Mediaboss Marketing

This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for May 11, 2023.

The Democrats have started the race for Washington's next governor.

Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz has officially announced that she is running. Technically, Attorney General Bob Ferguson has only announced an exploratory campaign, but we all know where that is headed. He was ready to run for governor in 2019 before Inslee went for a third term. And it's not like his exploratory team is going to come back with polls showing voters suddenly don't like chess players. So we have two prominent Washington state Democrats aiming for the governor's office. This boils down to folks inevitably calling Ferguson "Fergy" in conversation, and me increasing the number of times I have to copy edit the extra "l" out of "Hilary" in future coverage of Franz.

We've already covered Ferguson's run. Franz's announcement this week follows a similar formula local and personal, family history, with adequate bragging about accomplishments. She's leaning heavily into environmental issues, as well as local cost-of-living woes.

"While our planet changes, our laws don't keep up. On climate and across the board, we are paying the price. Wages are slow to rise. Housing is through the roof. Child care is out of reach. This is the harsh reality for too many in our state," Franz says in her first campaign video.

There is still plenty of time for more Democrats to enter the mix, which is likely. But with these two prominent gubernatorial candidates, Democrats will have to consider whether they prefer someone who does well in a tie, or a candidate who does well in a cowboy hat. She's a little bit country, and he's a little bit, well, Ferguson is more like Devo I suppose. So that metaphor doesn't exactly work, but you get the idea.

By the way, while we're on the subject, what's the deal with the word "gubernatorial?" Read more about that below.

The recent news means that the Democrats are so far dominating the conversation around Washington's next governor. What about the Republicans? I've previously covered the GOP angle in all this. In short, Republicans have a positive outlook toward 2024. So far, however, no prominent Republicans have indicated they will consider a gubernatorial campaign. Yes, there is Semi Bird, who announced his run way back in November 2022. Still, there is not a lot of chatter on that end of the spectrum. There was talk about potential for Republican Pierce County Executive Bruce Dammeier, but he has indicated that he's not interested.

Former Washington Congressmember Jaime Herrera Beutler is another GOP name that has been tossed around. KUOW's David Hyde recently caught up with her in Leavenworth. She said that she hasn't "closed any doors" when it comes to a potential gubernatorial race, but also hasn't made any decisions around it.

Washington's current Gov. Jay Inslee is still on the job and recently cancelled the Covid-19 vaccine requirement for state employees. As TSF covered earlier this week, even more pandemic-era measures are falling away. Starting today, the state's vaccine requirement for employees to stay in their jobs is nixed, meaning a population of folks no longer have to find religion to stay at work.

With the recent move, Washington aligns with the federal government, which also just dropped its own vaccine requirement. State employees who were fired or resigned over the vaccine rule will now be welcome to reapply. Also, employees could get $1,000 if they opt to stay up-to-date on their Covid shots. Read more here.

KinectAir CEO Jonathan Evans disembarks from a Pilatus PC-12 aircraft in Kalispell after joining a customer's flight from Vancouver, Washington. For a few years now, aviation enthusiasts have teased the idea of a Jetsons-style future in which small electric aircraft whisk us to work or across the state and region. That future is not here yet, though a handful of companies, including one based in the Pacific Northwest, are trying to get a head start on the future of flying using conventional planes. (Northwest News Network)

As more and more headlines emerge for the 2024 Washington gubernatorial race, we're going to see that word a lot more "gubernatorial." What the heck is a "gubernatorial," and why can't I get away with making jokes around this word and all the goobers in politics? I mean, other than the fact that it's mean and unprofessional.

Think about it. "President" converts to "presidential." "Congress" converts to "congressional." And then we have "governor" and "gubernatorial."

According to some previous public radio reporting, "governor" enters English in the 14th century. We got it from the French. But in the 16th century, when everybody was falling in love with classic Latin again, "gubernator" enters the language. Both mean the same thing an official who governs. The popularity of the Latin version was short-lived, which is sad, because Arnold Schwarzenegger was a governor, and we could have called him "The Gubernator." Such a missed opportunity. The adjective, "gubernatorial," however, has survived to this day. "Gubernatorial" and "governor" reflect the same meaning, and exist alongside each other in modern American English.

