Part One:
WHY DON’T DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES TALK MUCH ABOUT URBAN AREAS?
We speak with Alan Greenblatt, senior staff writer for Governing.com (formerly Governing Magazine). Because the early primary states do not have urban areas of any size, Presidential candidates tend not to address urban problems during the early months of the primary season. But they should.
After all, a large portion of the Democratic party’s base consists of urban populations. Even the non-urban areas — the small towns and rural areas — are plagued by many of the same problems as urban areas. Moreover, even if they don’t share the same problems, smaller localities are *impacted* by the resolution of issues in the urban areas.
For example, when a city passes ordinances that increase the minimum wage, that prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ individuals, or that ban plastic bags, the *effects* spill over to people who live in the rest of the state. In reaction, some states have passed statewide legislation preempting the city ordinances they don’t like. Also, non-urban areas in the state oppose (and resent) the expenditure of large amounts of state money to repair city roads and infrastructure, or to combat other urban problems.
Will Mayor Bloomberg be the beneficiary of these dichotomies? He is popular among the country’s mayors, having led groups advocating for “urban issues.” But will the negatives in his record hold him back? He has recently apologized for the stop-and-frisk policy he imposed while he was NYC’s mayor; but will urban-dwellers — and particularly African-Americans — accept his apology and support him?
Part Two:
We again welcome “Dr. Politics,” Steffen Schmidt, professor of political science at Iowa State University. We are not surprised by the Democratic House’s vote to impeach Pres. Trump. Now we wonder how the Senators will proceed. Will they actually hold a trial, taking evidence? If so, will they insist on calling evidence that most reasonable observers believe is totally irrelevant to the impeachment question (e.g., subpoenaeing Adam Schiff, or Joe Biden and his son)?
Because of their distrust in the integrity of our elections, voters may decide that it’s not worth voting. But isn’t there a reasonable factual basis for voters not trusting our democratic electoral process? Voting machines are easily hackable by local or foreign hackers; so were Hillary Clinton’s campaign computers; Russian bots have infiltrated social media to the extent that people don’t know what’s true and what isn’t; big money donors are able to control who succeeds in political campaigns (and then to influence the elected officials by using the access that they’ve bought); biased gerrymandering has allowed politicians to buy their voters rather than the voters choosing their politicians; and much more.
We also discuss a New York Times article reporting on new polls of independent voters. Surprisingly, the second most important topic, in independent voters’ minds, is the Trump administration’s separation of children at the border, and the mistreatment of children in their cells (leading to their deaths).
The third most important issue is whether our country should *totally ban* guns. The way this question is asked is grossly misleading, since no candidate – and no democratic candidates – are supporting a total ban. Yet the poll question misleads voters into believing that some or all democrats do support this, so the question is one that should play a role in their voting decision. Should the media be held accountable for such misleading?
