Dan Walters: Fewer and fewer (CA) state Democrats

DAN WALTERS THE SACRAMENTO BEE
Fewer and fewer state Democrats

May 13, 2006

State election officials released new voter registration data late last month, and they were bad news for Democrats. The Democrats' share of the state's 15.6 million registered voters, 42.7 percent, is 2.5 percentage points lower than it was four years ago, 4.1 percentage points lower than it was eight years ago, and 6.2 percentage points lower than it was 12 years ago. There are, in fact, about 200,000 fewer registered Democrats than in 1994, even though the number of potential voters has risen by nearly 4 million since then and the number of registered voters is up by 1.5 million.

Do we see a pattern here? Democratic politicians may comfort themselves with the fact that during that 12-year period, the party has maintained strong majorities in the congressional delegation and the Legislature, and won both U.S. Senate seats and nearly all other statewide offices – but that stems largely from Republicans' self-destructive tendency to field right-wing candidates unacceptable to independent voters. The fact remains that the Democrats' share of the electorate has skidded downward from 57-plus percent three decades ago to scarcely 40 percent today, and continues to shrink.

Republicans haven't directly benefited from the Democrats' decline. The new data confirmed that the GOP's share remains virtually fixed at just under 35 percent – almost exactly where it was 30 years ago when Democrats were flirting with 60 percent. But that also means that the margin separating the two parties is the lowest it's been since the 1930s. It also means that the ever-growing ranks of independents – up from 10.3 percent in 1994 to 18.3 percent today – are increasingly decisive in any seriously contested elections, such as this year's duel for the governorship.

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Simply put, the slower-growing – but very populous – urban counties along the coast are becoming increasingly Democratic, while the faster-growing inland counties are becoming increasingly Republican. It's really a two-pronged phenomenon. California's population growth is driven almost entirely by foreign immigration, which for the most part is going into the urban centers, while inland suburbs are growing largely because of movement of middle-class families from the cities.

That shift – perhaps a form of white flight – means that urban centers such as Los Angeles are undergoing rapid socioeconomic and cultural transformation even though their overall populations are growing slowly. And because immigrants are either ineligible to vote, or vote only scantily, the relative political importance of the urban centers is slowly diminishing.

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your party affiliation. Doesn't that jeopardize the secrecty of the ballot somewhat? The only purpose I can see is if, say, a large number of Democrats registered as Republicans to lull the GOP into a false sense of complacency about its popularity.

you are registered with that party. There are a few exceptions.

only registered party voters can vote for the party's candidates - as we did when we elected Kerry - and, of course, for local and state offices.

Many register as independent - do not bother to participate in the primaries until they find one that is important to them. Or switch to vote in a specific one. For example, I know of someone, in 2000, who switched to Republican to vote for McCain.

questioning basic facts. I don't know where he's getting his stats, or if they are true, and it wouldn't surprise me at all to find that the data he cites is colored, misinterpreted or just made up. Nationwide, the Democrats blew the Republicans away in new voter registration in 2004, nearly 60/40. I don't know the reg stats in California, but California gave a Kerry a 10% margin of victory in the state (and gave Barbara Boxer a 20% margin!), and Dems have a 2 to 1 advantage in the state legislature. It could be that independents and Greens are making some registration inroads because the state Dems are not far left enough (that is, MIDDLE enough!). But the VOTING pattern is overwhelmingly Democratic. There have also been voter registration suppression scandals, and a long term trend of jailing urban blacks/browns for long periods for minor crimes, depriving them of their voting rights, and incarcerating them in low population, white, rural areas--where they are counted for the purpose of census/political representation/gov't porkbarrel, but have no vote.

I consider Walters to be in the category of a Karl Rove, for creating the kind of delusional and highly manipulative political narrative that provides "explanations" for events that are being rigged behind the scenes, by people like rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson (initial funder of ES&S, electronic voting corporation, brethren to Diebold; Ahmanson also donated one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon Foundation, which touts the death penalty for homosexuals, among other things), or George Schultz (Bush Cartel operative who met with Kenneth Lay--thief of $9 billion from the state of California--and Arnold Schwarzenegger, then just an actor, in May 2001, to plot the fascist takeover of California, and in particular to prevent California from getting its $9 billion back.) (Greg Palast did the expose on that meeting.)

Dan Walters, in other words, provides a highly twisted version of California politics, always, without exception, in the service of big money and corporate/fascist power.

Here, he is laying groundwork for fascist (i.e., Republican) gains in California, that will be engineered by the Schwarzenegger APPOINTEE to Secretary of State, Bruce McPherson, who just illegally re-certified the worst of Diebold's election theft machines (the touchscreens, or DREs) in California. This occurred (McPherson getting appointed) after the "swiftboating" of our ELECTED, Democratic Sec of State, Kevin Shelley, who had sued Diebold and decertified those machines prior to the 2004 election. The vengeance of the fascists against Shelley was one of the evilest thing I've ever seen in California politics--and it was facilitated by the new Democratic leadership in the state legislature, who were either pissing in their panties for fear of getting "swiftboated" themselves, or are corrupt on electronics in government, like too many of our county election officials.

And all of this is the result of the corruption in Congress, where the "Hack America's Vote Act" of 2002 was hatched by major crooks and corporate shills, Tom Delay, Bob Ney and Christopher Dodd. This $4 billion boondoggle for Bushite electronic voting corporations (mostly Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia) destroyed the U.S. election system during the 2002 to 2004 period. Our elections are no longer transparent or verifiable. They are run by these Bushites corporations using "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code with virtually no audit/recount controls.

Diebold: Until recently, headed by Wally O'Dell, a Bush/Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser, who promised (in writing) to "deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush-Cheney in 2004."

ES&S: A spinoff of Diebold (similar computer architecture), funded by rightwing, billionaire, 'christian' nut Ahmanson.

Sequoia: Employs former Repub Sec of State Bill Jones and his chief aide Alfie Charles to peddle their machines--an example of highly corrupt "revolving door" employment. (Jones and Charles first brought this crapass voting technology to California, then went to work for one of the vendors.) (Note: Kevin Shelley banned "revolving door" employment in his office.)

These are the people now 'counting' all the votes in California--and in the U.S.--behind a veil of secrecy.

But you won't hear any of these kinds of basic, pervasive corruption issues ever discussed--or even touched upon-- by Dan Walters or his ilk. He writes the foreground copy for what is going on, and what is being made to seem "inevitable," out of sight of the citizens and voters.

Like I said, Karl Rove.