Here's what to expect in the U.S. as Title 42 ends for asylum-seekers

As Title 42 is set to expire Thursday, security officials are bracing for what could be an unprecedented influx of migrants seeking asylum along the southern border. The Covid-era public health measure allowed for the quick expulsion of migrants at the border and nearly halted the processing of asylum applications for more than three years. Once Title 42 is lifted, the tens of thousands of people who have been waiting in Mexico after fleeing from violence, poverty and political instability will be subject to decades-old immigration protocols known as Title 8.

SUBSCRIBE TO TODAY SO FAR

Read more:
The Democrats have started the race for Washington governor ... - KUOW News and Information

One of the intriguing stories of our time is the hostility, often hatred, between the political left and the right. The two have seemingly grown ever farther apart. Few politicians can manage to be moderates anymore. In the 1960s USA, there were liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats, but those have mostly gone. Eli Finkels recent and excellent paper shows that over the past half-century, peoples love for their own political party has remained about the samewhile their hatred for the other political party has steadily increased. Unlike in the past, out-party hate is now a stronger political motive than in-party love. Republicans are more united in their hatred for Democrats than in their love for each other, and vice versa.

Brad Bushman and I decided to try to understand why things are going badly. Brad is a liberal, and Roy is apolitical and indeed has not voted in any election this century. We started by facing that American elections are generally pretty evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. Instead of thinking that one is always right and the other always wrong, perhaps the optimal outcome for a modern democracy is an ongoing alternation in power between the left and the right. Nearly all the most successful countries in the world see frequent alternation in power between center-left and center-right parties.[1] Could it be that societal success requires a contribution from both, so alternating or sharing power produces the best results?

Lets look for a broader context in which to consider this issue. In recent years, the foundation of my thinking has been that the human mind was created by nature for culture (Baumeister, 2005). Every species has to solve the problems of how to continue lifeor else go extinct. That includes surviving longer and reproducing more. Humankind solves this in a very unusual way, namely by using culture to organize social life. It has been extraordinarily successful, given that the worldwide human population continues to increase even while most other mammals are seeing their populations decline.

How exactly does culture improve survival and reproduction? Culture is a giant system of cooperation in which people work together to produce more resources. To be successful and continue to increase population, a particular society must do two basic things: It must amass resources and distribute them through the group.

Now leap ahead from prehistory to the modern world. Cultural societies continue to accomplish both of those jobs, but they grow apart. The political right focuses on amassing resources. The left focuses on redistributing them. As societies evolve, those two jobs start to find conflicting implications.

Think about who votes conservative (Republican, in the U.S.). Farmers have always leaned toward conservatism. Businesspersons, especially managers, and executives. Merchants. Bankers. The military.

These peoples lives are all about amassing resources: creating them and storing them. The American military is about protecting them. And in world history, military forces were also important ways of acquiring resources (by conquering ones neighbors and extracting their wealth). (Also called looting, tribute, etc.)

In contrast, the modern left focuses on redistribution. It began with the labor movement, which pushed to redistribute profits from owners to workers. The supreme achievement of the political left is the welfare state, which redistributes resources as needed to take care of people from cradle to grave. Affirmative action redistributes opportunities. Taxing the rich to help the poor has been an enduring theme of the political left. The left also gets votes from people who rely on redistributing resources produced by others, such as schoolteachers and universities, single mothers, poor people, minorities, and government workers. Without the political left, a few people can hog all the resources while others live in misery and penury. The population might actually decrease, a biological sign of failure. But the political left pushes to spread the wealth and let more people live happy, fecund lives.

In short, the left focuses on redistributing and sharing resources. The right focuses on producing and conserving them. A thriving society needs both of these jobs to get done. And I think thats one reason that, again, most of the worlds most successful societies have seen ongoing alternation of power between center-left and center-right. That alternation ensures that both jobs get done.

Why cant they just appreciate each other? In the modern world, the two jobs have gradually become at odds. The ideal for the left is equal sharing: Societys resources should be equally available to everyone. The ideal for the right is more complicated. In recent human history, the best system for amassing maximal resources seems to rely on a competitive economic marketplace that works by incentives. But incentives create inequalityby definition! Inequality is the very purpose of incentives.

To amass more resources, rightists advocate a system that rewards innovations and improvements and thereby increases inequality, which clashes with the leftists pursuit of equality. This is pretty much how things go. When far-leftist governments take power, at first, happiness is widespread because the societys wealth is redistributed to the lower quintiles, making their lives better. But wealth is no longer amassed, given that the lefts specialty is redistribution. The recent history of Venezuela is sad but compelling example of this. Zimbabwe too.

But letting the political rightists run things soon creates problems too. Unregulated marketplaces give rise to environmental degradation, exploitation, and other problems.

