Ny Safidinao

In the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, many analysts suggested that  Hillary Clinton  lost to  Donald J. Trump  because of poor Democratic turnout. Months later, it is clear that the turnout was only modestly better for Mr. Trump than expected. To the extent Democratic turnout was weak, it was mainly among black voters. Even there, the scale of Democratic weakness has been exaggerated. Instead, it’s clear that large numbers of white, working-class voters shifted from the Democrats to Mr. Trump. Over all, almost one in four of President Obama’s 2012 white working-class supporters defected from the Democrats in 2016, either supporting Mr. Trump or voting for a third-party candidate. This analysis compares official voter files — data not available until months after the election — with The Upshot’s pre-election turnout projections in Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. The turnout patterns evident in these states are representative of broader...

Former territorial governor Acevedo Vila calls statehood for Puerto Rico "insane" (The Hill, Jan. 12).  What in the ex-governor's own state of mind lurks behind such brash words?   As governor Acevedo-Vila and other anti-statehood leaders told disenfranchised U.S. citizens in the island territory that bias in mainland against Puerto Rico’s ethnic peoples made statehood impossible. He joined professors in teaching students when it comes to statehood, “The U.S. does not want us.” Anti-statehood leaders insist seeking equal citizenship rights through statehood or real independence is too difficult, and unnecessary besides. Instead, the ex-governor’s political party manifesto declares Puerto Rico a separate sovereign nation entitled to privileges of U.S. citizenship in perpetuity.    In this bizarre ideological narrative federal benefits are understood as reparations for discrimination under undemocratic territorial rule. In the name of “commonwealth” this ...

Strangled by an economic recession imposed by the United States, the Caribbean island is plagued by a mass exodus... Programme information Producer: WILD ANGLE PRODUCTIONS Country: France Year: 2016 Reasons for Anger

On Friday, Congressman Alan Grayson filed legislation Friday that calls for a Constitutional amendment that would give the Puerto Rican people the right to vote for President, and provide the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico with electors in the Electoral College. “Three and a half million Americans in Puerto Rico have no say in who serves as President of the United States,” Grayson said in his floor speech “Women and African Americans were once denied this same basic voting right. Now it’s American citizens who reside in Puerto Rico who suffer this disenfranchisement.” Grayson added that the solution is not unlike the District of Columbia when they were granted electors to the Electoral College, with passage of the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution. Like Puerto Rico now, the District of Columbia was not, and is not a state. The firebrand progressive is in his final weeks in office after losing a bid for Senate earlier this year. State Senator Darren Soto, a Puerto Rican will succee...

The last time Democrats awoke to find themselves completely marginalized, the year was 2004, and George W. Bush had just  been reelected , along with pretty much every other Republican in creation. Almost immediately, the party’s top donors and strategists settled on an explanation. They decided that they were losing because they lacked the campaign “infrastructure” the right commanded (think tanks, media watchdogs, voter files, etc.), and they immediately set about trying to build one. From that effort, hundreds of millions of dollars later, came groups like the Center for American Progress, which quickly became the party’s premier think tank; Media Matters, which now rules a small empire of rapid-response groups; and a company called Catalist, one of several new repositories for data on Democratic voters. (I wrote  a book  on all this, by the way, which seems like eons ago.) All these organizations were humming along at full capacity by the time Hillary Clinton w...

The island of Puerto Rico has long been held up in a seemingly endless debate over whether or not it should become the 51st state of the union, remain its course as a territory or free association, or obtain outright independence. The discussion traditionally heats up towards the end of each election cycle, with this previous election being no different. The incoming pro-statehood governor, Ricardo Rosselló championed himself as the last governor of the colony; smear campaigns painted his opponent as separatist and anti-American; and a mysterious PAC appeared seemingly out of nowhere in previous weeks to promote statehood. Finally, Rosselló vowed to initiate special elections as part of his “Plan Tennessee” to vote for federal senators and representatives; promising that statehood was right around the corner. Statehood is further away than ever but politicians still find ways to squeeze out political capital from promises of increased federal funding and prosperity. The statehood op...

Republican operatives spent four years warning that the party needed to diversify — or risk a blowout at the ballot box. Donald Trump spent the campaign trafficking in divisive racial rhetoric — and he won anyway. Now, those who pushed for a more inclusive GOP fear that their party will absorb the wrong takeaways from Trump’s win, and that the momentum behind efforts to expand the Republican tent to include more minorities and young people has evaporated. “I am very concerned we will take the wrong lessons from this,” said Whit Ayres, a veteran GOP pollster. “Trump showed Republicans could squeeze out one more presidential victory by appealing primarily to white voters, especially against a historically unpopular Democratic nominee. But counting on winning the Electoral College while losing the popular vote is not a strategy for long-term success in the new America.” Trump’s coalition included people who spanned the wealth, education, gender and age spectrums, unified by one them...