Unregistered Voters Are One Of The Most Democratic-Leaning Groups

Mike the Mad Biologist

And this is a problem. While getting the occasional Trump supporter to change his mind would be a good thing–their votes ‘count double’ (Trump loses a vote; Clinton gains one)–I would argue that there are two major groups that have been neglected. The first are ‘demoralized Dems‘, which includes registered Democrats and independents who lean Democratic. They often feel betrayed by the Democratic Party but will almost never vote for a Republican, certainly not Il Trumpe. On economic issues, they are typically left-leaning and working-class oriented. It’s worth noting that 25 percent of Obama’s votes in 2012 came from white working class voters (other estimates claim 34 percent). Not 25 percent of the white working class voted for him, but one in four Obama votes were cast by a member of the white working class.

But there’s a second group, one that dwarfs any other demographic:…

View original post 335 more words

USDA chief Vilsack: Rural America becoming less relevant | AP

… rural America’s biggest assets – the food supply, recreational areas and energy, for example – can be overlooked by people elsewhere as the U.S. population shifts more to cities, their suburbs and exurbs.

“Why is it that we don’t have a farm bill?” said Vilsack. “It isn’t just the differences of policy. It’s the fact that rural America with a shrinking population is becoming less and less relevant to the politics of this country, and we had better recognize that and we better begin to reverse it.”

For the first time in recent memory, farm-state lawmakers were not able to push a farm bill through Congress in an election year, evidence of lost clout in farm states…”  via Associated Press.

The Late 20th Century Western Lifestyle Isn’t Going To Be Around Much Longer | Mark Steyn / Investors.com

The Eurovision Song Contest doesn’t get a lot of attention in the United States, but on the Continent it’s long been seen as the perfect Euro-metaphor.

Years before the euro came along, it was the prototype pan-European institution, and predicated on the same assumptions. Eurovision took the national cultures that produced Mozart, Vivaldi and Debussy, and in return gave us “Boom-Bang-A-Bang” (winner, 1969), “Ding-Ding-A-Dong” (winner, 1975) and “Diggi-Loo-Diggi-Ley” (winner, 1984).

The euro took the mark, the lira and the franc, and merged them to create the “Boom-Bang-A-Bang” of currencies.

How will it all end? One recalls the 1990 Eurovision finals in Zagreb: “Yugoslavia is very much like an orchestra,” cooed the hostess, Helga Vlahovi?. “The string section and the wood section all sit together.”

Shortly thereafter, the wood section began ethnically cleansing the dressing rooms, while the string section rampaged through the brass section pillaging their instruments and severing their genitals. Indeed, the charming Miss Vlahovic herself was forced into a sudden career shift and spent the next few years as Croatian TV’s head of “war information” programming.