Archive for the ‘Liberals’ Category

Liberals Have Some Soul-Searching to Do Mother Jones – Mother Jones

For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis, the election, and more, subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.

I dont know that I trust myself yet to say anything about the election, but theres a little bit I can say.

First, no matter what else, and no matter how close the count was, it looks like Donald Trump is being tossed out of the White House. This is an unalloyed good thing and we should all be breathing a huge sigh of relief over it.

That said, Joe Bidens victory represents only a tiny change in the vote compared to 2016. Trumpism wasnt rejectedhe probably would have won if not for the pandemicand liberalism wasnt embraced. At this point, Republicans still need to come to grips with how Trump took over their party, but Democrats need to come to grips with the fact that they remain a generally unloved alternative. I have my own ideas about why that is, which Ill keep to myself for the time being, but its something that needs to be addressed in a clear-eyed way. No more hiding behind popular vote victories or polls claiming to show that everyone loves our policies. Its obvious that both are misleading. Nor is the answer for the party to be more vigorous about supporting your personal policy preferences. Thats just lazy.

This is all going to be discussed to death over the next few months, and were all going to get sick of it. But the worst thing liberals can do is to keep piddling down the same path as always without giving it much thought. We need to do better.

Follow this link:
Liberals Have Some Soul-Searching to Do Mother Jones - Mother Jones

‘Away from the noise’: How Liberal Americans are coping with Election Day anxiety – Reuters

BERKELEY, Calif./NEW YORK (Reuters) - Rachel Richardson, a lifelong Democrat, is spending Election Day hiking trails along the Pacific Coast with her two daughters and a fellow mom with her kids in tow.

Daughters of David and Rachel Roderick use a map and candidates' pictures up on the wall to learn how the U.S. government works in Berkeley, California, U.S., August 27, 2020. David Roderick/Handout via REUTERS

The 41-year-old Berkeley, California, native who voted for Democrat Joe Biden early said she decided to plan a three-day camping trip to stay away from minute-by-minute election news here and keep anxiety over the potential reelection of Republican President Donald Trump and the pandemic at bay.

I think its now time for me to get a good nights sleep, a few nights in the fresh, clean air with no WiFi signal anywhere in sight, she told Reuters. Away from the noise of peoples responses.

Richardson and husband David Roderick spent the past months educating their children about the election and government along with about two dozen families from one of the most liberal U.S. cities while supporting candidates in key senate races.

Opinion polls show Biden ahead nationally and in many key states, but liberal voters are worried about another upset after Trump, a former real estate developer and reality show personality, unexpectedly won the 2016 election.

Im anxious because we know how the last election got swayed and the way that things went, said 38-year-old Jonathan Krieger after casting his ballot in Brooklyn, New York, on Tuesday morning. I think staying away from the news is my biggest remedy.

Many Democrats despise Trump, whom they see as a threat to American democracy, a liar and a racist, and struggle with the presidents bombastic style and norm-shattering behavior. His supporters admire his lack of convention and what they call straight talk.

Record numbers of Americans, more than 100 million, cast early ballots by mail or in person, leaving little to do but worry until votes are counted. To soothe their nerves, some liberals have doubled down on their pandemic-era coping mechanisms: running and exercising, yoga, meditation or writing.

Sylvia Baer, a New Jersey resident and lifelong progressive who has been quarantining in Florida, is spending the day locked away in her home office in Fort Lauderdale, writing short stories and poems.

Im writing like crazy, said Baer, 70, adding that the day had so far brought more excitement than scare. However, I will have a lovely gin and tonic on hand later this afternoon. Or two.

A professor of American literature and a poet, Baer began writing short memoir-like stories as the coronavirus ravaged her home state and shares them on Facebook as a way of coping with the stream of dreadful news.

The presidential campaign, which pitted Trump against Biden, has tested the nerves of many Americans already exhausted and grief-stricken by months of the unrelenting COVID-19 pandemic.

It also has further exacerbated the already sharp partisan divide here stoked by Trump during his four years as president.

In historically Democratic Ann Arbor, Michigan, sculptor Joe Szutz said things were going as planned at his home in a battleground state that Trump narrowly won in 2016.

Ive been taking it kind of slow. I did some cooking in the morning and I did a workout. Im doing some writing now on the computer and staying away from the TV, said the 77-year-old Democrat, who dropped off ballots for himself, his wife and his 18-year-old daughter, voting for the first time ahead of Election Day.

Szutz said he planned to take advantage of the unseasonably nice weather and rake leaves in his yard.

Registered Democrat Lisa Shapiro, a journalist in New York City who cast her ballot before dawn on Tuesday, said she had set up the ironing board to cut up the fabric for the masks she plans to sew later in the afternoon and into the evening.

She enjoys sewing, something she learned during the pandemic. Its almost the sound of the sewing machine, touching the fabric, she said.

She is not ruling out making a chocolate sheet cake and enjoying a dram of whisky early in the evening.

