RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/robertrobb/2018/11/04/2018-arizona-election-turnout-blue-wave-red-backlash/1836438002/

Democrats haven’t won a statewide race in Arizona since 2008.

When the Democratic state corporation commissioners who won that year, Paul Newman and Sandra Kennedy, lost their re-election bids in 2012, it was the first time in Arizona history that there was not a single Democrat holding statewide office.

The Democratic nadir was 2014. The Democrats ran what I thought was the finest and best-qualified slate of candidates for statewide office – from governor to state superintendent – in my lifetime, and perhaps in state history.

They all got swamped – except for David Garcia in the superintendent race, who was narrowly edged out by Diane Douglas.
What explains the drought for Democrats?

This Democratic electoral desert is a recent phenomenon. For the state’s first century, there was always at least one statewide elected Democrat in office. For most of the state’s history, Democrats actually dominated. Republican voter registration in the state didn’t surpass that of Democrats until 1986.

As late as 2006, Democrat Janet Napolitano smashed her Republican opponent for governor and Democrat Terry Goddard comfortably won re-election as attorney general.

So, what explains the Democratic drought since 2008, since it hasn’t primarily been from a lack of well-qualified candidates?

With the rise of independent registration, those remaining registered Republican or Democratic tend to be pretty brand loyal. There is not nearly as much crossover voting – a Republican voting for a Democrat or vice versa – as there used to be in the state.

And brand-loyal Republicans dominated the turnout. Since 2008, Republicans have been more than 40 percent of the general election turnout every year except 2016, when it dipped to 39 percent.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/screeching-harpies-vow-no-sex-unless-men-vote-for-democrats/

Since scratching and beating on the doors of the Supreme Court had zero effect on keeping Justice Brett Kavanaugh off the court, the ladies of the left have decided to go with a new tactic: a sex strike! That’s right, fellas, you’re all out of luck with the #Resist girls. Author Wednesday Martin has penned an essay at CNN called “What if Women Went On a Sex Strike Before the Midterms?”

It’s time for a revolution. At the polls, and in the bedroom. And in our understanding of who women are, sexually and otherwise. Given the tight interweaving of economic and political power with sexual entitlement, female sexual autonomy has never been more urgent, and women’s sexual pleasure has never been more political. Let’s consider what it might mean to go on a sex strike of sorts — to get what we want, rather than give what we think we owe others.

It seems the Democrats have finally got their bumper sticker for 2018: “Zero F*cks for Anyone. #Resist”

What’s revolutionary about women using sex to get what they want? And worse, aren’t feminists supposed to reject femininity and female wiles in favor of more equal ways of advancing? I’m confused. Didn’t we just have a whole #MeToo campaign against the casting couch? Females willing to trade sexual favors in exchange for stuff is exactly the kind of girl Harvey Weinstein was looking for.

A women’s sex strike against service sex, a refusal to do it out of a sense of obligation, would force us to confront these basic inequalities. Our current administration has amped up the notion that women are mere extensions of male will and pleasure, there to serve at every turn…What are the President’s insults to Stormy Daniels other than assertions that the woman who enjoys sex or profits from it in any way — emotionally, financially, or physically — is unnatural, immoral, and unattractive? In this world order, female sexual autonomy is not only dangerous and destabilizing; it is increasingly hard to imagine. And female pleasure is irrelevant, even pathological, if it exists at all.

I’m pretty sure the president’s insult of Stormy Daniels had less to do with how much she likes sex (yeah, we know) and more to do with her hideous character and willingness to attack his family for money. She’s also not attractive, and most people don’t believe he’d cheat on Melania (the most beautiful woman on earth) with a horse-faced tramp who hired one of the most crooked lawyers on earth.*

In the ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes, the character Lysistrata urges women to go on a sex strike to get men on both sides to end the Peloponnesian War. In our case, a sex strike against service sex can be a powerful statement — that female desire, a metric of agency like women’s votes, will be heard.

Am I the only one who knows that Lysistrata was a comedy performed by all men? They were mocking women, not making some big statement about women’s power and rights. Why is everyone so dumb? I didn’t even graduate college and this woman has a doctorate from Yale? (Note to parents: do NOT waste your money on the Ivy League!)

Fellas, if you’re feeling nervous that this idea might catch on, the #Resist ladies were good enough to put together one last sexy campaign to show you what you’re missing. Take a good look, because that’s all you’re going to get!

I know it’s going to be rough. I mean, these ladies are something else!

I’m sure by now you guys are worked up into a lather that cannot be quenched without some of this #Resist lovin’! Am I right? CONTINUE AT SITE

http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/7306/full

There are journalistic assignments that should be refused, not as a matter of principle but out of basic common sense. Making predictions about American politics in the age of Trump is one of them. That Donald Trump won the Republican nomination was surprising. That he ended up in the White House was — well, a strong enough what-the-hell adjective does not exist (I did not expect Trump to prevail and nor, quite possibly, did he). However, the chequered nature of that win, a two per cent loss in the popular vote (the widest margin of “defeat” for a victorious candidate since 1876) but a passable, if far from overwhelming, majority in the only vote that counts — the Electoral College — was a necessary reminder that federalism matters more and elite opinion less than is sometimes assumed.

Remembering that is a good beginning to understanding why, despite Trump ratcheting up a record of gaffes, blunders and peculiarity unthinkable in any other president, earlier talk of a Democratic “wave” in the midterm elections on November 6 has evaporated.

While that might merit a celebratory presidential Diet Coke, the Republicans still face a tricky day on the sixth. Despite a healthy economy (GDP grew at an annualised 4.2 per cent in the second quarter, the unemployment rate dropped to 3.7 per cent in September and in the same month consumer confidence reached an 18-year high), almost all the “generic” polling has the generic Democrat comfortably ahead of the generic Republican. Even without Trump in the Oval Office this was coming. An incumbent president’s party almost always struggles in the midterms. Like a British by-election, except for far higher stakes (all the seats in the House of Representatives will be up for grabs, as will 35 Senate seats and numerous state-level offices), midterms are often used by the voters who show up (turnout is typically around 40 per cent, compared with 60 per cent in a presidential election year) to shake a fist at those in charge.

There are incumbent presidents, and then there is Donald J. Trump, whose approval rating has been dismal for most of his time in office. As I write (late October) it is ticking up and now stands somewhere in the mid-40s, weak for a strong economy and at a roughly similar level to Barack Obama’s polling eight years ago. But that was in the aftermath of the financial crisis and shortly before game-changing midterms in which the Democrats suffered a loss of more than 60 seats and control of the House, as well as a brutal reduction in their Senate majority. The Republicans’ chances will be hurt by too much Trump in some areas — upscale suburbs and their remaining redoubts on the east and west coasts in particular — but they could, in a paradox that may mean trouble for them beyond 2018, be hurt by not enough Trump elsewhere, specifically in the rust belt, where voters who moved from Obama (or no vote) to Trump made enough of a difference in their states to tip the 2016 election the GOP’s way.