If the left and right could begin to see that the other side also serves an essential function in society, they could agree to disagreebut perhaps respectfully. Hatred and demonization may be well suited to short-term vote-getting and also well suited to social media, but in the long run, I think they do considerable damage to the social fabric.

To thrive, a society needs both to amass and to redistribute resources.

See the original post here:
Why Do Republicans and Democrats Hate Each Other? - Psychology Today

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribunes daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

Working after midnight Wednesday, Texas House Republicans revived key parts of a bill to create a new state border policing unit, upending Democrats daylong efforts to sink it ahead of an important bill-passing deadline.

Democrats initially brought down House Bill 20 by state Rep. Matt Schaefer, R-Tyler, on a technicality late Tuesday night, leaving it out of reach of a House deadline to receive initial approval by midnight Thursday because the House had already set its Thursday calendar earlier in the night.

But Republicans gave the policing unit new life less than three hours later, taking language from HB 20 and attaching it as an amendment to a separate immigration-related measure, House Bill 7. The amendment was adopted 90-51.

That borrowed language would create the Border Protection Unit, which is meant to use nondeadly force to deter people from crossing the Mexican border, with its officers able to arrest, apprehend or detain persons crossing the Texas-Mexico border unlawfully in border-region counties.

Members of the policing unit would not have to be law officers.

The creation of such a unit will likely test the states limits on immigration enforcement, which has traditionally fallen under the federal governments purview.

Opponents of the policing unit said it would allow untrained vigilantes to go after anyone they perceived to be a migrant.

Rep. Victoria Neave Criado, D-Dallas, said the unit would expose Texans of color to racial profiling.

What is to prohibit or stop a Border Protection Unit from setting up their post in Hispanic neighborhoods? said Rep. Erin Gmez, D-Brownsville, who said her largely Hispanic community would be at particular risk of racial profiling because of its proximity to the border.

Schaefer pitched his bill as a way to help Texas better control the crossing of migrants and combat dangerous drugs at the Mexican border.

The serious nature of the fentanyl crisis cannot be overstated, Schaefer said while introducing the bill Tuesday night.

Democrats had placed themselves in position to sink HB 20 by delaying action on multiple bills throughout the day a practice known as chubbing that is used to avoid controversial topics near the end of legislative deadlines.

Democrats celebrated the bills demise and promised to be vigilant for attempts to revive the policing unit, but their efforts to challenge the amendment to HB 7 on technicalities were rejected by the House parliamentarian.

Neave Criado said the legislation would have devastated law enforcements relationships with communities all over the state.

This bill was not just about the border or migrants, it was a statewide bill that would have been devastating whether you are new Texans or your family has been here for generations, said Neave Criado, who leads the Mexican American Legislative Caucus. It would have emboldened civilian vigilantes to be able to set up checkpoints in our cities.

Tickets are on sale now for the 2023 Texas Tribune Festival, happening in downtown Austin on Sept. 21-23. Get your TribFest tickets by May 31 and save big!

See original here:
Thwarting Democrats, House Republicans revive border policing unit - The Texas Tribune

Democrats know that Republican attacks on abortion rights will be central to their efforts to reelect Joe Biden and regain full control of Congress in 2024.

And for good reason Democrats won competitive midterm races last fall while running on protecting reproductive freedom. Last month, in another high-stakes election in Wisconsin, the judicial candidate who staunchly supported abortion rights beat her anti-abortion opponent by 11 points.

Polls conducted over the last few months indicate that abortion remains top of mind for voters, who seem to have grown even more supportive of abortion rights than they were before the Dobbs v. Jackson decision overturned the constitutional right to an abortion last June.

I dont think Democrats have fully processed that this country is now 10 to 15 percent more pro-choice than it was before Dobbs in state after state and national data, pollster Celinda Lake said recently.

But there is one worrying sign for Democrats in the polling data. Over the past two weeks, for example, two new national polls and data from three focus groups conducted in swing states (Ohio, North Carolina, and Michigan) indicated that significant numbers of independent voters remain confused and skeptical about where Republicans and Democrats stand on protecting abortion rights. The upside for Democrats is they may have substantial room to grow with these voters.

