PoliticsUSA: Primary Votes: Women candidates win in key races, besides trending up they are also trending conserve
The enti-incumbent trend continues in the latest round of primary votes to select party-candidates in various states. The outstanding win among Democrats, to my mind, was nevertheless an incumbent in the USA Senate, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas. She has for months stood out from her colleagues because of her accounting background, her role on the Senate Agriculture Committee, and hence her vigourous campaign to curb the wilder rampages of financial interests in the derivatives markets. They were --along with housing-mortage snake-oil lending by Fannie May, Freedie Mac and assorted sordid banks -- a chief cause of the Great Recession we hope to have begun shaking off (Greece!, Hungary?).
Sen. Lincoln has her own natural interest: to protect the agricultural derivatives markets from the worst abuses that undermine the smaller farms, often family farms, that are plentiful in her state. This has given her, as well, a national concern for the overall agricultural policy of the USA, and ins+t into the difference between farmers and large farming corporations. From this centerpoint, she has worked hard to achieve as much as is presently possible to her and like-minded Senators, a fair and effective Financial Regulation law -- especially its section on Derivatives and its subsection on Agricultural Derivatives. You may recognize these financial zones as related to the futures markets in agricultural commodities -- corn, wheat, soybeans, etc. Futures markets focussed not on the usual food commodities but instead on financial instruments, however, have distorted the already-existing dangers of destabilization by excesses in selling and buying the outcomes anticipated in farming and coporate agriculture. It always has had and will have a speculative edge, due to the need to know what size and quantity can be expected from future harvests of foodstuffs. But with experienced commodity-futures speculators eyeing and shifting in part to participate in the wider deployment of derivatives investment, there's a stituation where food futures are impacted by the feedback loop from lucrative financial futures, based on paper and digital obfuscations. That's the impact dynamics of financial sector spill-over into the once-ordinary ho-hum trading in food commodities. The newer kind of speculation sets the tone too much for the time-worn speculation on what food will be on hand for American tables several months from now.
read more ...
I detail Lincoln's situation, around the fact of her win as an incumbent, noting now her uphill climb against the millions spent by the labour unions (state and local) to bring her down to defeat, to install one of their minions to carry out the Obama policy orientation in lockstep, and even influence it according to labour's bias toward secularist establishment unions (AFL-CIO, SEIU of which I was once a shop steward in Toronto, etc). Hail to Blanche Lincoln! I don't care who the Republican candidate may be, I endorse Lincoln for the November General Elections.
But, I'm not just cheering-on a Dem, and liberal in many regards, best understood as a moderate Dem. I'm also pleased and excited to see the wins of Republican women this round too, wins notably in California (to select Republican gubernatorial and senate candidates): Meg Whitman (woudbe Gov), Carly Fiorina (woudbe Sen). That trend is definitely conservative among Republicans, and I woud probably endorse both against their Democrat rivals just elected in the other party's primary, as well. Again, Whitman seems to have been talking moderate, then trending conservative, but in the general election will probably return to a moderate stance. Good for her! Yes, there are Republican moderates. I woud think most reformationals, refWr+t's primary audience worldwid, woud classify themselves on this particular problem-historical problem-spectrum. The experimental spectrum in this case being a tractory between Moderate Democrat -- like Sen. Blanche Lincoln -- and Nikki Haley, elected candidate for a South Carolina senatorial seat. She was endorsed by Gov Sarah Palin (Alaska). Haley won the Republican nomination, and was assisted by Tea Party movement activists (grannies) who at least individually joined her voluntary campaign in each of the districts locally. An informal current in the stream (Vollenhoven).
And then there's Nicki Haley who just won her runoff primary vote to become Republican candidate for Senator, in South Carolina. Her self-presentation on the video (above) is reassuring to me. And I notice her prior endorsement by Sarah Palin, so my political path has remotely crossed that of the Divine Sarah. No endorsement of Lady Divine, but I'm tempted to jump the gun and endorse Nicki Haley r+t now.
Update (Jun11,2k10):
I guess I'm part of the move to throw the bums out, the anti-incumbent mood that is sweeping American politics at the grassroots. But I'm more toward the moderate part of the dominant r+t > center orientation of the American public at present. So, for the reasons adduced above, I have no problem with a moderate Democrat like Lincoln, or an apparent moderate Republican like Whitman. May their tribe increase!
The trend is: women, non-incumbents (exception Lincoln and perhaps Whitman), moderate Dems, conservative Reps (Whitman is an exception among several in various states). It's all up for grabs, however, as more primaries and the ensuing campaigns will tell us.
-- Politicarp (with help from EconoMix and Owlb)
Further Sources:
No comments:
Post a Comment