Kinda back on topic --- (about 87 days till the Iowa primary)
The elections of Tuesday, while small, could be an indicator of the future.
Kentucky elected a Republican Tea Party outsider newcomer businessman vs. a former Dem Governor. The day before the polls had the dem winning by a large margin but the result was a large margin for the Tea Party guy.
This discrepancy is easily explained. The polling in Kentucky is almost entirely done by the major newspapers, all of which have a noticeable liberal bias in both their own paper & their (mostly urban) readerships. Jack Conway won every county with a major city except Covington, which sits right across from Cincinnati. Matt Bevin won, literally, every other county in the state. I don't quite know what it means for the future, but very few Repubs ever win a statewide seat in Kentucky, because it's a Blue Dog Democrat state; with nearly twice as many registered Dems to Repubs. So for Bevin to pull off such a
crushing victory over a well known Democrat, as well as drag along three more Repubs to take 4 out of 5 of the constitutionally required statewide offices is unprecedented I believe. That said, the breed of Democrat around here doesn't typically look like your average Dem, with strong preferences for traditional family values; pro-2nd, anti-abortion, etc. Kentucky polls around 64% in favor of a constitutional ban on elective abortion, so this isn't a borderline issue here.
Ohio shot down legal weed
Not exactly. Ohio shot down a state constitutional amendment that would have de-criminalized minor possession of MJ, but would have also established a legal cabal of 10 or so producers with the privilege of producing, transporting & retail sale of MJ. Nor was there any provision for new companies to compete, the cabal was a sealed membership, which the amendment part would have made very difficult to alter. That last part turned out to be a poisoned pill for most supporters of recreational or medicinal MJ.
and Texas (Huston?) voted for sane sexual identity laws.
This is my take also. Most modern Wal-mart's & Targets these days have a third option for a "family" or "private" restroom anymore anyway. Dad's don't like taking their baby daughters into the open men's restroom to change a child in full view of strangers' children anyway. The public has been quietly demanding the third option for many years, and just recently Carson mentioned making it part of new building code; so that new schools & public buildings over a certain size would have to have a third option if they have "open" (as opposed to individually lockable, single stall bathrooms) public bathrooms. Most schools I've been to have had at least one individually lockable bathroom for years already, they have just been typically reserved for the staff. My high school had two of them back in the 80's.
This apparently shows a willingness of voters to continue moving right over the last 5-8 years. The vast majority of states, cities, counties and both federal houses are now Republican controlled.
As with the Ky example above, I'm not convinced that this is about the electorate moving towards Republicans, per se. I see it as the retoric of the Democratic party moving too far away from traditional 'family values' to still sound reasonable to parents. The majority of adults might be perfectly fine with a transgender male using a woman's restroom in public, so long as there were a way to ensure that said person was truly transgender, and not simply just a pervert. But when parents stop to think about that question, they eventually get to the point of asking, "How can we be sure?" and then trend towards the idea that the right of women & girls to be comfortable in public trumps the right of a particular transitioning transgender male to be comfortable in public, before the transition is complete. So this might simply be the practical rule of 'the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few' playing out, in the case of the Houston vote. Time will tell, I suppose; but I predict that those Republican controlled state legislatures are not in solid territory, if they were to try to drag the nation the opposite direction based upon ideology alone.
State houses are now 68 out of 98 Republican. For reference that number would be considered a huge landslide and mandate if applied to the presidential election. 70/30
Bernie is pretty much toast, (sorry all you Feel the Bern voters here) so one must assume that the much hated HRC will be the Dem candidate. Pretty sure Bill will vote for her reluctantly. No need to show me polls on this. In fact, Hillary will be the poster child for the Republican get out the vote campaign. Pretty much any Republican or even a zombie off the Walking Dead will beat her.
I said months ago that anyone of the original 16 Repubs running for the nomination, except Jeb Bush; would beat either Hillary or Bernie. Jeb could beat Bernie, but not Hillary; simply because in a dynasty versus dynasty matchup; who would you choose?
Poll
