In other news, MISC and decline-to-state voters grew by almost 2000.

It's pretty obvious. As the country becomes increasingly more educated, so it becomes more liberal. The only recourse left available to Republicans is to attempt to further restrict voting rights as much as they can.

dear happy s.
nice try. but a huge swing and miss. the country is becoming less and less educated. and the public schools along with most colleges have predominantly big-government loving leftist teachers as they indoctrinate their students.

you sound as if you've been thoroughly indoctrinated. is there any hope for you? i dont know but for starters, i suggest you reading "ameritopia" by mark levin. (it is a nyt best seller but the nyt, nor the mainstream media are happy with its success.

What is meant by "more liberal" anyway? Laissez faire is liberal!

Dear huh,

So sorry, but you appear to have been left behind. All objective indicators show the country is becoming increasingly educated, and more and more women are getting college degrees as well! And, yes, of course many of our teachers are leftist. Teachers and professors today require advanced education.

I started reading Ameritopia by Mark Levin, but I found such right-wing, hate-filled, conspiratorial hysteria a bit too much to stomach. Also, I do not appreciate how wealthy conservatives buy books such as those by Levin, Coulter, Hannity, and Palin by the tens of thousands in order to send them to backward readers in the rural hinterlands.

Dear Stacey,

Your confusion suggests that you also seem to have been left behind. Yes laissez faire WAS liberal, back in the 19th century when liberalism was understood to mean support only for that government which was needed to keep big private interests in check. But liberalism has gone through many semantic shifts over the years, and you can thank the GOP for rebranding the term over the past several decades. What I and most educated people mean by liberalism is support for human diversity, namely, an ethic of care for those in need of assistance (children, elderly, disabled, those who have faced systematic discrimination based upon skin color, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, and more). Liberals believe that instituting fairness for these peoples, where fairness has been historically lacking, is requisite for a healthy democratic order. What I and most educated people mean by liberalism is support for a government large enough to protect those in need of assistance, thereby ensuring that private interests (corporations, the upper classes) do not use their unequal resources to exploit or oppress the less advantaged in our society. In short, liberalism today is coterminous with the political agenda of the Democratic Party.

Hence, I reiterate: As the country becomes more educated, it becomes more liberal (i.e., supportive of Democratic/democratic policies). With greater education there arises a push toward greater democratization, not less democratization as tends to be embraced by the GOP and its scare mongers like Mark Levin. I might humbly suggest that "huh" and "Stacey" seek out additional educational venues.

*yawn* A concise response to a simple request for clarity to your ambiguous use of a term suffices.

I responded, quite concisely I might add, to your request. But I also felt a need to rescue you from your conceptual confusion. "Laissez faire is liberal!" I mean, really Stacey. Given your short attention span, I'm beginning to understand why you seem to be prone to such confusion.

Seems to me the real answer is 15,263 are democrats and 24,333 aren't.

Oh look at that. I'm being rescued from someone's assumption. How cute.

KR, doesn't your, um, "real answer" exclude the increasingly outnumbered standing of Republicans? Why the omission? Is this on account of your own variant of, um, objectivity?

In addition to education being a key variable, I'd also emphasize age. I mean old white people can only live so long.

I'll log off now, as too many words tend to put Stacey to sleep.

Oh, dear me, Stacey. Does it take a student like myself to explain to you adults that YOUR TRUTH CLAIM --- "Laissez faire is liberal" --- is quite a bit different than SOMEONE ELSE'S ASSUMPTION. Not cute, not clever, and really pretty lame. Now, please scurry back into your hole before you further embarrass yourself.

HS, no omission. Could be those not registered as either party could swing either way--just saying I don't see an overwhelming majority. I know people in town, for example, who register as undeclared and switch back (either D or R) for the primaries. Not a particular win or loss for either the Dems or Reps.

