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Blacks In Detroit Are Doing Well...SMH...The Shit Democrats Say

By: ancel1961

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Blacks In Detroit Are Doing Well...SMH...The Shit Democrats Say - Video

Facing an uphill climb to regain a two-house supermajority in November, legislative leaders say that they have asked Gov. Jerry Brown to stump for fellow Democrats in a half-dozen competitive districts.

It's the sort of thing governors typically do as their party's state leader. And a two-thirds Democratic majority would help Brown pursue his agenda, because no Republican support would be needed for any of his proposals.

But Brown, who is expected to win his own race handily and has not mounted a time-consuming campaign of his own, has not committed to any appearances.

The governor "will be as helpful as his busy schedule allows," said Dan Newman, his campaign spokesman.

Incoming Senate leader Kevin de Len (D-Los Angeles), heading the election effort for Democrats in the upper house, said he is "actively pursuing the governor to make appearances."

"He is a very popular governor, and he's the top Democrat in the state," the senator said.

One legislative source who is privy to the discussions but not authorized to speak publicly said lawmakers are "in negotiations" with Brown's representatives over what role the governor might play.

Even with the governor's help, Democrats say, it could be tough to secure a supermajority in both houses. Voter turnout typically falls when there is no presidential contest, and there is no galvanizing statewide race or ballot measure this year to spur people to the polls.

In the June primary, a record low 25.2% of state voters cast ballots, and Democrats blamed that low turnout for Republican wins in three Senate districts where Democrats lead in registration. Historically, higher percentages of Republicans typically vote in low-turnout elections, so their influence could be increased.

"This electoral cycle is going to be the most challenging in more than a decade, so we absolutely have our work cut out for us," De Len said.

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An easy favorite, Gov. Brown is slow to aid fellow Democrats

GOPs Abbott, Democrats Davis to face off in debate
For the first time since 1998, the Republican and Democratic nominees for Texas governor will debate their positions in a South Texas setting.

By: kxan

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GOPs Abbott, Democrats Davis to face off in debate - Video

One idea gaining currency among psychologists and political scientists is that Democrats and Republicans are politically polarized because they are fundamentally different. As one science journalist concluded after reviewing the literature: "A large body of political scientists and political psychologists now concur that liberals and conservatives disagree about politics in part because they are different people at the level of personality, psychology and even traits like physiology and genetics."

Americans are certainly polarized. According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, 36% of Republicans and 27% of Democrats see the opposing party as a threat to the nation's well-being. But are differences in biology and personality really responsible for political polarization? Perhaps in part. Liberals and conservatives obviously have different ideologies, and research indicates that these ideological differences are correlated with differences in biology and personality.

Research published in Current Biology, for example, found that conservatism was associated with increased gray matter in the right amygdala, whereas liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex. Other research has found personality differences such that conservatives have a greater need for order, structure and authority than liberals.

But despite the intuitive appeal of such conclusions, explaining political polarization with differences in biology and personality overlooks a crucial fact: A big part of the reason Democrats and Republicans are at loggerheads is that they are so similar.

When Democrats and Republicans in Congress can't pass legislation whether on gun control, immigration or climate change it is often because both sides have dug in with a similar obstinacy. They both think about political information in a partisan, biased manner.

Consider the "party-over-policy" effect, illustrated by Republicans when it came to the Affordable Care Act. The law's basic tenets including the idea of an individual mandate grew out of Republican proposals. But once Democrats got on board, Republicans turned against it, even asserting that the individual mandate was unconstitutional.

The psychological pull to support one's own party and oppose the other is true of both the left and the right. Geoff Cohen of Stanford University conducted experiments on welfare policy in which subjects felt very differently about proposals depending on which party they were told supported them. "If their party endorsed it," the study found, "liberals supported even a harsh welfare program, and conservatives supported even a lavish one." Note the symmetry: Liberal participants were no more likely than conservatives to base their judgments upon the actual content of the policy. Ezra Klein called this kind of party-over-policy thinking the "depressing psychological theory that explains Washington."

It might seem, therefore, that political differences could be minimized if people could somehow be encouraged to consider policies and evidence in their own right. But this turns out to be not so easy to achieve.

In a recent series of studies on "solution aversion," Troy Campbell and Aaron Kay of Duke University found that people's evaluation of scientific evidence was very different depending on whether they saw the policy implications of the science as politically desirable.

Republicans and Democrats read a statement asserting that global temperatures will rise 3.2 degrees in the 21st century. They were then asked to evaluate a proposed policy solution to address the warming. When the policy solution emphasized government regulation (e.g., a tax on carbon admissions), only 22% of Republicans said they believed the temperature projection was accurate. But when the proposed policy solution emphasized the free market, 55% of Republicans accepted the basic science. Liberals exhibited a mirror-image bias when presented with information about crime risk. If a proposed solution threatened liberal ideology, they were more likely to question whether the risk was as severe as described.

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Similarities between Democrats, Republicans make them so different

TIME Politics 2014 Election Senate Democrats Leading TV Ad Blitz As Election Approaches The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee aired more TV ads in key Senate races last week than any other group

This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ruled the TV airwaves last week, even trumping the conservative super PACs and Koch brothers-backed nonprofits theyve accused of trying to buy elections.

The DSCCan official arm of the Democratic Partyaired about 3,800 ads in U.S. Senate races across eight states, according to a new Center for Public Integrity analysis of preliminary estimates provided by Kantar Media/CMAG, an advertising tracking service.

That was more than double the number of ads run by its GOP counterpart, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, from Tuesday, Sept. 16, through Monday, Sept. 22.

Such dominance isnt shocking against the backdrop of Senate Republicans fundraising hiccups: the NRSC ended August with about $5 million less in the bank than the DSCC, according to the groups most recent campaign finance filings

Its critical that the DSCC use our sizable fundraising advantage over the NRSC to help bridge the gap and stop the Kochs from buying the U.S. Senate, said DSCC spokesman Justin Barasky, referring to the conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch whose political network has also been a major player in competitive Senate races.

NRSC spokeswoman Brook Hougesen did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but numerous recent fundraising pleas from the group have bemoaned the Democrats financial advantage.

The midterm environment is toxic for Democrats, yet theres a chance Republicans may not take the Senate, wrote GOP strategist Karl Rove in a fundraising message for the NRSC on Wednesday. Why? The Democrats have a huge money advantage.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., struck a similar tone in a separate recent email: If we are unable to close the fundraising gap, Republicans risk being outspent 3-to-1, 5-to-1, even 6-to-1 in several key battleground races.

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Senate Democrats Leading TV Ad Blitz As Election Approaches