[lbo-talk] Bush expected to announce candidacy any day now

[kelley at pulpculture.org]

At 10:29 AM 2/19/2004, Jon Johanning wrote:
>On Thursday, February 19, 2004, at 08:05  AM, John Halle wrote:
>
>>A further consequence is that the New Haven and other big city 
>>delegations have much less power on the state level compared to the 
>>suburbs where registration and turn out is much greater.  The machine is 
>>willing to accept this trade off-a sure lock on local power at the 
>>expense of disenfranchisement (and ultimately immiseration) of the 
>>constituency they claim to represent on the state level.  While I haven't 
>>studied the matter-some should-, this same dynamic is likely to be 
>>operative in most big cities.  The bottom line is that the Democrats have 
>>only themselves to blame for their increasing inability to turn out what 
>>they claim (increasingly laughably) to be their base.
>
>It doesn't seem to be operative in Philadelphia, unless I am unaware of 
>its operation. On the contrary, Philly Democrats need all the registration 
>and voter turn-out they can get precisely in order to have some decent 
>representation on the state level. And the current governor is the 
>ex-Philly Dem mayor (not someone I am particularly fond of, since he is 
>also an ex-D.A., whom we are fighting on the death penalty issue).
>
>I would guess that New York City Dems are not trying to keep registration 
>down, either, but someone who knows NYC politics could enlighten us on that.

It wasn't operative in upstate NY or here in Tampa Bay. Voter reg drives 
were/are invariably pushed by Democrats and shunted by Republicans.

I remember registering people to vote with NYPIRG back during the Jackson 
campaign. We'd walk the poorest neighborhoods, get people to register, and 
then listen to them yap about voting republican. They were very defiant 
about it, 'coz we were, after all, coming off as lib'r00l edjamacated types!

Ayup!

Kelley