Oh, I see. KR is simply engaging in wishful thinking. But of course on her, um, logic, it seems that Dems would have the greater desire to switch parties to vote in primaries than do Reps. And so, in that case, using her own, um, logic, the disparity between Dems and outnumbered Reps may be even greater than the current numbers would indicate. Thanks for suggesting this!

You're a student?! You best get to bed then since it's a school night, dear. And don't forget, have sweet dreams of rescuing me from your assumptions.

When you assert that "Laissez faire is liberalism!" (your own words my dear woman), you are ensnared in your own conceptual confusion, not my assumptions. I tossed you a life preserver, but you seem to have slipped too far beneath the surface to take advantage of my rescue effort. So sorry. My hunch is that this happens to you quite often.

You are right about one thing, though. I should have been asleep two hours ago. Big chemistry test tomorrow!

I said that? REALLY?! I could have sworn I wrote "Laissez faire is liberal". Oh right. I did. And guess what? It still is liberal. Wow, so much trouble to just get a sense from you of what you mean by "the country is becoming more liberal". What? More open, more free? Clearly I have my answer now. You meant "more left-wing".

I wonder how free the educated youth of today are feeling as they are burdened with debt from easy credit student loans, high public debt baby-boomer pensions, and little hope of paying it all given the high unemployment rate amongst that age group.

Happy Student, you are sharp as a tack and do your teachers proud. However, please consider being more respectful of your elders. Your arguments are strong enough to carry the day. Sticking your vanquished opponent with repeated personal jabs gives them no room to gracefully acquiesce to the excellent points you raise. Best of luck on your chemistry exam.... Sheldon Changjan

HS, OK. More Dems by 2,000; and 11,000 who may or may not change that lead. What matters is who shows up and how they actually vote. For example, though fewer in registered numbers until recently, maybe more Democrats actually voted or enough others voted for a Democrat. I'll go look at the county site. I was just pointing to the fact that those 39,000 votes move around.

Happy Student; your superiority complex tells us all we need to know about the success of your indoctrination experience. Keep posting because more people need to see what you're about.

The indoctrination FNORD experience clearly conditioned HS to have no other definition FNORD for the word liberal than "liberalism" FNORD.

Sheldon,

Funny, I would think a teacher to be quite upset if a student tried to pass off a misquote or other misrepresentation as a truth claim. I had a professor stop two students in the middle of their presentation and take a break to get some fresh air and calm down after the two students based their entire project on a fictionalized biography of Billie Holiday and acted like they didn't know it was fiction. What grade do you think they got?

Don't feed the troll---you all know by now that the pontification posted as 'happy student' is once again the diarrhea of the keyboard produced by gollum/mittens,etc.
"What I and most educated people mean by liberalism is support for human diversity, namely, an ethic of care for those in need of assistance (children, elderly, disabled, those who have faced systematic discrimination based upon skin color, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, and more)." Wow, which way to your utopia? When you're not busy saving the world and patting yourself on the back for it, is trolling your only other hobby. I'm sure it must be difficult for you to type all this drivel with only one hand free.

Yes, it is obvious that Pleasanton is becoming increasingly left wing loon. That is how we wind up with a city council that has 4 our of 5 members that are loons, including The Three Stooges. That is how why we have so many years with a hippy dolt as Mayor. All signs are that that The Hippy Mayor will run for Congress and that the loons will actually elect the dolt. The sad thing is that as Pleasanton has become increasingly left wing loon, it's attractiveness as a place to live has been degrading. Pleasanton is becoming more like main-stream northern California, where residents are bailing out by the millions to other states, only to be replaced by immigrants that largely vote left wing loon. The degradation of Pleasanton is going to also be degraded by low-cost housing being rammed up our rears by Gov. Moonbeam Brown. That's why we are getting the h*ll out of while the getting is good and before housing prices go completely into the dumpster.

Yeah happy student!!!! They (republicans) really don't get it. You are very educated which makes them crazy. It is assumed that we are as democrats are all poor, illiterate pieces of trash who have lost our way. Some of us genuinely care about our fellow "man" and want to see that everyone is treated fairly and humanely.