Classes were canceled at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law on Tuesday, and Emily Bruce, the schools director of equity and inclusion, offered a 30-minute guided meditation session to cope with the anxiety many students are struggling with.

The hope is to offer this as a tool for finding some relief from that, she said.

Reporting by Jane Lanhee Lee in Berkeley, California, Maria Caspani in New York and Ben Klayman in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Editing by Caroline Stauffer, Steve Orlofsky and Grant McCool

Continued here:
'Away from the noise': How Liberal Americans are coping with Election Day anxiety - Reuters

Final counts of B.C. election ballots to determine if Liberal Laurie Throness will have seat in Legislature – The Globe and Mail

'Im a little bit jittery,' Laurie Throness, seen here in Port Moody, B.C. on March 22, 2012, said in an interview Thursday.

John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail

A final count of ballots this weekend will determine whether Laurie Throness, the Liberal candidate forced to resign from his party in the middle of the B.C. election campaign, will have a seat in the legislature.

Im a little bit jittery, Mr. Throness said in an interview Thursday. We prepared our scrutineers, and were all ready to go.

For most candidates in this falls B.C. election, the verdict from voters was clear on Oct. 24, but in at least four ridings where the preliminary count is close, the final count that begins Friday will determine winners and losers.

Story continues below advertisement

Mr. Throness, who won the riding of Chilliwack-Kent in 2013 and 2017, was pressed to quit his party just 10 days before election day following a string of controversies, including his remarks at an all-candidates meeting where he equated free contraceptives with eugenics.

He remained on the ballot listed as the Liberal candidate and many voters had already voted by mail before he quit a factor that could give him an edge. On the preliminary count, he was 195 votes behind New Democrat Kelli Paddon, and elections officials in the riding still have more than 7,300 ballots to count.

He would sit as an Independent if he does manage to keep his seat, and although he doesnt anticipate a warm welcome in Victoria from his former caucus colleagues, he said he would enjoy the freedom of being politically independent.

Across the province, Elections BC has more than 640,000 absentee or mail-in ballots to count an unprecedented number that may slow the final results.

We expect the count to take at least three days, but there still is some uncertainty. We have never counted this many mail-in and absentee ballots before, said Andrew Watson, communications director for Elections BC.

Premier John Horgans NDP secured enough support in the preliminary count to be assured of a majority government, but the final shape of the legislature has yet to be determined. The NDP lead in 55 ridings, while the Liberals lead in 29 and the Greens in three.

But four of those ridings were deemed too close to call on election night, and they are all traditionally strong Liberal seats.

Story continues below advertisement

The Liberals governed British Columbia for 16 consecutive years until the 2017 election produced a minority NDP government supported by the Greens. Now the Liberals face a reckoning after their worst showing in the popular vote and lowest seat count in seven provincial elections.

The scale of the Liberals' defeat will be clear after the final count. While they cant hold Chilliwack-Kent, they hope to keep the other three.

The riding of Richmond-South Centre was held by Linda Reid, who represented the Liberals since 1996. Ms. Reid didnt run again and the Liberals ran a star candidate, Olympic athlete and Richmond councillor Alexa Loo. After the preliminary results, Ms. Loo is trailing NDP candidate Henry Yao by 124 votes. There are more than 5,200 ballots to count.

Another bedrock Liberal riding that could change hands is Vernon-Monashee. Incumbent Eric Foster has held this riding since 2009, and won by a wide margin in 2017. This time he is leading by a razor-thin margin of 183 votes over the NDPs Harwinder Sandhu, and Elections BC has more than 8,500 ballots left to count.

With more than 7,300 ballots yet to count in Abbotsford-Mission, Liberal incumbent Simon Gibson is leading by 188 votes over New Democrat candidate Pam Alexis. Mr. Gibson held the riding since 2013, and it has been a safe Liberal seat long before that.

Jordan Reid, the NDPs field director, said her party will have more than 300 scrutineers on deck this weekend, including a number of lawyers, to watch the final count in each riding.

Story continues below advertisement

Certainly our priority is, of course, the tightest races where there are those chances that margins may shift and change, she said.

The NDP encouraged its supporters to take advantage of the mail-in ballot options, she added. Were cautiously optimistic about the results.

We have a weekly Western Canada newsletter written by our B.C. and Alberta bureau chiefs, providing a comprehensive package of the news you need to know about the region and its place in the issues facing Canada. Sign up today.

Go here to see the original:
Final counts of B.C. election ballots to determine if Liberal Laurie Throness will have seat in Legislature - The Globe and Mail

Democratic strategists and their expensive liberal pipe dreams – Washington Times

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

The mainstream media began circling the wagons even as the votes were being counted on Tuesday. CNNs Jake Tapper saw what was happening early and began telling viewers that all that talk about a Biden landslide was always a pipe dream. By Thursday, The Washington Post was beginning what most would view as the Herculean task of rehabilitating the pollsters whose predictions they had been citing to predict the very landslide Mr. Tapper was now dismissing as a pipe dream.

