Caucus

After the Iowa Lessons for Liberals and Progressives from the Iowa Caucus I wrote this: Lessons for Liberals and Progressives from the Iowa Caucus. As the primaries progressed, it became clear to me that the Democratic Party was experiencing its own version of “Tea Party” activism and I wrote this: Bernie Sanders and The Emerging Progressive “Tea Party”. The…

Women’s Rights Women’s rights are rights that promote a position of legal and social equality of women with men. Some of the main people involved in the women’s rights movement were Betty Friedman, Gloria Steinem, and the judges in the Supreme Court in 1973. Betty Friedan published the book Feminine Mystique that attacked the popular notion that women during this time could only find fulfillment through childbearing and homemaking. The book described the problems of middle-class American women…

In 2002 Flint, the largest city in Genesee County, Michigan. Had a referendum to recall the then incumbent city mayor Woodrow Stanley, due to mishandling of the city budget which has piled to an outstanding $30 million city defect. (FRAMMOLINO, 2002) The city’s local government began to take on major financial blows after General Motors (GM) closed its doors to its Buck plant in 1999, adding to the city an additional 4,000 unemployed workers to the city’s unemployed work force. The average GM…

Actions and events that might not ever see the light of day in decades past can make or break people nowadays, with prying eyes and fast fingers located everywhere. Take for example the Nevada Democratic caucus. Without the ability to spread and share their wrongdoings, the amount of people aware of that situation would be substantially smaller than it was when it happened. There is an unprecedented amount of transparency available now, thanks to social…

The duty of the primaries and the caucuses allow the states to choose an early date on the nomination calendar in order to make their state more important during the nomination process known as “front-loading.” Currently, the first caucus in the US is in Iowa and the first primary is in New Hampshire. Every year each party holds a national convention to nominate its presidential and vice presidential candidate Delegates are elected to attend the conventions for each party, and they…

Westminster-style democracies to voice their constituents’ concerns in session, notwithstanding the politicized Question Period (QP), member statements, opposition days where the opposition controls the House agenda, parliamentary debates, informal lobbying in caucus or in all-party parliamentary groups, and the exceptional Private Members’ Business (PMB) to sift through the adversarial party system to gain enough cross-party support – and finally, of…

Political parties are organizations that run candidates for political office and coordinate the actions of officials elected under the party banner. There are many different types of political parties around the world. In Western European countries, the major political parties have millions of members and the party leaders are in control of what their elected officials do. In many new democracies, candidates run as representatives of a party but the party leaders don’t really have control over…

became Democratic strongholds by 1990 after the Republicans stopped appealing to socially liberal voters there. Overall the Democratic Party has retained a membership lead over its major rival the Republican Party (GOP). Today, the House Democratic caucus is composed mostly of progressives and centrists, with a smaller minority of conservative Democrats. The party's philosophy of modern liberalism advocates social and economic equality, along with the welfare state. It seeks to provide…

The United States election process is one of great importance and significance to the American government. Yet voting can be one of most confusing topics to its citizens. How does an election work? How does your vote make a difference in our county? What is the Electoral College and what is its purpose? These questions have been asked and thought of by many Americans for generations. As with everything in government, the process is much more complex than it seems. On the surface, electing a…

By 1787 it was clear that the Articles of Confederation were not working. Fifty-five men met in Philadelphia in what became known as the Philadelphia Convention to fix the Articles, or so they thought. Instead they realized that the Articles needed to be completely thrown out and a new form of government needed to be created, which turned out to be the Constitution. However, not everyone had the same ideas or wants for the new government. In the articles A People’s History of the United States…