just 30.3% in 1932.

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The plan was particularly successful in Adams County, where, by 1960, farm labor declined to one of the lowest percentages in the state. Armstrong Tire and Rubber, later known as Titan Tire, was one of the first manufacturers to respond to Mississippi’s plan, opening a plant in Natchez in 1939. It became a linchpin in the community, the behemoth building’s outline visible above the tops of homes and businesses in its neighborhood. It eventually employed more than 1,000 white workers, and by the 1960s began hiring blacks, including Jessie Winston, now 108 years old, who checked the quality of tires coming off conveyor belts, and his daughter Helen.

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The streets surrounding the tire plant were busy with passing cars and families and lined with fully occupied, brightly painted homes, the Winstons recall.

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But in the 1980s, globalization and automation began eliminating the sorts of lower-skilled manufacturing jobs that the South had been so successful at attracting. The tire plant closed permanently in 2001 largely due to regulatory lawsuits and union negotiations that turned sour. This threw Mr. Winston and his daughter out of work. Other factory closures happened around the same time, devastating the county’s tax base.

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“All of a sudden that [industry] money stops flowing through the economy,” Mr. Russ said. “It was alarming.”

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The neighborhood near Titan’s gray and rusting plant is quieter now, there is less traffic, and empty homes with broken windows contrast with the well-kept lawns of the remaining residents and churches. The restaurants the Winstons used to frequent have closed. Mr. Winston continued a hair-cutting side gig and later worked at a bakery, making doughnuts and pastries. His daughter became a housekeeper for a local community college.

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The federal government has tried ways to redress regional disparities. Huntsville, Ala., was a major recipient of federal missile and space research jobs and funding. President Trump’s tariffs are meant to bring factory jobs back to the U.S., including the South. After the Trump administration threatened 25% tariffs on auto imports, Toyota announced it was building a $1.6 billion assembly plant with Mazda Motor Corp. in Huntsville. But such moves have yet to eliminate the South’s income gap.

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Many economists say the most effective way for the South to regain its momentum would be to invest more in education, which would over time create a more skilled workforce to attract employers. But Mississippi State University economist Alan Barefield notes that is difficult to reconcile with southern states’ historic desire to keep spending and taxes low.

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As Adams County’s industrial jobs fled over the past decade, they have been replaced by jobs in the lower-paid leisure, hospitality and food sectors, which are now about a fifth of the workforce. Natchez leaders have also tried to draw tourism dollars, emphasizing its deeply Southern roots and proximity to the Natchez Trace Parkway, a series of trails formerly used by Native Americans. Foreign tourists now meander down the city’s waterfront path with an unobstructed view of the Louisiana coastline, and make their way through antebellum-style plantation homes with tall, imposing white columns.

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But the dearth of college-educated workers has hampered its ability to attract high-paying white-collar information and professional and business services jobs, which made up less than 8% of the workforce.

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So city leaders are doing their best with what they have. They encouraged its local community college, Copiah-Lincoln, to adapt its offerings to what potential employers may need. This is showing signs of working. Great River Industries, which makes fabricated metal products like industrial-sized vessels that hold chemicals, moved to Natchez in 2013 after the city pushed the community college to redesign its welding curriculum. The firm currently employs almost 300 and plans to hire more. A couple of other smaller manufacturers have also set up shop.

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But Mr. Russ acknowledged that the city can’t depend on just a few manufacturers in a handful of product areas or it could go the way of the past again.

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“There’s no visions of grandeur,” Mr. Russ said, and little hope of going back to the days of Titan Tire. “But what if we get 10 100-[person] plants that grow to 250 jobs over time?” he added. “You don’t take the beating when you lose one.”

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” Anthony DeBarros in Washington contributed to this article.

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Write to Sharon Nunn at sharon.nunn@wsj.com

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Copyright ©2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the June 10, 2019, print edition as 'The South’s Economy Is Falling Behind.'

