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Bunch of weapons Dems will have to fight harder w. going into '24--starting w. economy, Repub chaos. [1]
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Date: 2023-06-16
Point one: The newest Washington Monthly includes a terrific article about the continuing lies from the Rethugs about the economy:
Republicans Say Inflation, Crime, and Immigration Are Out of Control. The Numbers Disagree. Every day, good news overshadows the Republican presidential candidates’ talking points. The right-wing Cassandras need a new shtick. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis began his campaign alongside Twitter owner Elon Musk last month by declaring, “Our southern border [has] collapsed. Drugs are pouring into the country. Our cities are being hollowed out by spiking crime. The federal government’s making it harder for the average family to make ends meet and to attain and maintain a middle-class lifestyle … Stop pricing hardworking Americans out of a good standard of living through inflationary borrow, print, and spending policies.”... There’s one problem with this Republican portrayal of a Democratic president presiding over chaos: None of it is true.
As the article notes, inflation is WAY down, border crossings are WAY down, and crime is down decently.
Republicans may talk up crime, and there are no shortages of alarming anecdotes, but there is no Biden crime wave. “Murder is down about 12 percent year-to-date in more than 90 cities that have released data for 2023, compared with data as of the same date in 2022,” according to crime data analyst Jeff Asher, writing in The Atlantic, a trend that could lead to “one of the largest annual percent changes in murder ever recorded.” That follows a 4 percent drop in homicides in 2022 from the prior year, according to the Council on Criminal Justice analysis of data from 35 cities. In fact, over the past five years, the worst month for homicides was July 2020—when Trump was president. Another set of promising data comes from the Violent Crime Survey by the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which looked at data from 70 cities. During the first quarter of 2023, homicides, rapes, and robberies dropped about 8 percent from the first quarter of 2022.
As fare as crime is concerned, GIGAFACT notes that:
In 2020, nine of ten states with the highest per capita violent crime rates leaned Republican, while eight of ten states with the lowest rates leaned Democrat, according to a cross-analysis of the latest available FBI crime data with FiveThirtyEight's partisan lean index. Looking at the murder rate specifically, states that voted for Donald Trump exceeded states that voted for Joe Biden in every year since 2000, according to an analysis of CDC mortality data by Third Way. The left-center think tank pointed to higher poverty and gun ownership and lower education and social spending in red states as possible explanations.
Point two: there is so much else that the Dems need to play up. We may have a very big one soon, if the wacko right in the House gets their way and the government faces shutdowns on a sharp drop in appropriations. From Raw Story:
GOP accused of breaking debt ceiling deal and 'threatening a government shutdown' The top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee accused her Republican colleagues on Thursday of increasing the likelihood of a government shutdown by approving spending numbers below the levels set under the bipartisan debt ceiling agreement, which hasn't even been law for two weeks. In an appearance on CNN, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said House Republicans have already "walked away from this deal," pointing to the House Appropriations Committee's party-line vote Thursday to set next year's spending at fiscal year 2022 levels—a substantial cut and well below the topline set by the debt ceiling law. But the committee's proposed cuts would apply only to nonmilitary spending, which includes programs related to education, environmental protection, child care, and more. As HuffPost's Jonathan Nicholson reported Thursday, the Republican-controlled appropriations panel "stuck with the defense number in the debt limit deal, meaning the total government funding pie would be smaller than what Democrats thought they’d agreed to only weeks ago―and the slice of that pie available for agencies and programs outside of the military would be even smaller."
This latter point takes us back to Rethug threats on cuts to Social Security, Medicare and healthcare spending, which of course takes us back to the 2018 election, where Dems romped in the House, gaining 41 seats in the House.
On top of that add our momentum on abortion, with Rethug legislators running against much of their own electorate.
On top of all of that I continue to believe that Climate Change will become a more important Dem political point, as weathers disasters between now and 11/24 stay high enough for vast numbers of voters to worry about. We WILL be getting more yellow air, and we will be getting more floods, fires big storms and Regional Monster Heat, such as the south is getting. From our “friends” at Fox News:”
Record-breaking heat scorches South; parts of Texas could top 120 degrees Texas, Louisiana, Florida under heat advisories A potentially record-breaking heat wave is expected to encroach upon most of Texas, Louisiana, and parts of Florida through the weekend, with a heat index of up to 120 degrees possible in some areas. More than 33 million people were placed under heat advisories by the National Weather Service on Thursday, some of which are scheduled to remain in effect through Friday night. "It wouldn't be an active summer weather pattern without oppressive heat," the Service noted, adding, "much of Texas and the Deep South will have plenty."
I expect more killer tornadoes, too.
Lastly, tying in with much of this, are the simple facts that 1) the Rethugs would rather fight on politics and personality than on policies our nation needs, badly, and the extremists in the House hold a lot of power; 2)Rethug authoritarianism is becoming a bigger issue as more books get censured or burned; 3) The Rethugs would be thrilled to further cut spending on the needy than increase taxes on the overprivileged and tax cheats, 4) the Rethugs have done nothing to help limit drug prices. (I love paying $35 a month for my insulin!); and 5) the Rethugs will be hard pressed to find a competent and popular Presidential Candidate, with Trump in big trouble and acting nuttier to everyone except his cult and everyone else being on the wrong side on abortion and numerous other issues.
There is so much more, but I will end for now with one of my old themes: The Dem Undercount in polls. Don’t believe a damned thing you see in current polls, which show the two parties close. The spectacular advantages the Dems have—which they need to do a much better job of articulating—will come to the fore by next November, I am confident.
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/16/2175847/-Bunch-of-weapons-Dems-will-have-to-fight-harder-w-going-into-24-starting-w-economy-Repub-chaos
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