One survey, conducted in mid-April by Marist Poll in partnership with NPR and PBS NewsHour, found 38 percent of independent voters think neither Democrats nor Republicans handle the abortion issue well, compared to just 10 percent of Democratic voters and 21 percent of Republican voters who felt the same. And when the progressive polling group Navigator asked voters in April what they thought came closest to the Democratic Partys position on abortion, 34 percent of independents said they didnt know enough to say, compared to just 9 percent of Democrats and 11 percent of Republicans.

These gaps are significant, as most US adults self-identify as independent voters 41 percent, according to Gallup, compared to 28 percent of adults who ID as Republican and 28 percent as Democrat. Since 2009, independent identification has grown and reached levels not seen before, Gallup reported this year.

The surveys come as some abortion rights activists continue to raise frustrations with the president for what they see as his lackluster support for keeping abortion legal. While the Biden administration has done much to defend abortion rights since the Supreme Court issued its ruling last summer, the president himself has struggled to talk about abortion, relying largely on surrogates and euphemisms like protect womens health care and a womans right to choose. In Bidens recently released reelection launch video, he did not say abortion himself though a woman was featured holding an abortion is healthcare protest sign. In February, Biden used the word abortion explicitly for the first time in a State of the Union address, though many activists were still upset he devoted just four sentences to the topic, and almost an hour into his speech. It was, to be blunt, offensive, feminist writer Jessica Valenti said after.

The Biden administration did not return a request for comment.

Bryan Bennett, a pollster with Navigator, said independents broadly report pro-choice attitudes, so the two new surveys suggest Biden and Democrats have a real opportunity to talk more and crystallize where they stand on abortion.

Bennett noted that among independent women, the gaps were even higher, with 43 percent in their latest survey saying they werent sure what Democrats position on abortion was. Focusing on that, and trying to reach that 34 percent of independents who dont have a position, represents a real chance to drive that [pro-abortion rights] advantage, he said.

A majority of independent voters back abortion rights, though public opinion research indicates there may be some notable differences between their views and those of self-identified Democrats. For example, while a post-Dobbs Navigator survey found 84 percent of Democrats identified as pro-choice, the pollsters found just 54 percent of independents did. Thirty percent of independents in the same survey identified as pro-life, compared to 11 percent of Democrats.

Heading into the 2022 midterms, pollsters found abortion rights to be a significantly motivating issue for independent voters, though again less motivating than for Democrats. A quarter of independents told Navigator the Dobbs decision made them much more motivated to vote in November, compared to 56 percent of Democrats. And 41 percent of independents told KFF the decision made them more motivated to vote, compared to 64 percent of Democrats. A Wall Street Journal poll found 9 percent of independents ranked the Supreme Court ruling as the top issue among five choices motivating them to vote, compared with 77 percent of Democrats.

In days immediately following the midterms, NARAL Pro-Choice America led exit surveys of voters in battleground states and found that while Democrats ranked abortion a top priority for Congress and the White House, independents did not.

Still, independents definitely reported broad pro-choice attitudes in NARALs exit survey, with 54 percent saying theyd be less likely to support Republicans if they tried to pass more abortion bans, and 74 percent of independents said women and their doctors should make decisions about abortion, not politicians.

When asked about the Marist/NPR survey finding high levels of distrust among independents for both Democrats and Republicans, Angela Vasquez-Giroux, NARALs vice president of research, noted that many voters support abortion access because they distrust politicians generally. Voters dont want politicians involved in their personal freedoms and personal medical decisions, she told Vox.

In late April, Navigator hosted three focus groups with women voters to learn more about how abortion issues continue to motivate Americans politically. The participants in Ohio and North Carolina were suburban women who identified as either weak Democrats, independents, or weak Republicans; the participants in Michigan were women of color who identified as either strong Democrats, weak Democrats, or independents.

Each group had between seven and nine participants, and all had previously stated they either support the right to abortion or do not believe the government should prevent access to abortion even if they are personally against it. While these are tiny samples, researchers say the qualitative data from a focus group helps clarify voter beliefs and signals questions to more rigorously study in the future.

Vox reviewed video footage and transcripts from the three focus groups and found in each some women who support abortion rights had significant trouble identifying Democrats and Republicans stances on abortion.

I think Democrats are pro-life and Republicans are against it, said one participant in Ohio, when asked what Democrats and Republicans believe on abortion.

In Michigan, a woman was asked how the two parties differ on abortion and how she would describe each partys position.

Im not sure, the woman answered. I really havent basically heard anything about which party is leaning toward it and which one isnt. When the focus group moderator pressed her to guess, she answered: If I had to guess, I would say Democrat would probably be against it and Republican probably would be for it.