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The article encourages people to post comments on your opinion about the South's problems.My opinion:Democrats lost a lot of credibility when they pushed for the online sales tax imposition, which is a total assault on poor people, and a total assault on the states that don't saddle sales taxes on their people. Plus it is a total fraud. A person in Tennessee who pays a (online) merchant for a product SHOULD BE SEEN AS MAKING THE TRANSACTION WHERE THE MERCHANT IS LOCATED. The big fraud is that a merchant in New Hampshire or Oregon is somehow seen as having his transaction point in the home state of the buyer.The "race-to-the-bottom" would have actually worked in poor people's favor - for once - had the transaction location been seen in its totally natural state, that is to say the item was purchased in the sellers physical location.The flood of businesses to Montana, Oregon, Delaware, Alaska, and New Hampshire would have required sales taxes to be ended everywhere for states to be economically competitive. The wealthy (facing potentially higher state income taxes) did not like that idea. And neither did the liberal members of the Supreme Court.The sad thing is that there already was an early 1990's precedent (involving a North Dakota case) that seemed to protect poor people, but that was thrown out without a second thought. A South Dakota case brought the issue back. South Dakota lost, in a lower court, in its attempt to slam poor people, due to the earlier precedent. But the powerful anti-poor forces won at the Supreme Court.The economic deck is stacked when totally NOT-natural forces are somehow enshrined into the economic physical reality we are all forced to live with. Talk about "fine-tuning" and (intelligent?) "design" of physics!This recent decision was the ultimate case of the wealthy powers enjoying a perpetual triumph over the poor.(And with the liberal side being as much of the never-ending problem as anybody)We need a new universe to start all over and try again.

From the early 21st century, an article about the party that cares about a democracy without "interference" ( 19 years later, anyway).

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ARCHIVES | 2000

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Political Briefing; A Spot for LaRouche? No Way, Party Says

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By B. DRUMMOND AYRES JR.

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JUNE 11, 2000

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Like Rodney Dangerfield, Lyndon LaRouche says he don't get no respect.

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Or delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

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Mr. LaRouche is running for president. Again. He says he is a Democrat, perhaps the only one who can save the nation, and maybe the world, from an economic and social implosion.

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But the Democratic Party says he is a convicted felon (mail fraud involving fund-raising) with political beliefs that are ''explicitly racist and anti-Semitic.''

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Nevertheless, Mr. LaRouche continues to campaign as a Democrat and, in states where election officials permit his name on the ballot, he draws some votes, sometimes thousands of votes. In last month's Democratic primary in Arkansas, for example, he got more than 53,000 votes, or 22 percent of the total cast. The other candidate on the ticket, Vice President Al Gore, got 194,000 votes.

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So does Mr. LaRouche get to go to the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles with 22 percent of Arkansas's 48 convention delegates? Or with delegates from any other state?

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No way, says the Democratic National Committee. If he shows up, committee officials say, he will be barred from the convention and, they add, courts have ruled several times that such exclusion is legal.

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Mr. LaRouche denies he is a racist or an anti-Semite. As for his fraud conviction, he says he went to prison and paid his debt to society. His big vote in Arkansas, he argues, proved his viability as a candidate. ''In Arkansas,'' he says, ''reality struck.''

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As Senator Tim Hutchinson, the chairman of the Bush campaign in Arkansas, sees it, the reality is that 53,000 Democrats ''couldn't stomach Al Gore'' so they voted for a candidate ''not famous for being somebody you can support.''

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Political Briefing; A Spot for LaRouche? No Way, Party Says - The New York Times

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Your vote counts, except when it doesn't.That is encouraging.

First the bad news.Mexicans (in Mexico) are really anti-immigration.

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When Mexican President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador agreed to step up Mexico’s immigration enforcement to avert U.S. tariffs, many analysts expected his base to be disillusioned. Lpez Obrador had long advocated for migrants’ rights and the freedom of movement for asylum seekers.

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But 51 percent of Mexicans support using the country’s newly formed national guard to combat migration of undocumented immigrants in Mexico, a key provision of the agreement. Just under half of Mexicans have heard about the June agreement, but among those who have, 59 percent favor it ,while 34 percent are opposed.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/...a6-ab670962db05_story.html

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64% say migrants are a burden, while 20% say they are a benefit.Only 7% of Mexicans want to allow migrants to have never-ending residency. A majority, 55%, are for deportation.Now the United States.The bad news is that 51% support Trump's raids. 36% oppose.Poll: Slim majority supports deportation raids - POLITICONow the good news.First of all, there have been polls (from a month or 2 ago) that show a plurality saying Trump's tariffs hurt their state verse helping (47% to 41%).But on to Michigan

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July 25, 2019 12:06 PM
Poll: Michigan voters largely agree on economy, tariffs, immigration and climate change

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Tariffs

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A plurality of 47 percent of Michigan voters believe tariffs on foreign products hurt consumers like themselves.

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A plurality of 47.3 percent believe tariffs on Chinese imports hurt Michigan farmers.

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A plurality of 40.8 percent believe potential tariffs on foreign car imports will hurt Michigan's domestic automotive industry.

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However, Republicans and Fox News viewers polled have the opposite feeling on tariffs, with 47.9 percent of Republicans and 61.2 percent of Fox News viewers believing tariffs help the state's auto industry.

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Immigration

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56.5 percent of voters polled believe immigrants are good for Michigan's economy.

