Zipgun
Zipgun's JournalHave you signed the petition? It could be a game changer in Florida next Election Day. At almost 70% on Dec. 1st!
Source: Florida Phoenix
Sponsors of the proposed abortion-rights state constitutional amendment are nearly 270,000 petition signatures away from qualifying for the 2024 general election ballot, presuming the Florida Supreme Court and Attorney General Ashley Moody — who is opposed to the initiative — don’t get in the way.
As of the latest update posted Friday on the Florida Division of Elections website, Floridians Protecting Freedom had collected 621,690 signatures toward the 891,523 they need by Feb. 1 to qualify for the ballot. The total equals 8% of the votes cast in the last presidential election.
Sponsors also need to reach that 8% threshold in at least half of Florida’s 28 congressional districts. As of Friday, they’d reached that mark in four districts — CD 4 in Clay, Duval, and Nassau counties; CD 10, Orange County; CD 13, Pinellas County; and CD 14, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties.
Supporters recently began to focus on 10 districts: CD 2, CD 3, CD 7, CD 9, CD 15, CD 16, CD 17, CD 21, CD 22, and CD 23.
Read More: https://floridaphoenix.com/2023/12/01/abortion-rights-initiative-around-270k-petition-signatures-away-from-ballot-goal-will-it-work/
If this gets on the ballot this could be HUGE! The groups behind this effort have done amazing work. Please down load and sing the petition here:
https://floridiansprotectingfreedom.com/petition/
Clarence Thomas' staggering corruption is a gift we cannot ignore.
EVERY SINGLE CONSERVATIVE DOMINATED DECISION HE WAS A PART OF IS INVALID.
We need to make this a mantra and continue to voice this. Removing him is not enough. Nor is adding ethics rules for the High Court enough. Decades of corruption and decades of polluted decisions. Rulings on reproductive rights, gerrymandering, voter suppression, limiting money in elections, 2nd amendment, union dues, just to name a few, are now tainted and invalid.
If we give no push back on his perversion of the law, more dirty justices will continue his work. We cannot cede this ground and allow the full extent of the corruption to be normalized and entrenched by further rulings by a twisted Supreme Court. Refute their legitimacy, challenge their acceptance and demand these legal matters be brought before a un-compromised court.
Time for a frank discussion about Florida.
I understand the frustration with the situation in Florida, and as a resident and native Floridian, feel it myself. But it is much more than just Flora DUH voters being dumb. It over two decades of terrible leadership and decisions by the Florida Democratic Party. 25 years of infighting, turf wars, incompetence and even corruption have crippled the party and ham-stringed their efforts at challenging Republican control.
In many ways, they have ceded the majority of the counties to the GOP (several counties don't have a party office), neglected to recruit candidates and not supported candidates who do run for a lot of races. Instead they have retreated into a defensive mindset that seems to just want to hold on to the few strongholds and hope for the best. There is a dearth of good candidates for higher offices because of the failure to cultivate lower level candidates. (I'm not going to go into more detail on the long history of issues plaguing the Florida Democratic Party at this time, but will if needed)
Florida is the third largest state with 28 seats in the House and 5.5% of the electoral collage. At the very least it makes sense to want to be at least marginally competitive rather than let the GOP have a free pass so they can spend their money elsewhere. And if it is now a red state, it is only recently one, despite the problems with the party and their track record. DeSantis only scrapped by to win the governorship the first time, winning by a margin of 0.4%, less than half a percentage. And many other governor races have also been by very small margins. Until the last one.
And now it seems like the GOP is unstoppable and running rampant with no hope of challenging them. The question is, is this true? I don't think so, at least not yet. But it certainly will be if things continue as they have for the past 25 years. The new Florida Democratic Party leader, Nikki Fried, seems motivated, competent and was the only democratic candidate to win a state level party in 2018. I am not sure she will get the support, or time, needed to change the situation around. And she deserves a real chance. So does Florida. And if Florida can be turned around (likely not into a blue strong hold, but a competitive purple state that the GOP has to fight tooth and nail for) it would be a huge win for the country.
With the current over reach of horrible, authoritarian laws that the GOP is now enacting and despicable culture war actions, this might be the time to mount a real challenge to them. But it won't come easy and it won't come cheap and it will likely take some time. The obstacles are big, with gerrymandering and voter suppression baked into the laws here now and a huge number of incumbents. Things will only get worse if there is no real attempt. And consequences of unfettered GOP control here will affect the entire nation.
If conviction after his term only prevents him from holding office again, why bother?
Seriously, it seems that conviction in that case only helps Mitch McConnell. Might be better to have Trump fighting with McConnell for control of the GOP than knocking him out of that contest. Is there a time as to when the impeachment has to be presented to the Senate? More and more it's looking like Trump will once again face no real consequences. Maybe the NY investigations will do something, but not likely jail time. Banking issues will likely penalize those in the bank that helped him, but not much more. The loans might bankrupt him again. Might. Sure, going to loose a lot of money and be dragged into a bunch of lawsuits. But I am feeling that he will never really face the kind of consequences he deserves. Our system is so broken.
Another perspective on the down ticket votes.
First, I am not trying point fingers or assign blame, rather I am interested in getting a better idea on how the votes were cast. One of the things I have had concerns about is with Biden's outreach to GOP or conservative voters is the possibility of them splitting their votes. So they might detest Trump and then vote for other GOP candidates. While a number of never Trumpers have been vocal about voting against the entire party this election, I'm not sure that is what happened. I suspect that there were a lot of split ballots.
