Friday, July 28, 2017

A look at national politics with Barry Casselman, The Prairie Editor


Guest: Barry Casselman, The Prairie Editor.......we will look at the state of our politics on the day after the GOP failed to pass a repeal..........what was Senator McCain thinking in casting the decisive vote? Where does this go from here? The Trump administration seems to be in a state of chaos and it does not look very good................................and other stories............

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Tags: Trump month 6, US Senate and Obama Care To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

Keep Venezuela in your prayers this weekend.........the next 72 hours will be hard..........it's time for Maduro to go and fast.



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The situation in Venezuela is really bad.....US orders embassy families out.....violent clashes are expected....bad legacy of Chavez



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Red state Democrats choose Schumer over their states.....they will be reminded of this by GOP challengers in 2018.




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"Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln" by Doris Kearns Goodwin


This is a very interesting book about the Lincoln presidency.   It tells the story of how President Lincoln surrounded himself with "rivals".   



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The “donkey blues”



The GOP is divided, a division that has grown over years. ObamaCare’s repeal effort has revealed real frictions.     
However, the Democrats have huge problems, too. It starts with their ideas and an effort to rebrand the party.
Steve Malanga has a good analysis of the party’s search for ideas:   
At the state level, the party faced a sustained run of bad results that included losing some 900 local legislative seats, while watching Republicans capture 31 governorships. 
Republicans now boast 25 state “trifectas”—in which they control the legislature and the governor’s office—compared with just six for Democrats. 
 
To comprehend the magnitude of Democratic losses, consider that Republicans hold more power in the states than at any time since the Civil War.
Democrats knew after 2014 that they had serious problems. A party task force examining that year’s election results acknowledged the stark losses. But the group’s recommendations for revival were bland at best, focusing largely on organization and infrastructure rather than on ideas that might appeal to the electorate. 
Recommendations included expanding voting rights, working harder to control redistricting, and building an “open and accessible” party. 
The resulting document said almost nothing about policies except in the broadest terms, and ignored the fact that Republicans were winning in many states with an agenda that included fiscal restraint and a pro-business approach to economic growth. And the task-force report made no acknowledgment that the increasingly leftward drift of the party had driven away many of its traditional blue-collar constituents. 
As early as 2013, trade unions whose membership once formed part of the Democratic Party’s core were in revolt against the Affordable Care Act, the growing power of public-sector unions, and the increasing influence that the environmentalist, no-growth agenda had on the party. 
Many of those trade union members defected to Trump in 2016.
The problem is that they don’t have any new ideas. They are simply painting the donkey in a different color but it’s the same message of “class warfare”, “identity politics” and “Trump is awful.”    
Furthermore, how can you rebrand a party by having Nancy Pelosi outline the new ideas? Does anyone, including most Democrats, believe that Pelosi has any new ideas?
As we’ve seen in several special elections, the Democrats have a message problem. They can’t connect with people who own small businesses, mothers who believe that boys and girls go to different bathrooms or naturalized U.S. citizens like me who believe that “sanctuary cities” are an insult to the rule of law.
We will hear a lot about the GOP’s troubles and we have our share. However, our issues are nothing like those of the Democrats, a party still thinking that the answer to every problems lies in more government.
Hank Williams or B.B. King would call it “Having the donkey blues!”
P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.

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Sorry Senator McCain...your vote makes no sense..premiums are shooting up in Arizona and elsewhere & you do this....why?



Tags: Senator McCain kills repeal? To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

Do we need another book explaining Hillary Clinton's loss? Dems need to move on....



Tags: Democrats and 2016 To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!