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John --
In the final remaining election challenge of
the midterm cycle, Sen. Raphael Warnock held onto his
seat, defeating Republican
opponent Herschel Walker in yesterday’s runoff election in Georgia.
Kudos to Warnock’s team for making a concerted effort to appeal to
independent and Republican-leaning voters with an inclusive, unifying
campaign. As campaign manager Quentin Fulks pointed out, “There could
have been other campaign operatives or another campaign that could
have said, ‘Okay, Herschel Walker has all this baggage, so we’re just
going to run to the left and just try to turn out as many of our
voters and just let Republicans eat their own.’ We didn’t do
that.”
Warnock’s team
correctly ascertained that many voters are disillusioned with their
party or with both of the two major parties. As Michael Schaus writes in The Nevada
Independent,
“As it turns out, not all
voters view the ballot as a binary contest between two large political
factions—some voters, apparently, care about what name is next to the
letter that denotes a particular party affiliation. Those voters who
split their ticket should be considered a warning to partisans that
the traditional team-sport approach to elections is going to have to
change with a growing percentage of the public feeling disillusioned
about our current state of political affairs. And make no mistake,
plenty of voters apparently feel disillusioned—the ever-increasing
market share of unaffiliated voter registrations being one obvious
manifestation of such discontent.” We couldn’t have said it any better
ourselves.
The midterm
election has given rise to some hopeful signs that at least a few of
our leaders in Washington are getting the message that the American
people have had it with division and dysfunction and are seeking a
better way. There is currently bipartisan energy in Congress on
immigration, veterans services, pharma, and addressing the alarming rise of
antisemitism. That’s what
can happen when we make our voices heard through our
votes.
But there’s a
long way to go. The system makes it too difficult—or even impossible,
in some cases—for those who don’t fit neatly into an R or D box (i.e.,
most of us) to fully express our power in the voting booth. Without
voting reform, we’ll never get to a place where a truly functional
government that works in the best interests of all Americans is the
norm, rather than the exception.
OTHER NEWS &
VIEWS
United against corporate PAC
money
“In the 118th
Congress, a growing contingent of lawmakers is telling corporate PACs:
We don’t want your cash. More than 70 members say they are swearing
off such contributions, indicating that a trend, almost exclusively
among Democrats, that caught on during the 2018 election cycle has
persisted. Despite the growth, the move has not led to the enactment
of major campaign finance policy or legislative changes. With divided
control of Congress next year, even a minor overhaul of political
money laws seems unlikely. Nevertheless, business political action
committees, or PACs, which are not indexed for inflation and must
follow disclosure requirements, face an uncertain future as the bang
for their bucks diminishes.” —Roll Call
Iowa is out
Taking the lead from President Biden, who
has called for greater diversity in the presidential primary process,
a Democratic committee voted last week to remove Iowa as the leadoff
state on the presidential nominating calendar. It would be replaced
with South Carolina beginning with the 2024 primary elections. Biden
suggested South Carolina because it is more racially diverse than
Iowa, and would thus ensure that voters of color aren’t marginalized
as Democrats choose a presidential nominee. The president also advised
Democrats to scrap “restrictive” caucuses like Iowa’s altogether, as
they require in-person participation that can sometimes exclude
working-class and other voters. —Associated Press
A truce in the war on mail
voting?
“For the past two years, Republican
officials in the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania have
blasted mail voting, firing off lawsuits and bills aimed at crippling
the balloting method that has become increasingly popular
post-pandemic. In the wake of a midterm cycle that proved disastrous
for them, they’re wondering if their antipathy to the idea cost them
the election. ‘Republican and conservative activists need to embrace
mail-in voting, as it isn’t going away any time soon,’ wrote GOP state
Rep. Russ Diamond in a post-mortem on his website. ‘Our goal isn’t to
convince regular voters to vote by mail, but to figure out how to
cultivate mail-in votes from those registered Republicans who vote
infrequently or don’t vote at all.’” —Politico
Anderson: It’s time for real
election reform
“[Ranked-choice voting] is basically a winnowing process. While
recognizing the candidate preferred by most voters—not simply by
Democratic or Republican voters—it also tests how deep that preference
goes. And eliminates those that are not strongly preferred by most
voters. No more two-person, ‘lesser of two evils’ choices. And it has
the potential to advantage candidates who are more centrist as well,
since they would not be eliminated in a sharply partisan primary
election where only the purest party identifiers tend to vote.
Gerrymanders and party primary voting have poisoned the political
well. So, let’s be at least willing to try something else.” —R. Bruce
Anderson in The Ledger
Forward is more than a party. We stand with the unifiers, the
reformers, and the doers on any political “team” who get it—that it’s
not about the letter next to the name, but about the people that name
represents. We’ll keep working to ensure that every American is
well-represented and has an equal say in who works for
them.
All the
best,
The Forward Party Team
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