Signs of the Electoral Times
Posted on February 29th, 2008 in Uncategorized | 9 Comments »
As some regular readers may know, I’ve long been arguing that it doesn’t matter who the GOP and Democratic presidential nominees are, and that the press has been paying too much attention to the personalities of this campaign and not enough to underlying electoral, demographic, psychographic and economic trends which strongly suggest a Democratic victory.
(Partly because it’s in the media’s economic self-interest to highlight the horse race aspect of the campaignâit’s good for business.)
Two recent events strengthen my feelings.
One, in a New York state assembly special election, a Democrat just beat a Republican in a district that is “overwhelmingly Republican.”
Now the state GOP is in danger of losing control of the assembly for the first time in decades.
I think you can consider that defeated assemblyman the canary in the coalmine of the fall elections.
Event number two is George Bush’s statement yesterday that the country isn’t in a recession. I understand that there’s a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t quality to any statement the president makes about the economy. But this statement is going to kill the Republicans. It will make Bush look even more out of touch with the country than he actually is, and they will be forced either to reject the president or defend him, both unfortunate options.
I’m not saying the Democrats should be overconfident; I am saying that the forces underlying the electoral mood have been building for eight years, and I don’t think the press is explaining them well……
9 Responses
2/29/2008 3:20 pm
A) I understand your point about NY but will never see any Democratic trend in NY as a weathervane for national trends (in fact, I would see NY GOP’ers as always the first to go - when is the last time they expected to carry the state in a national election?).
B) With the Bush thing, you’re assuming that we will, technically, go into recession, no? Obviously the quote will mean nothing if we don’t - like a lot of people (even with yesterday’s news), I think we’ll continue to nudge up against it but not cross the line.
-Egret
2/29/2008 7:59 pm
Let’s hope its true. I will not shed a tear for conservatives like Bradley after their lot is thrown out of office. Hillary, Obama — I don’t care. Just send Bush back to Texas, McCain back to Arizona — along with his amen choir with the likes of Richard.
2/29/2008 8:27 pm
You sound too confident that Democrats will win the election no matter what. Aren’t there distinctions among Democrats?
Look at Democrat Mayor Menino, for instance, a big supporter of Hillary Clinton. Menino killed the Boston Higher Education Partnership and replaced it with the Boston Step Up program. Are the Boston Public Schools better off for it? or was this just a way for Menino to do business with the classier and richer Universities? all of which, incidentally, are looking for permits from the City for major construction projects in the city!
Some Democrats!
3/1/2024 1:48 pm
First off, Menino is not a democrat. He is a Boston Democrat. (Bostonians know what that really means)
Next, what did BHEP produce for results? The Boston Public Schools are a disgrace and it really does not matter which universities “help”.
The disaster is a result of the lack of family involvement and the resource starved teachers due to a bloated admin (unions, class division, culture wars still ongoing from the ’70’s)
You see the best thing that could happen is the following: 1. universities stop paying extortion for permits, 2. take all the known poorly performing students from the worst situations and put them in METCO (send them to Lexington and Concord and Wellesley), 3. keep the best kids black, white, asian whatever (and parents who show up to PTO) in the system. Solves the graft, solves the performance problem and keeps the vulnerable kids safe in those beautiful white suburbs (if we really want to be “liberal” about all this). Oh, and there is more than sufficient money to do this-reallocate the Chapter 70 money - it follows the student…you’ll see those cash starved suburbs jumping to be first in line for the money. Oh, and yes higher ed can get back to what it does best which is not educating primary and secondary public school pupils.
Have a nice day!
Oh what does this have to do with liberals, democrats and republicans and conservatives? I’ll leave that to you to ponder and I am sure respond….
3/1/2024 2:15 pm
How long would the bus rides out to Wellesley be for these kids? Serious question.
3/1/2024 5:01 pm
The big and prestigious universities in the Step Up program are not really paying extortion, are they? They have agreed to contribute to improve schools in Boston, but they way they go about it does nothing but help the universities themselves. With one hand they write a fat check to improve schools. With the other they collect the construction permits. While Menino is writing the permits they then take the money they gave him back to fund research projects for their own faculty to do research on Boston kids.
Better than bus the children to Wellesley and Lexington, why not take those checks and send these children to BB&N? How many could receive scholarships with the multimillion transfer-transfer back that currently funds salaries and research budgets of Harvard professors?
3/1/2024 5:10 pm
Two years ago, when it was first announced, the Step Up Initiative sounded like a good idea…
http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/10.05/99-publicschool.html
Does anyone know what it has produced?
3/1/2024 6:43 pm
1:15 pm
serious answer - it is the same for the proposed new METCO students as it is for the current METCO students. amazing, uh?
3/1/2024 6:58 pm
4:01
looks like you are proposing a novel solution. there are some inherent flaws, though. first, harvard would not get credit for paying for boston students to go to bb&n or the like so why would they engage?. and, who will determine which kids get to go and which do not? you think admissions at H is difficult. this could only be a nightmare.
also, the universities are paying to offset the lack of taxes that are due to the city. how does the public benefit if the dollars go to yet another private non taxed entity? who pays for police and fire protection, sanitation etc.?
the kids in METCO could probably qualify for bb&n but have already been turned down. There are more than 60,000 kids in the boston system. can all the private schools within a 20 mile radius absorb that number of a fraction thereof? i think not.
as for other public school systems picking up the burden…why not since most of the tax revenue the commonwealth receives is generated in boston but distributed to the suburbs. (really, it is true)
so, who really cares about these non profit groups that supposedly help students? test scores are down, attendance is horrible, graduation rates are offensive. so why should the universities pay money to these groups?
why not hold the city’s feet to the fire, start hiring some qualified professionals, get rid of the power hungry cfo who has strangled the city and is allowing it to bleed out and just let the private sector and non profit sector do what they are supposed to do?
just my opinion.