"Also, I do not appreciate how wealthy conservatives buy books...."

As if no democrat can afford a book, really? But that's what we're supposed to buy into, I assume.

So confusing. I thought, according to all the liberal rhetoric, that only republicans were wealthy, yet by the post, Dems have lots of money too, and apparently more then the Reps by the registration numbers. So there are rich Dems, well I'll be....learn something new everyday. Guess I'll change from undecided to Dem since that seems to be the "in" thing to do. I'm sure it will make me feel all tingly inside.

Wow, all the hate. Thats what is destroying
America these days. We all want the same thing, a prosperous country. How we get there is a different story. More personal responsibility less gov. intrusion, help to those who can't help themselves, or a progressive nanny state, where big brother tells us how to live. There needs to be balance, we have none at the moment.

Hey folks, we have an open primary now. Any Republican can vote for any candidate. You don't have to play hopscotch registration games.

There are two parts to this that need improvement, in my opinion:
1) more citizens need to register and vote, estimating that 50,000 are eligible to register in Pleasanton, hoping that those not yet registered are more moderate, and
2) more citizens need to register for one of the two main parties, no matter your political persuasion, to participate in the primaries, where the general election candidates and eventual winner are chosen. Until CA has open primaries, please register in one fo the two main ones.

Decline-to-state registrations are increasing in California as we're becoming a more post-partisan society. CA has partially open primaries. You can request a ballot for a different party only as long as that party offers one to non-partisan voters for that election. The Republican primary ballot this coming election does not seem to have a non-partisan ballot. Another option for post-partisans is to get involved in the Americans Elect organization: Web Link

Both parties have their share of rich and poor, though the right also gets the benefit of the vast majority of corporate support, which out-weighs the spending power of unions.

But I think the key difference is that the poor on the right vote against their self interest, while it's the rich on the left that vote against their self interest.

Corporations mostly support both parties except for Saban Capital Group, Newsweb Corp, Time Warner, DLA Piper (a defense industry law firm), Disney, Vivendi, and Goldman Sachs.

Let's see, corporations supporting mostly Republicans are Amway, Koch Industries, Exxon Mobil, MBNA Corp, Chevron, UST Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb, Union Pacific, Wal-Mart, BP, GlaxoSmithCline, etc.

On the fence there's AT&T, Microsoft, Citigroup, JPMorgan, GE, Lockheed Martin, Verizon, Bank of America, FedEx, Boeing, AFLAC, Comcast, Anheuser-Busch, Raytheon. Funny that Bear Stearns, AIG, Fannie Mae, Goldman Sachs, and Lehman Brothers all show up in the list as slightly ahead in donations to Democrats.

From "Top All-Time Donors, 1989-2012" Web Link

That massive time span is irrelevant as times have most certainly changed, not just in wealth distribution to the top 1% but also the Citizens United ruling.

And with that, where's the tally of the secret, un-traced money that is flowing in huge numbers from billionaires into the conservative PACs these days, like Karl Rove's little baby...American Crossroads.

Web Link

Pff, as if there are no super PACs for Democrats...

But you do bring up another policy subject that badly needs reform: campaign financing.

How can you say the electorate is more educated now, when the present day voters keep voting for things they cannot pay for (like high speed rail), things that already exist(like more bonds for cleaner? water), and for the party line instead of the best possible candidate.

California was originally populated with people with little education but a lot of common sense. Now we have a population with education but little common sense. One population produced the greatest state in the union, the other is making sure that it doesn't stay that way.

FYI: Stacey has been laid off because she spends all of her time on these boards and not enough time doing her menial labor. She will be free to respond with her misguided opinions and prejudices.

(Just kidding. Stacey is a helicopter parent with nothing better to do.)

