[Magdalen] Fwd: Re: Election

[Jay Weigel]

I always knew who my parents favored, and why. When I was small, my mom
took me and my brothers with her when she went to vote. My dad usually
voted later, on his way home from classes or work. And later, my school was
a polling place, Back then, schools didn't close on election day; voting
was in the gym, so we just didn't have PE. The teachers usually made some
reference to what was going on, so we kids knew it was something of moment.
The first election I remember clearly was the presidential election of
1952. Campaign buttons were allowed in my school and they were traded just
like any commodity of childhood. I found a couple when we were cleaning out
my mom's house. I remember being sad when Stevenson lost. We'd had a mock
election at the school, and surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly,
he'd won that (it was a school largely populated by children of UW-Madison
faculty).

I followed my parents' example and took my kids with me when we went to
vote. Schools are closed now on election day, and they didn't have civics
classes, nor do their kids. However, my daughter, at least, has been very
good at educating her boys about the political process, and she takes them
with her to vote also.

On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 10:42 AM, Jim Guthrie <jguthrie at pipeline.com> wrote:

> On 2/10/16 11:37 AM, Ann Markle wrote:
>
> >> This is not true. Hillary did get one less. And, as Eleanor pointed >>
> out,
> >> this is the way the political system works. The pundits, which I enjoy
> >> watching, have been saying for a long time that it's the delegates that
> >> count, and that's what candidates need to pay attention to. That's >>
> part of >> how Obama got it from Clinton in 2008. It pays to fact-check your
> >> sources,
>
> Keep in mind that Superdelegate came about in the 1980s in response to
> both the Nixon landslide against McGovern and Carter's loss to Reagan.
>
> It should be remembered that after the 1968 debacle in Chicago, McGovern
> spearheaded a committee that rewrote the rules so as to have the convention
> delegates all chosen by primaries, caucuses etc., rather than dictated by
> party leaders (like Mayor Daley, Tammany Hall, Segregationist holdouts in
> Mississippi and the like). But in an effort to regain power for the
> "grown-ups" -- superdelegates were added -- pstate party leaders, members
> of congress and the like so that a "runaway" like McGovern (or now Sanders)
> could not happen again.
>
> If one wanted to reform the election system, New York and California and
> Illinois would have February Primaries. But the fix is in -- the
> conservative South gets to pick the candidates for President and the
> legislators in those three states are perfectly happy to let that happen.
> It's one reason there's no such thing as a moderate Republican going to
> even try to run -- no Rockefellers or Scrantons allowed. And for Democrats,
> no McGoverns, Wellstones or even a Sanders -- need apply either.
>
> The big blow-up is going to happen when a Presidential candidate wins the
> popular vote by an overwhelming margin, but loses the Presidency because of
> the Electoral College. I'm not making any predictions, but one can easily
> see Trump or Cruz winning 55-60% of the popular vote because of 70-80%
> margins in the South and the few other states where fundamentalist
> Christians hold sway, but get trounced in the Electoral College because  of
> Democrats eke out wins elsewhere.
>
> You think things are divisive in America?  You ain't seen nuthin yet!
>
> Cheers,
> Jim
>
>
>