Much of the progressive agenda was rejected across America yesterday, but a few progressive causes prevailed here in blue-state Massachusetts, via referendum approval of dropping the MCAS graduation requirement (Question 2) and allowing Uber and Lyft drivers to unionize (Question 3). But it wasn’t a clean progressive sweep: voters rejected the partial legalization of psychedelics (Question 4) and changing the current restaurant tipping-pay structure (Question 5). … Btw: Approval of Question 1, which allows the auditing of the legislature, was definitely a bi-partisan affair, winning more than 70 percent of the vote.
Month: November 2024
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Progressive causes triumph in at least one state: Massachusetts
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Oops. … Kamala Harris, loser
I sure got that one wrong. No huge last-minute female surge for Harris. Trump simply outperformed her on so many key levels. … I agree with Dan Kennedy: Win or lose, Harris performed magnificently as a candidate. Just not magnificently enough. … What really hurt Democrats was Democrats. I’ll have more on this later. But let me just say: Democrats have a lot of soul searching to do in coming weeks, months and years. They’re out of touch with huge swaths of the American electorate, particularly working-class, rural and non-college-educated people in general. Dems need to find a way to connect to them – economically and socially – and distance themselves from some of the radical positions of the academic left. What Dems don’t need is to act and sound like they haven’t learned anything.
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Prediction time: Kamala Harris, winner
Maybe it’s a case of wishful thinking, but my hunch is Kamala Harris is going to pull this one out today. Donald Trump outperformed the polls in 2016 and 2020 – and he may yet do it again this year. But I think women are going to put Harris over the top, as suggested by the recent Selzer/Iowa poll. Latino anger over third-rate comic Tony Hinchcliffe’s first-rate racist comments could also help Harris, or so I hope. .…
Update – 11-5-24 – I liked these lines in a NYT piece on what could happen today and this week: “If Kamala Harris wins big, we should have seen it coming all along. … If Mr. Trump wins big, we should have seen it coming all along.”
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Kristaps who?
Down two starters – Kristaps and Jaylen – and the defending champs still find a way to win. … In particular, it’s remarkable how little people are talking about Kristaps’s absence. … This team is just fun to watch. They have so much talent and depth.
Update – 11-5-24 – Ho-hum. Another day, another Celts win, this time by 30 points, and without Jaylen and Kristaps again.
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NYT: Identity politics, RIP
And good riddance. … The excesses of progressives’ identity politics and political correctness are the main reasons why Democrats aren’t a majority party today. …
BTW: Nate Cohn has a separate take on why Dems can’t shake Donald Trump.
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Et tu, Fall River?
Ben Berke at WBUR explains why Fall River has gone Trump. It’s that working-class thing again. … And that Portuguese thing, too.
Hub Blog 