The Party Platform Propositions on the Ballot Were Designed to Manipulate and Divide Us

If you want to see vivid proof of the collapse of the center in American politics you don't have to look any further than the ballots a small percentage of us filled out on Tuesday for the primary election.Traces of this destruction were not to be found in candidates listed on the ballots, however. It was a primary election and voters indicated beforehand whether they wanted to fill out Republican or Democratic ballots. It was in making that choice that one was also directed to vote Yes or No on a particular slate of propositions that the parties each put forth for the approval or disapproval of their voters.The returns from these are shocking in what they reveal. Each of the propositions on the Democratic slate passed by typically 97 percent. Some of the Republican margins of approval were less stark, but only by comparison. Here, too, one found approval on the order of 96 percent, making the dip to the the occasional 87 percent look like a real nail-biter. Of all the propositions proffered to Democrats for their approval, none received less than 92 percent support. There was even a 99 percent support for one, a number that I don't think I've ever seen on a ballot that didn't have Saddam Hussein's name listed as a candidate. Republican opposition never rose above 35 percent, and that only once. Most opposition was in the single digits.  Continue reading...