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57.3 percent oppose federal funding to build a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

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81.7 percent strongly support increased federal funding for enhanced security at border points of entry as long as it doesn't include wall funding.

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Fox News viewers are the outlier with 88.1 percent supporting a border wall.

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77.3 percent oppose the separation of children from immigrant parents who crossed the border legally or illegally.

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54.5 percent said undocumented adults who have committed no other crime than crossing the border should be given a pathway to citizenship.

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26.2 percent said all undocumented adults should be deported.

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Poll: Michigan voters largely agree on economy, tariffs, immigration and climate change | Crain's Detroit Business

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This is really good news because Trump's protectionist requirements in the NAFTA re-boot (dubbed USMCA) used to be ultra-popular stuff for all of human history.Consider the populist part of the USMCA deal:The percentage of a vehicle that must be made in North America will increase from 62.5% to 75%70% of a vehicle's steel and aluminum must be from North AmericaBetween 40% and 45% of a vehicle must be produced by workers earning at least $16 an hourMichigan must have 41% of its people who know that this time-honored market interference will increase the price of vehicles by a few thousand dollars each. It will hurt sales. It will hurt consumer purchasing power. It will hurt every other area of the economy- an economy which collectively needs consumers with more purchasing power and left over dollars to spend. It will hurt the larger economy's job creation.Now immigration:55% of Michigan's people seem to feel that illegal border crossings aren't such a bad thing, because they want a pathway for citizenship.Fundamentally, the less xenophobic side seems stronger. These are questions about policy, not feelings.That does not mean that actions - raids & border controls - against illegal immigrants are not supported by the country, but it means that illegal immigrants are not seen as THAT bad of a thing. Perhaps there should be a reminder that illegal crossings are a MISDEMEANOR not a felony.Younger voters will be less and less supportive of the time-honored "law and order" position, which enjoys 51% support presently.The truth is that without Trump, we Americans would never have a chance to look at these old laws. Closer looks (by the American public) seem to be making the anti-immigration side suffer a much smaller plurality of support than at any time in my lifetime.The anti-immigration plurality is shrinking every single day, and the Open Borders movement is getting stronger.55% of Michigan voters want a pathway to citizenship for the "immigrants who broke the law".The crime is a misdemeanor. Minor.55% SUPPORT MAKING THESE PEOPLE CITIZENS - the major issue even more extreme than making them legal residents.

quote:

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There isn't much support for decriminalizing crossing the border illegally.

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https://thehill.com/...il-fines-for-illegal-border-crossingsIt looks like 41% want to make illegal border crossings a crime verses 31% who want the crossing to result in a fine.Only 67% of Republicans want illegal immigration to be a crime.

quote:

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The results were based on interviews with 1,001 registered voters conducted between July 5 and 6. There is a margin of effort or plus of 3.1 percentage points.

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The question of whether those crossing the border illegally should be punished as criminals has come up in the presidential race.

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In the second night of the Democratic debate, nine of the 10 Democrats on stage raised their hands to indicate they did not think those crossing the border illegally should face a criminal punishment.

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....

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The treatment of people detained at the border for crossing illegally to obtain asylum in the United States has also become a major political issue. An internal government report released last week described squalid and over-crowded conditions at facilities holding people who crossed the border.

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Tess Bonn

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This was July 8, 2019.I am not sure there is evidence (unless I am missing something) that backs up the comment that there "isn't much support" for decriminalizing illegal border crossings.My source (above) indicates the opposition to decriminalizing is not exactly insurmountable, as it is simply a 4 in 10 plurality.

Home of the Marist Poll | Polls, Analysis, Learning, and MoreIt showed 66% oppose decriminalizing verses 27% who support.People probably feel it was a question about Open Borders.The specific issue of a fine verses a crime shows a not-so-strong opposition to the technical term "decriminalization". 42% verses 31%. See my above post.

http://maristpoll.marist.edu/...Tables_1907190926.pdf#page=3Scroll about 70% down for poll."Do you think decriminalizing illegal border crossings is a good idea or
a bad idea?"It will sound like a question about Open Borders to most people.47% of Democrats say it is a bad idea verses 45% who say it is a good idea.Overall 66% say bad idea. 27% say good idea.Decriminalization is a technical word. It sounds like one is making illegal immigration 100% legal.But the word requires a definition so people know what it means.But see this poll which, again, is specific.https://thehill.com/...il-fines-for-illegal-border-crossings41% say illegal immigration should be a crime.32% say it should result in the offender (notice the language of GUILT in the description) getting a fine alone.Now, there will be complications when one has to keep going deeper.The questions will come.What should come after the fine?And so on.