I get that there is frustration with poor messaging on some topics (for example the label defund the police) from the progressive side, and that may very well be a factor in how votes were cast. I also get the frustration with the progressive side with how their issues and leaders are addressed (or ignored) by the party leadership. I think it comes down to two basic philosophies on how to approach voters and each has benefits and dangers.
One philosophy is a "big tent" approach where there is outreach to middle of the road or more moderate conservative voters. The other is a appeal to the left by championing their issues. The crux of the matter is that neither approach gets consistent voters. Making matters worse is the perception (real or imagined) that these are polar opposites.
Centrist outreach doesn't always work and even when it does there is no guarantee that agreement on one candidate or issue will carry on through out the ballot. Florida is a good example of how voters can split their ballots. Trump won, but so did a $15 minimum wage initiative. And this is not a isolated incident. Florida voters have kept the GOP in power at the state level yet voted for Obama twice, (attempted) to restore voting rights to ex-felons, approved medical marijuana, etc.. There are significant problems with the state level party leadership and organization that also play into these results, but I think the example holds.
On the other hand more left leaning outreach also doesn't achieve consistent results. The young vote is notoriously (with good reason) hard to get participation and turn out from. Large youth turnout is as decisive as it is rare. When it happens it is big, then never seems to happen again. And the schism with far left voters and the Democratic Party (thanks Ralph Nader) continues. I know of left voters who said they would vote for Biden this time only. One then vowed to never vote for another democratic candidate. (yeah, I think it is dumb and short sighted also)
So my first question is, do we have any good information on split ballot voters yet? On how they think and make their decisions? Not conjecture, but actual data? And if we do, what have we learned? We know that once issues are presented in a way that divorces them from labeling, many democratic and progressive issues become popular. For example at first "Obamacare" was unpopular yet calling it the ACA or looking at specific provisions suddenly it was very popular. So how do split ballot voters think? Is it tribal, they like individual candidates or issues once they become failure with them but are so tied to the other party, officially or not, that they just automatically default to voting R in every other instance? Do split ballot voters believe that it is type of checks and balances? Is it a branding/messaging problem?
If nothing else, the Lincoln Project proves just how good conservatives are at messaging. And that is a deficit that the Democrats desperately need to correct. I know that the Reagan administration didn't view messaging as outreach or education but rather psychological warfare. They weren't interested in finding voters who agreed with them or doing what voters wanted, they wanted to condition voters to agree with their labels and messaging, even when the actual policies might not have been popular. I'm not saying that democrats need to do this, but they do need a way to break through this.
My second question is are the two different types of outreach really mutually exclusive? If we can break through the labeling barrier and articulate positions that might otherwise be popular with centrist and moderate voters then more issues that are important to progressives could be championed. This would allow outreach to both sets of voters at the same time. A second benefit would be that by being able to safely push more left leaning issues, if there is too much resistance to get big changes there is more room for smaller fall back positions that might then be successfull. One of the problems that the ACA had was by having a more moderate starting point, the GOP was able to weaken it and push back implementation of key provisions.This in turn let GOP spread more misinformation about the act as the actually provisions were not in effect. Once they finally were implemented, they became very popular.
I think it was a calculated risk reaching out to republican and more conservative independent voters. Not only was it a risk worth taking, as getting Tump out was of utmost importance, but it was successful. But the trade off may very well have been weaker down ticket results. Ultimately we need to A) understand split ballot voters, and B) figure out a way to neutralize the advantage that conservatives have with labeling and framing the debate. Being able to reach out to both types of voters, energizing left leaning voters and not allowing the GOP to scare the moderate voters is a win/win scenario.
Finally as expanding the ability for people to vote must be another top priority I wonder if there is a way to provide ways to get more access for young and other traditionally non-voters involved as part of this effort. If there is automatic voter registration then spur of the moment decisions allow someone who normally doesn't vote to participate. They don't have to decide they want to vote ahead of time and register. Our current system of voting does not mesh well with non-traditional voters, especially young voters. As the system needs to be improved one of the goal must be to lower barriers and make the process more friendly to non traditional voters.
The only thing I have to say about this weekend.
In the face of what has happened. In response to all the unkind, cruel and hateful things coming from those who feel they won this weekend.
I only have one thing to say.
IF.
IF you cannot keep enough voters from voting...
IF you cannot gerrymander enough districts...
IF the money of your donors cannot drown the voice of your opponents...
IF your foreign patrons cannot interfere successfully with the voters and the voting...
IF you cannot gin up enough fear and hatred to hide the real problems...
IF you cannot change enough laws to protect you from facing the consequences of your crimes...
IF you actually have to bow the will of the majority of voters and not a carefully cultivated and indoctrinated minority..
IF the packed and rigged courts cannot overrun the legitimate elections...
IF all the cheating, lies and manipulation fall short in the face of conviction and determination coming from the disenfranchised, the discarded, the demeaned and downtrodden...
We will NOT be kind, or forgetful, or forgiving.
But we WILL be just.
Tick Tock
Any one have some good links to reliable stats showing the reality of welfare numbers?
Percentages of able bodied people vs. elderly, disabled and children. How little social welfare costs and how much corporate welfare costs. That kind of thing. I have a few, but looking for more.
I need some help finding the facts about the report that illegal immigrants are getting medicare
through the prescription drug program and Medicare Advantage plans. As you have to be 65 to enroll for medicare, how are illegal immigrants getting befits? Why would they even know about these programs? Something does not smell right about this. Are they being pointed to these programs by shady health care providers?
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jan/7/illegal-aliens-may-lose-of-some-medicare-benefits/?page=1
Profile Information
Gender: MaleHometown: Rockledge, Florida
Home country: United States of America
Current location: Jacksonville, Fl
Member since: Thu May 1, 2014, 06:18 PM
Number of posts: 182