In North Carolina, a participant said she wasnt sure where the parties stand on abortion and had been surprised Roe v. Wade was overturned under a Democrat.

Okay, but did Joe Biden have a say in whether or not it was overturned? the focus group moderator asked.

No, but he helped get the Supreme judges where they are. The moderator then informed the woman that the most recent judges came in under Donald Trump.

Confusion among independents has been reflected in some other polling data. For example, in a survey conducted in the two weeks after Dobbs, 23 percent of independents said they dont know if abortion rights were at risk in their state, compared to just 5 percent of Democrats who said the same. Likewise, while a majority of independents said in the same survey they would support a nationwide law that protects the right of a woman to have an abortion, 18 percent of independents said they werent sure either way, suggesting there might be more need to clarify for voters what that means.

One Democratic pollster, speaking on background, said the data about independents was great to have and provides actionable information for campaigns ahead of 2024.

Other leaders have been more hesitant to suggest Democrats could benefit from new tactics to target pro-choice independents saying the recent election results in Democrats favor speak for themselves.

Time and time again, whether it was the 2022 midterms, ballot initiatives, or special elections in Virginia and Wisconsin, voters continue to prove that they will support the candidate who will protect their reproductive freedom, said Jenny Lawson, the vice president of organizing and electoral campaigns at Planned Parenthood Action Fund. The data is clear and we have the receipts: Anti-abortion politicians are on the losing side of the issue.

Vasquez-Giroux of NARAL also defended Bidens rhetoric. I think the president is doing a pretty good job of being clear about where he stands, and [regarding] the reelection video taking one example out is not fully representative, she said. And you do have [Vice President] Kamala Harris out on the road talking about abortion. It should be clear where the administration stands.

See original here:
Can Democrats convince independent voters theyll protect abortion rights? - Vox.com

When he ran for president a second time in 1968 on the American Independent Party ticket, Alabama Gov. George Wallace said, Theres not a dimes worth of difference between the Democrat and Republican parties.

Granted that Wallace, who had been a Democrat, was attempting to attract votes for that nascent party, but his statement may have found new life in Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, a former Democrat and now an independent.

Appearing last Sunday on Face the Nation, Sinema referenced the final speech her predecessor, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., gave on the Senate floor in 2018 in which he lamented the partisanship that has overtaken Congress: he said that folks were more interested in ensuring that the other party lost or prevented the other party from getting a win. And then they were no longer focused on the much more inspiring and more meaningful work of bringing people together, people of good faith to actually solve problems and improve lives of the people that we serve in our country.

We have heard that lament before, but actually working together requires agreement on what the problems are and a willingness to actually solve them instead of bludgeoning members of the other party.

Sinema went a step further in explaining the extreme partisanship: Theyve moved away from that center of working together and finding that common ground and theyre going towards the fringes because thats where the money is, and thats where the attention is, and thats where the likes on Twitter are, and thats where you get the clicks and the accolades. And theres an incentive to continue to say things that are not true and not accurate.

Asked why she didnt switch to the Republican Party from the Democratic Party, Sinema laughed and said, you dont go from one broken party to another.

Her solution is a familiar one that needs more adherents. Again referring to McCains final Senate speech, she said: he spoke about the importance of getting rid of the uninspiring activities you see now of partisanship and restoring the inspiring activity of working together.

So how do we fix this in our country? Its not that difficult. Its all of us choosing to behave with that same level of dignity, of respect for each other of honor, refusing to do that uninspiring activity of just trying to prevent the other from a win, and instead focusing on what can we do to bring our country together and demonstrate that were serving them.

With Title 42 expiring today, which is expected to bring in a new wave of migrants, Sinema blames not only the Biden administration for failing to come up with a plan, but also both political parties: both parties have benefited for decades by not solving this challenge.

Perhaps thats why the fastest growing voter group is independents, though they usually end up voting for one party or the other on Election Day.

Its going to take more than one senator to make the case that our system of elections and government are broken. Returning to the guardrails provided in the Constitution would solve a lot of problems, but barring that unlikely occurrence, it is up to We the people to make changes by voting for candidates who are committed to actually addressing and solving the growing number of problems that confront us.

Otherwise, George Wallace will be seen as a prophet because there is increasingly not a dimes worth of difference between the two parties when it comes to doing what is best for the nation.

Cal Thomas is a syndicated columnist.

Read the original post:
Cal Thomas: Democrats and Republicans not a dime's worth of ... - TribLIVE