Nate Silver, the liberals odds-maker-in-chief, had been predicting that it was basically all over long before the votes were counted. Just prior to Election Day he said the data gave Joe Biden a 90% chance of winning. His acolytes were predicting not only that the former vice president would sweep President Trump from office, but that a massive Blue Wave would give Democrats control of the Senate and allow them to increase and further consolidate their control of the House. The Washington Post reported a week before the election that Mr. Biden was leading Mr. Trump in Wisconsin by 17 points, and CNN gloated that same week that Mr. Biden had an 11-point popular vote lead nationally.

They were gleeful and hardly contained themselves as they predicted the demise of the hated GOP as visions of 1964 and 1974 danced in their heads.

Oh, there were a few spoil-sports out there suggesting that pollsters had learned little if anything from their failure four years earlier, but their betters dismissed them as third-raters or in the bag for Mr. Trump. They knew from the data that Democrats would beat Sen. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina and that Texas was a toss-up within reach of the Biden campaign. Mr. Bidens people and Democratic strategists obviously believed their pollsters as they poured tens of millions of dollars into states they insisted they could flip.

Following the 2016 elections, Democrats and progressives decided they had to try to understand rather than simply demonize the folks who living outside their urban oases. The deplorables who had inexplicably rejected Hillary Clinton in favor of Donald Trump were a mystery they knew they had to figure out to return to power. Democrats even organized what one called safaris to flyover country to see what might be going on out there. The effort was short-lived, however, as they opted instead to simply attack the new president as Vladimir Putins racist, traitorous stooge rather than to try to come to grips with the problems and feelings of those drawn to an outsiders message.

To them, Mr. Trump was a dangerous, racist buffoon and before long they convinced themselves that even those under-educated deplorables they just could not understand shared their views. They managed to persuade themselves and those living with them in the bubble they inhabited that impeachment, embarrassing the president and calling him names would make them popular with a public they believed just had to share their opinions, News outlets from MSNBC to PBS and from The Washington Post to The New York Times carried report after report detailing their view that rural, small-town voters, farmers and miners were discovering that Mr. Trump hadnt delivered for them and would abandon him this year.

All this collapsed on Election Day. Mr. Trumps base hadnt vanished; indeed, one was hard pressed to find a voter who had supported him four years ago who wasnt ready to vote for him again. As the votes were being counted, the pipe dream was revealed to be either just that or something far more sinister; an attempt by anti-Trump progressives in the media and elsewhere to suppress the Trump vote. It didnt work and they were shocked to learn that the man they had spent so much time demonizing as a racist got more non-White votes than any Republican in 60 years.

In the end, their favored candidate, Joe Biden, may win the White House in a squeaker because we still live in an evenly divided nation, but Republicans held the Senate, increased their strength in the House and even netted a new governor and held or even increased their hold on state houses across the country. Voters denied progressives the unified government they sought in an election that will leave at least half of the nations voters feeling cheated, the media and the pollsters who cook the books for them with virtually no credibility and progressive billionaires who made this the most expensive election in U.S. history wondering what they got for their money.

If the pollsters had been right and liberals had run the table, the progressive dream of remaking the country and the U.S. Supreme Court would have been in reach. But as various news organizations began reporting just a few days after the election, Democrats are revising the Biden transition plan and wish list as it belatedly dawns on them that their pipe dream was little more than that.

David A. Keene is an editor at large for The Washington Times.

More here:
Democratic strategists and their expensive liberal pipe dreams - Washington Times

Tommy Tuberville to out-of-state ‘liberals who gave to Jones: Go to hell – AL.com

U.S. Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville told out-of-state donors to Sen. Doug Jones campaign to go to hell during his victory speech Tuesday night after defeating Jones in a bitterly fought Alabama Senate race.

Tuberville, the first-time candidate and former Auburn football coach, made the comment at the Renaissance Hotel in Montgomery when he came out to address cheering supporters shortly after the Associated Press declared him the winner Tuesday night.

"Tonight, the liberals in California, New York, and Washington, D.C., learned the hard way that Alabamas Senate seat cannot be bought, Tuberville said. If youll allow me to quote one of my opponents many campaign ads: They can all go to hell and get a job as far as Im concerned.

The crowd roared its approval.

The Jones' campaign spent almost $25 million, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, about four times what the Tuberville campaign spent.

Tuberville referred to a Jones ad critical of the way Tuberville left coaching jobs at Ole Miss, Auburn, Texas Tech, and Cincinnati, calling him a quitter. The ad shows a clip of Tuberville leaving the field after a loss at Cincinnati in 2016, yelling into the stands at a heckling fan, Go to hell. Get a job.

The incident was widely publicized at the time. Tuberville resigned at the end of the 2016 season, ending his coaching career.

Read this article:
Tommy Tuberville to out-of-state 'liberals who gave to Jones: Go to hell - AL.com