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Posted February 11, 2017 17:25:02

The WA Greens say polling shows 33 per cent of Liberal voters will not support the party if it does a preferences deal with One Nation.

The results of the Essential poll of 2,000 people have been revealed as the Liberal Party State Executive considers the issue.

Upper House candidate for North Metropolitan region Alison Xamon said the Greens were putting One Nation last, and so should the Liberals.

"One Nation has no place in this Parliament and the last thing they need is any leg-ups from the Liberal Party," she said.

"They need to be completely rethinking how they're approaching their dealings with One Nation we're not doing any deals with One Nation, and in fact we are putting One Nation last and recommending our voters put One Nation last."

Ms Xamon rejected suggestions Pauline Hanson's party had changed.

"One Nation is as racist as they always were," she said.

"They've always attacked the first Australians, Aboriginal Australians, they've attacked people who have come here from Asia, they're attacking the Jewish community, and now they're attacking people from Islamic backgrounds," she said.

"It's not acceptable, we are a multicultural country, this is something which should be celebrated and cohesion needs to be protected and One Nation has no place here.

"I'll be very, very clear Pauline Hanson does not speak for me."

The Greens used their state election campaign launch to announce their policy on donations reform, claiming wealthy interest groups and vested interests were undermining the political system.

Ms Xamon said the Greens wanted to limit lobbyists' powers and the influence of developers.

"We need to have dramatic reform of our donations laws and that's something that the Greens are going very hard on," she said.

"We want to have a banning of donations particularly from for-profit corporations, mining companies, polluters because we think that that's twisting the policies of government."

Ms Xamon said the Greens would continue to seek reform in other key areas.

"Making sure that we have sustainable cities, looking at renewable energy targets, sustainability around water and housing and transport are really critically important," she said.

"But also making sure that we've got different approaches to law and order, and ensuring that we've got appropriate services for people who are in need, particularly people with mental illness, people with disability, tackling racism.

"We need to really rethink the way we're approaching jobs and training and worker safety."

The Greens currently only have two members in the Legislative Council, and none in the Legislative Assembly.

The party suffered a swing against it in the 2013 election.

Ms Xamon said she was confident the party would improve its position.

"Every single party has its ebbs and flows, and there's no doubt at all certainly since 2013, the Greens vote has continued to climb back up again, we're expecting we're going to have pretty good representation in the West Australian Parliament," she said.

Topics: greens, one-nation, polls, government-and-politics, elections, liberals, wa

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WA election: Greens say One Nation preference deal will lose Liberals votes - ABC Online

Democrats are preparingto try and stop President Trump's agenda at all costs. Senate Democrats have voted more and more in unison against Trump's Cabinet nominees, and now there is even talk of an unprecedented filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee. It's what the party's base is demanding is right now.

But there is a difference between doing what feels good and whatis strategically sound. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said it well this week: "You've got to pick which ones you're going to fight about; not every pitch has to be swung at."

To which some Democrats quickly respond: What about Republicans?

Republicans, they point out, stood firmly against most anything President Obama did for much of his presidency, and while they didn't unseat him in 2012, they won back the House in 2010, the Senate in 2014, and after 2016 they're in as powerful a position as they ever have been. Call it what you want -- "obstruction" or "principled opposition" -- it seems to have worked out quite well for the GOP.

But that's not a sure sign that it will also work for Democrats.

The reason I say that is because polarization in this country favors Republicans more than Democrats, at least when it comes to Congress. Republicans have something of an inherent advantage in both the House and Senate, and polarization helps reinforce those advantages these days.

Why? There are simply more red states and more red districts. Republicans took over the House and Senate in recent years largely because they knocked off some of the final hangers-on among Democrats in conservative-leaning places. It first happened in the South; then it spread to Appalachia and the Midwest.

Thanks to that trend and the fact that Republicans drew friendly House maps in many key states before the 2012 election, a straight-partisan vote for Congress pretty much ensures a Republican majority.

The 2016 election is a good example of this. Trump, as everyone knows, lost the popular vote by two full points, 48-46. But despite that loss, he actually won 230 out of 435 congressional districts, compared to 205 for Hillary Clinton, according to numbers compiled by Daily Kos Elections. And in the Senate, he won 30 out of 50 states.

So basically, 53 percent of House districts are Republican and 60 out of 100senators hail from red states, according to the 2016 election results (in which the GOP, again, lost the popular vote).

The question from there becomes how much -- and how -- Democrats will need to overcome this inherent disadvantage.

