If Democratic Party leaders aren’t re-watching last week’s debate in Houston, they should. If they have watched it and aren’t freaking out over what they see, it’s fair to ask whether they actually want Donald Trump to win a second term. That session was a debacle for the party and the field: Nearly three tortuous hours of tails wagging dogs, petty sniping, and a lack of vision all the Lasik surgery in the world couldn’t cure.
With unconscious biases driving our perceptions, and political rhetoric and a flood on information fueling our animosity, the level of societal incivility continues to heighten. Here are some ways to break the cycle.
The U.S. Presidential election is more than one year away, yet campaigning is well underway. And while election season once signified a ramping up of vitriolic rhetoric aimed at opponents and the other political party, the American public is now exposed to a constant stream of hateful diatribes, mostly thanks to President Trump’s tweets.
The system is rigged against voters at every institutional level, but the reform movement is building momentum going into 2020 and beyond.
NANR's Executive Director interviews two guests this month. First up, John Opdycke, President of Open Primaries, activist and strategist with more than 25 years of experience working in independent, alternative and reform politics. John discusses how the election reform movement is growing and some of its challenges, "politics as usual," and the ongoing efforts of Open Primaries in Florida, Pennsylvania, Arizona and more.
Instead of trying to manipulate voters into thinking something they clearly don’t think is true -- that Donald Trump is too conservative -- Democrats would do better to advance a candidate that’s not too liberal.
A recent L.A. Times Op Ed tucked under the Times’ Politics vertical suggests that an L.A. Times poll indicates that, “Democrats are missing an opportunity to brand Trump as too conservative.”
Why’s that, according to David Lautner, the Times’ Washington Bureau Chief?
4 state Republican Parties have cancelled their primaries and caucuses altogether while other states are making it more difficult for GOP challengers.
Four state Republican Parties -- Arizona, Kansas, Nevada, and South Carolina -- have decided to cancel their presidential primary or caucus for the 2020 election, denying even their own members a choice in the 2020 race.
It is not uncommon for a party to cancel primaries when they have a sitting president running unopposed. Most of the time the incumbent is effectively not challenged.
In a first-of-its-kind poll, FairVote partnered with YouGov to showcase the benefits of ranked choice voting to determine the true preferences of Democratic voters in a crowded 2020 field.