Democratic Party
Economy, Financial Worries Weigh on Likely Voters
By PPIC
California’s likely voters approach the elections this year with big concerns about the economy and the state’s fiscal future, according to a statewide survey released today by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), with support from The James Irvine Foundation.
Despite signs of an improving economy, an overwhelming majority of likely voters (84%) believe that the state is in a recession. Nearly half (48%) say the recession is serious. Fewer (36%) say it is moderate or mild, and just 14 percent say the state is not in recession. Most (62%) expect bad economic times in the next year and most (59%) see the state going in the wrong direction.
The GOP: driving moderates to the Democrats
By Peter Schrag
As Spike Jones used to sing about that Strauss waltz – the Danube ain’t blue, it’s green – California ain’t nearly as blue as the political maps have it. It’s purple. We may vote for Obama, Feinstein, Boxer and all those other Democrats, but we also love our Proposition 13, our term limits, and our three-strikes laws.
We got another reminder of our purpleness – and a lot else besides – from Eric McGhee and Daniel Krimm’s elegant analysis of California’s political geography that PPIC, the Public Policy Institute of California, issued last month. Click here to see the report.
McGhee and Krimm crunched a lot of PPIC survey data to produce their political artwork, some of which looks like nothing you’ve ever seen.
Building a Blue-Green Coalition in California
By Marcy Winograd
Former Democratic Candidate for Congress
After the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act, with its codification of imprisonment without charge or trial, I could no longer register voters for the Democratic Party – even with the hope of involving new registrants in the California Democratic Party’s popular Progressive Caucus. If I could not ask someone to join the Democratic Party, I could not in good conscience stay in the party, even as an insurgent writing resolutions and platform planks to end our wars for oil.
Unfortunately, too many corporate Democrats, beholden to big-money donors or to a jobs sector dependent on militarism, vote for perpetual war and the surveillance state, replete with secret wiretaps, black hole prisons, and targeted assassinations. Far too many who are fearful or bought by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee vote for legislation that relegates Palestinians to second-class citizenship and threatens to take our country to the brink of an unthinkable war on Iran.