The median House district in this country in the 2016 election was Virginia's 2nd district, which went for Trump by 3.4 points.Democrats hold just five districts that went stronger for Trump than that median district -- a reflection of our polarization and how predictably these districts tend to mirror the national vote. So Democrats would need to win just about every district that went for Clinton or narrowly for Trump.

Republicans also have more districts "in the bag," so to speak. Trump won 186 districts by double digits, compared to 171 for Clinton. And he won 211 districts by 5 or more points, compared to just 185 for Clinton.

So Trump won more districtsby at least 5 points than Clinton won overall, and he won more districts by 10 points than Clinton won by at least 5. If we consider every district decided by less than 10 points in 2016 to be a battleground, Democrats need to win more than 60 percent of them to win the House majority back. And if you define the battleground more narrowly as every district decided by 5 points or fewer, Democrats need to win 85 percent of them.

What a lot of people don't realize about the Republicans' big wins in 2010 and 2014 is that they didn't really penetrate a whole lot of Democratic territory. Here's what I wrote when there was some chatter about Democrats re-taking the House last year:

...In the big GOP wave of 2014, Republicans only took over four districts that leaned toward Democrats, according to the Cook Political Voting Index (PVI). Were Democrats to win back the House this year, they would likely have to win a dozen or more seats that clearly lean toward Republicans, just by virtue of how friendly the map is to Republicans (both because of natural partisan sorting and gerrymandering). Republicans have an inherent advantage in holdingthe House that serves as essentially a sand dune beating back whatever wave Democrats can produce.

And that's even more the case in the Senate, where Democrats'path back to the majority in 2018 is difficult, to say the least. Given the states that are holding elections, Democrats will need to reelect every Democratic senator in big Trump states like Indiana Missouri, Montana and North Dakota, while also stealing GOP seats in Arizona, Nevada and a heavily Trump state like Nebraska, Tennessee or Texas. Are they really going to do that if they go against everything Trump does?

What got the GOP over the top in 2010 and 2014 was largely nailing down districts and states that, in a strictly partisan world, would have been theirs in the first place. Being partisan in Congress seems to have helped them accomplish that task.

But for Democrats, being completely partisan and playing to their base without expanding the party's appeal has less upside when it comes to winning House and Senate majorities. That's not to say they can't do it -- just that the strategic roadmap Republicans used doesn't necessarily apply to Democrats.

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Why Democrats can't just obstruct their way back into power - Washington Post

Fear is running high among immigrant communities since President Donald Trump's inauguration -- and after the recent publicized deportation of an undocumented Arizona mother of two after a routine visit with immigration officials, reports have been spreading of Immigration and Customs Enforcement stepping up its actions in the southwestern US.

The actions are the first concerted effort by ICE under the Trump administration to arrest targeted undocumented immigrants for deportation proceedings.

It's unclear at this point in the nascent administration whether it was a sign of things to come, or whether the actions were conducted under any different procedures than could have been in place under the Obama administration. It was the uncertainty, the publicity of the raids and the high tensions raised by public comments on immigration by Trump administration officials that had Democrats asking for more information.

"These reports show the serious consequences of the president's executive order, which allows all undocumented immigrants to be categorized as criminals and requires increased enforcement in communities, rather than prioritizing dangerous criminals," California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said in a statement responding to media reports of the stepped up enforcement, including some accounts that the actions were targeting low-priority undocumented immigrants, including family men and women.

ICE in Los Angeles said Friday it had conducted a five-day operation targeting criminals and fugitives, and said that the vast majority of those arrested had criminal histories.

Seeking to push back on reports of indiscriminate raids, ICE released the results of the operation from its Los Angeles office, saying about 160 foreign nationals were arrested during the week. Of those, 150 had criminal histories, and of the remaining arrests, five had final orders of removal or were previously deported. Ninety-five percent were male, they said.

While specific numbers weren't available, ICE said "many" of the arrested individuals had prior felony convictions including violent charges like child sex crimes, weapons or assault charges.

An ICE official confirmed Atlanta had conducted a similar surge this week, and roughly 200 arrests were made in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina in a similar routine enforcement action. Texas Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro said in a statement that he had confirmed with ICE's San Antonio field office that similar actions were conducted across Texas, calling the action "Operation Cross Check." He said he would be following up to make sure the actions were targeting the worst offenders.

Full numbers for the actions across the country will be made available Monday, the agency said.

A Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman said overall about the agency's actions that everything is "routine," and are not part of casting a widespread net.

