Delaware Dem

Your Primary Day Experience

Claire Snyder-Hall and the rest of the team at Common Cause Delaware want to hear your story if you had any difficulty voting at your polling place. I know that Nemski was asked for his ID before voting, and there is always some confusion regarding that procedure. It turns out that, while you are not required to show ID in Delaware, poll workers will ask for it, and if you do not have an ID or are unwilling to show it, you will be required to fill out a form before you can vote. I presume that this form has you swear under penalties of perjury that you are who you say you are.

Anyway, if you had a problem with your registration or your polling place, let Claire and Common Clause know.

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Townsend gets endorsements from Bentz, Jaques and Sokola

Three Newark-Area state lawmakers have endorsed their fellow colleague, State Senator Bryan Townsend, this morning. These endorsements come on top of earlier endorsements by Sen. Karen Peterson, Sen. Nicole Poore, Rep. Ed Osienski, and Rep. Paul Baumbach.

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Thursday Open Thread [4.28.16]

Josh Marshall on Clinton v. Trump:

These two candidates aren’t just appealing to different demographics or voting coalitions. They’re operating in what almost amounts to two different political universes. In linguistic terms it is almost like two mutually unintelligible languages. I guarantee you that everyone who has voted for Trump in any primary so far loved those remarks. They hate Hillary. They hate ‘political correctness’. More than anything else they love provocation itself. But this kind of talk, while a single instance itself, reminds us that Trump has already all but disqualified himself with huge swaths of the electorate. It’s like a long fingernail drag over the chalkboard for a significant majority of voters. Trump has a 70%+ disapproval rating among women; roughly 80% disapproval among Hispanics; and the list goes on and on. At the moment he’s even doing fairly poorly among whites! But we should expect those numbers to rise significantly as Republican partisans unify around Trump.

Meanwhile Clinton is talking about opportunity, inclusion across racial groups and the gender divide. It is a message framed around inclusion for rising groups, young people and incremental improvements in the safety net and wages for those just hanging on in the 21st century economy. It really amounts to a simple continuity message with the Obama presidency. What he did. My point isn’t to pump this agenda. This is an ideologically agnostic point. It is to point out how it is virtually incomprehensible in the Trump universe. Gibberish or nonsense in a worldview based on reclaiming things your supporters believe were or are being taken away from them by others, and a powerful leader reclaiming what you lost from domestic newcomers and foreign adversaries. They’re just categorically different, not just in policy terms, but in language, manner of acting in public, concept of leadership. Everything. They’re mutually incomprehensible, seemingly indifferent to what folks on the other side of the divide even think.

Think about it this way. Can you imagine Trump and Clinton actually debating or discussing a specific issue? Let alone engaging in a formal debate?

What worries Republicans profoundly and has Democrats what I would call cautiously ecstatic is that if both candidates are doubling down on these portions of the population – Clinton’s chunk looks significantly larger than Trump’s. The biggest driver in November may turn out to be gender. But seen through a racial prism, which seems more likely: that Trump will significantly drive up the white vote or that Clinton will significantly drive up the minority vote? Trump seems dramatically less popular with Hispanic voters than Romney and it is difficult to see him making up much of that ground. Remember too that there are fewer white voters in 2016 than there were in 2012.

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Wednesday Open Thread [4.27.16]

Hillary Clinton reached out to Bernie Sanders in her Philadelphia victory speech tonight in an effort to begin to bridge the gap between their two campaigns.

“And I applaud Senator Sanders for challenging us to get unaccountable money out of our politics, and giving greater emphasis to closing the gap of inequality and I know together we will get that done,” she promised. “Whether you support Senator Sanders or you support me, there’s much more that unites us than divides us,” she added. Clinton then outlined some of those issues where we are united. “We all agree that wages are too low and inequality is too high. That Wall Street can never again be allowed to threaten Main Street. And we should expand Social Security, not cut or privatize it.”

Bernie Sanders, for his part, was also conciliatory and realistic as to the goals of his campaign going forward. From a statement released to the press last night:

“I congratulate Secretary Clinton on her victories tonight, and I look forward to issue-oriented campaigns in the 14 contests to come. […]

“The people in every state in this country should have the right to determine who they want as president and what the agenda of the Democratic Party should be. That’s why we are in this race until the last vote is cast. That is why this campaign is going to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia with as many delegates as possible to fight for a progressive party platform that calls for a $15 an hour minimum wage, an end to our disastrous trade policies, a Medicare-for-all health care system, breaking up Wall Street financial institutions, ending fracking in our country, making public colleges and universities tuition free and passing a carbon tax so we can effectively address the planetary crisis of climate change.”

I am fine with all that. Fight for the Platform. I really have never viewed the Sanders presidential campaign as a campaign to elect Bernie Sanders President. Rather, it really was a campaign to keep the Democratic Party in the progressive column. Indeed, Hillary and Bernie might make a good team going forward. No, not as a ticket. That is a demotion for Sanders to be her VP. No, Bernie can use his position in the Senate to advance the progressive agenda while working with Hillary Clinton on issues where they agree with each other and can get things done. Bernie will keep the party anchored to the left.

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Tuesday Open Thread [4.26.16]

So the polls are open. If you read this page, you better vote. Use this thread to talk about your polling experience, and if you are a poll worker, we would love to hear your stories about turnout and other campaign stories that are going on at your precinct. I voted first thing, the 5th voter in line at my polling place.

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Monday Open Thread [4.25.16]

Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. John Kasich “have agreed to coordinate in future primary contests in a last-ditch effort to deny Donald J. Trump the Republican presidential nomination, with each candidate standing aside in certain states amid growing concerns that Mr. Trump cannot otherwise be stopped,” the New York Times reports.

“In a statement late Sunday night, Mr. Cruz’s campaign manager, Jeff Roe, said that the campaign would ‘focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for Governor Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico.’ Minutes after Mr. Roe’s statement, the Kasich campaign put out a similar message.”

Trump responded on Twitter: “Lyin’ Ted and Kasich are mathematically dead and totally desperate. Their donors & special interest groups are not happy with them. Sad!”

This may be the case of too little too late, but maybe, just maybe, if the deal extends to California and New Jersey, with Cruz concentrating on Cali and Kasich NJ, then maybe it might prevent Trump from gettting to 1237.

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