Ted Rall, an author and editorial cartoonist, has this opinion piece defending political parties and partisanship, and criticizing top-two systems. Some of his points have support in the political science research conducted by Samara Klar and Yanna Krupnikov, set forth in their 2016 book, “Independent Politics.” They find that most people who say they are independent voters are really strongly committed to either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, but they sense that nowadays, identifying oneself as a partisan is socially disadvantgeous, so they say they are independents. Thanks to several people for the link to the Rall column.
Hmmm.
NOT *politically correct* (ie NOT SAFE) to indicate one is connected with communist Donkeys or fascist Elephants ???
Just more on the long road to Civil WAR II ???
See Germany 1929-1933.
See Spain 1931-1939.
1950s deja vu —
Are you now or have you ever been a member of or connected with the XYZ Party ???
It is a false narrative that Democrats had a clear plurality of voters in 2012 in CA-31. The two Republican candidates received a majority of the vote in the primary. In 2014, the Democratic candidate barely won election.
It is interesting that he uses the pejorative “jungle primary” as if he were a totalitarian seeking “order”.
The 31st US House district was such a Democratic district that it only gave 41% of its vote to Mitt Romney in November 2012, and only 41% of its vote to the Republican running for US Senate in that election. Furthermore, in 2014, the district’s Republican Congressman, Gary Miller, didn’t even try to run for re-election. He knew his win in 2012 was a fluke.
California Republicans always have a higher turnout rate in primaries than any other group. I read that on June 5, 2018, Republicans running for US House received more votes in California than Democrats running for US House. But that doesn’t mean the November 2018 vote will be similar. I don’t want to do a similar calculation myself until all the votes have been counted, but it certainly is surprising if that is true.
Miller had served in Congress for 16 years, and he wanted to be able to raise his grandchildren, who had abducted by his former daughter-in-law and taken to Mexico.
Pete Aguilar only received 51.7% of the vote in 2014. That was less than the four Democrats received in the 2014 primary.
Aguilar was the only Democratic incumbent congressman to not receive a majority in the 2018 primary.
I’ll disagree with Rall on the observation that the people want sharply defined parties where reaching accross the isle is treason. But that’s a side observation that is irrelevent to the main points of the article.
Everything else is spot on.
I’ll also say that I hate to find myself agreeing with Ted Rall . The man’s an asshole. But that too, is off the point.