"ICE Fugitive Operations teams are out every day as part of routine, targeted enforcement operations," said acting press secretary Gillian Christensen. "These are existing, established fugitive operations teams. ICE does not conduct sweeps or raids that target aliens indiscriminately. ICE only conducts targeted enforcement of criminal aliens and other individuals who are in violation of our nation's immigration laws."

Still, as Trump continues to talk about cracking down on illegal immigration, advocates remain concerned that the new administration could be stepping up enforcement against otherwise peaceful undocumented immigrants.

On Thursday, protests sprang up at the deportation of Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, a 35-year-old mother of two, who had checked in with ICE at an office in Phoenix the day before, as she had regularly since a 2008 conviction of using a fake Social Security number.

Friday, Democrats decried the actions nationwide as needlessly causing fear for immigrant communities.

"The President wants to show off and it appears he has unleashed the Department of Homeland Security to kick-out large numbers of immigrants and anyone they encounter, without much oversight, review or due process," said Illinois Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez. "The goal of such policies is to inject fear into immigrant communities, frighten families and children, and drive immigrants farther underground. It damages public safety and the fabric of American communities while putting a burden on local social services and the foster-care system."

Gutierrez's concerns were echoed by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, a Democrat from California.

"I am outraged to hear of the recent ICE arrests in southern California. If the Trump administration is genuinely concerned about threats to American security, it should prioritize violent felons and others who pose real danger," Roybal-Allard said in a statement. "My office has been working to get detailed information from ICE."

"These activities have caused fear and uncertainty for many of constituents," Correa wrote, and listed 10 questions he wanted answers for from ICE, among "How far in advance were these enforcement activities planned?"

And a city councilman from Austin, Texas, said he was concerned that ICE was making a public show of force in his city as retribution for being a sanctuary city.

"ICE actions like these are beyond reprehensible," Greg Casar said in a statement. "They instill fear in the community, and they make everyday people fear for their lives."

While ICE characterized the actions as routine, fear remains that the Trump administration's recent executive order beefing up interior enforcement of immigration laws could mean a vast expansion of deportations of undocumented immigrants.

While the Obama administration had clear guidance prioritizing deportation of high-level criminals, an executive order signed by Trump in his first week set up enforcement priorities that could include virtually any undocumented immigrant living in the US.

Trump made cracking down on illegal immigration a central focus of his presidential campaign. On Saturday, the President defend another part of his campaign promise on immigration, vowing to keep costs down on a border wall that would span the US southern border with Mexico.

"I am reading that the great border WALL will cost more than the government originally thought, but I have not gotten involved in the ... design or negotiations yet. When I do, just like with the F-35 FighterJet or the Air Force One Program, price will come WAY DOWN!" Trump wrote in two consecutive tweets.

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Democrats, advocates question ICE enforcement raids after hundreds of arrests - CNN

Alabama: Joe L. Reed, 77

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Im wearing a Kuspuk; its a traditional Alaskan jacket that they wear in the wintertime, so we made a summer version. Its held up in the heatits cotton and has this beautiful bric-brac trim. Its gorgeous.

Ironic that youre wearing this jacket when youre from a state thats the most impacted by climate change.

Exactly, I know. Our summers have gotten hotter and hotter every year. Weve gotten less and less snow. A couple weeks ago, Fairbanks, Alaska was hotter than New York City. I dont remember exactly how hot it was, but it was, like, mid-90s.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Theres a lot of excitement this election. Arizona is a battleground state. Its always been leaning red, but its starting to turn around. We have an exciting race where our very own congresswoman Ann KirkpatrickCongressional District 1, from the Navajo nationis running against the highest-ranking Republican in the Senate, John McCain. We are mobilizing throughout Arizona; all of the delegates here are pushing many of our Democratic candidates to win.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Hes not acceptable. Hes not even acceptable to people in his own party. People who find him unacceptable, they should come with us.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

That was very good for Bernie to do, but some of his people . . . I dont know if you saw our delegation, but there are a lot of rows missing. Three rows. Im not supposed to really dwell on that, because they said that the medias going to try to make a big deal of it.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Theyre using this platform to talk about the issues that we just talked about, because there are hundreds of Flints across the country. And if we dont pay attention to these issues in terms of infrastructure, water quality, and environmental injustices, all of these places will experience what Flint is going through.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Im with the NAACP, and Im here as a delegate for Hillary Clinton. One of the strong issues in Mississippi is the Confederate flag, because we feel like it symbolizes hate. Its currently part of the state flag, and we are of the opinion that the flag should be changed, or if its being flown, it should be taken down. I was happy to find that that position was taken here. There was a demonstration to have that flag taken down here in Philadelphia, and it was successful here, and that flag was taken down. Were trying to get the flag down in the state of Mississippi, and were hoping to get that conversation to the national forefront.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

I am very much alarmed, as are all of the Native [American] delegates, and most of the delegates from around the country. [Trumps] use of very racist terminology, especially with his reference to our women, bothers all of us. It bothers me, particularly. And I am going to work hard to defeat this bully, harder than I have ever worked, in any campaign over many years. Interestingly enough, this is my eighth national convention. I have been here every convention since 198835 to 40 nightsand I have never been as moved as what I saw last night, and I have never had more resolve than I have right now about defeating this bully Donald Trump. Indian Country has to take our rightful place in this process, and we have to complement the efforts of the Democratic party, and we have to get the job done.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Shes my wife. Im a superdelegate.

Can I assume that youre a Hillary supporter?

Ive been supporting Hillary since 2008, and Im still supporting her.

Whats it like being married to Jeanne Shaheen?

Well, youre going to have to ask her what its like being married to Bill Shaheen! Im kidding. Weve been married 47 years. Its been great.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

I have worked for the election of every Democratic president since Lyndon B. Johnson. This is my fourth national convention.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

I was very inspired by what Bernie Sanders was talking about, and when I was of age to be a delegate, I was very inspired and decided to run.

Have you decided to support Hillary?

Yes I have. I prefer Bernie, but Im still a democrat at the end of the day, so Ill support whoever the Democratic nominee is.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

They know that. Totally know that. As a matter of fact, Utah is now being looked at as a swing state. And the reason is, its because of Trump. Though a lot more of the Republican people are looking toward the Libertarian candidate, and somevery fewlooking toward Jill Stein. There are a few months before the actual election, in which people are going to analyze, really, who more represents their values. And I think that Hillary, by being more religiousand they are a religious statewill appeal more to the Mormon base.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Do you think Bernies contributions to the race have brought people into the Hillary fold?

Oh absolutely. Hes brought a lot of things up in the issues. We brought em up, and we put a lot of them in the platform. Not all of them, but we got 90 percent, so Im happy.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

Photograph by Justin Bishop.

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Are Democrats Having Their Tea Party Moment? - Vanity Fair

Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Brandon Dillon is not expected to face a significant challenge in his bid for re-election on Saturday, but new activists and current leaders will compete for a series of caucus, congressional district and central committee seats.(Photo: Detroit News file)

Detroit Michigan Democrats are gathering Saturday at the Cobo Center in Detroit, where theyll look to regroup after a series of stinging election losses and choose new officials who will lead the party into the 2018 cycle.

State party chairman Brandon Dillon is not expected to face a significant challenge in his bid for re-election, but new activists and current leaders will compete for a series of caucus, congressional district and central committee seats.

Two separate groups inspired by Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a 2016 presidential candidate and democratic socialist, are hoping to breathe new life into the party by engaging the grassroots. The two organizations are at odds, however, and are promoting separate candidates for various party positions.

Leaders of Michigan for Revolution have blasted "establishment" Democrats and say they want to "revolutionize" the state party. Michigan to Believe in, meanwhile, has worked with labor leaders to deveop a joint "progressive unity slate" of convention candidates.

Just months after President Donald Trump became the first Republican to win Michigan since 1988, Democrats are plotting to return the state to the "blue" column in 2018. Voters next year will pick a new governor, attorney general, secretary of state and decide races for the Michigan Legislature and Congress.

Dillon has spent months traveling Michigan and talking to activists about his plan to refocus on local parties and candidates, retrain local leaders and activists and rebuild the Democratic brand. He's promised to organize and rebuild the party as he and other Democrats "resist" Trump.

East Lansing Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, who was the first high-profile candidate to announce her 2018 campaign for governor, is expected to make the rounds at Saturday's convention, dropping by various caucus meetings to discuss her plans for the state.

U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, who is also considering a run for governor, is expected to speak at the convention and have a large presence at Cobo, where his supporters plan to wear t-shirts declaring the Flint Township Democrat "fits Michigan like a glove.

In Detroit's 13th Congressional District, Chairman Jonathan Kinloch is attempting to hold off a challenge from precinct delegate Theo Broughton, who is backed by former mayoral candidate Tom Barrow.

The race has turned negative in recent weeks, with Barrow accusing Kinloch of trying to bend the rules to allow additional voters at the convention. Kinloch has responded by comparing Barrow to Trump and calling him "Detroit's own alternative facts author."

The convention is exepcted to run through Saturday evening.

joosting@detroitnews.com

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Michigan Democrats plot new course at Cobo - The Detroit News