The republicans are smart enough to take the money and run. We are smart
enough to get while the getting is good. We left 6 months ago. Sold our house
In record to a nice family from China. Made a terrific profit and moved to a red state.
If you feel so strongly about your social issues you should have no problem
paying for them all yourselves.

Sounds like all the Tea Partiers are hightailing it out of Pleasanton. I'm sure they're scared of the growing diversity in town.

I am not registered with either party but vote for the best candidate (or should I say, the "lesser of two evils?". In 2008, I voted for Obama but this year, if Romney gets the nomination, I will vote for him.

So Happy Student, many in Pleasanton are like me: we refuse to register with either of the parties since they are both screwing up big time. Yes, the extreme right is awful but so are those who like you, seem to think that liberal is the way to go.

Whatever happened to being moderate? Extremes are destroying this country (yes, the Palin followers as much as the Obama camp)

"One population produced the greatest state in the union, the other is making sure that it doesn't stay that way."

What is destroying California:

1) Unions
2) unsustainable pensions
3) prop 13
4) the growing government spending and welfare for all mentality
5) financing illegals instead of deporting them
6) harder to go to College as tuition is going up and universities cut staff but keep their six figure income for "executives"

Hey "Student" get a job, leave your parents basement and then pontificate...

"Funny that Bear Stearns, AIG, Fannie Mae, Goldman Sachs, and Lehman Brothers all show up in the list as slightly ahead in donations to Democrats."

Don't forget Solyndra, who donated big time to Obama and received in return, half a billion dollars from the government, just to turn around and file bankruptcy due to poor financial management (but its execs got good compensation packages while many were laid off. And do you hear Obama talk about this? NO!)

american-elect, insures Obama re-election! Just like Perot insured The kid from LittleRock beat Papa Bush.
American-elect has moderate Huntsman pitted against avowed SOdcialist Bernie Sanders. It just screws with the real election and backfires. Don't screw around and experiment with our country.

resident,
i submit to you that birg democrats and "moderates" (including rinos like mccain, bush) have been the ones screwing up our country. we so not have any time left for dems and rinos to experiment with America's future.

the only antidote to saving our country is conservativism which i define as holding true to the US Constitution.

"the only antidote to saving our country is conservativism which i define as holding true to the US Constitution."

The solution is to be fiscally conservative but socially moderate.

Bush Jr was a liberal as far as spending goes and backwards (ultra conservative) as far as social issues - the wrong combination.

I laugh at how the GOP rallies the base with talks of "freedom" and yet they are the ones threatening freedom of choice (abortion, etc), and that is how people like Santorum (who would not win in November because the only people voting for him are the Palin type followers) are actually suppoted by the base.

Bush Jr was not a moderate. He was a very irresponsible liberal spending guy with very backwards ideas as far as social issues go (he appointed Alito to the Supreme Court, that says it all). And his dad, well the apple doesn't fall far from the tree...he appointed Clearance Thomas! and was horrible as far as spending.

McCain was not a good choice because of Palin (I know you do not believe that but...), and I personally do not think that fiscally he would have been that much different from Obama. So in 2008 Obama was the lesser of two evils because at least he did not have a backwards moron like Palin on his ticket

btw, he guy the GOP so much admires (Reagan) also spent big time and raised taxes...

Stacey and Kathleen,

You two are the gifts that just keep on giving. Bless you!

P.S. Will you be my chum?

hey resident,
"freedom of choice"???!!! I am not referring to the "freedom to kill" ... in this case babies. I am referring to babies' "freedom" to live.

Somehow you pro-death socialist/marxist democrats don't understand freedom of the individuals.

huh,

that is the problem with the extreme right, which you seem to be a part of. You define freedom in a way that benefits your religious beliefs. That is why crazy folks like Santorum will never win in a general election - they only appeal to the very extreme people who do not believe in birth control (or evolution...), and who believe that a woman who was raped must not be given access to the morning after pill. Luckily, the extreme right (base of the republican party, followers of Palin, Rush's audience) is not big enough to win an election.

Hopefully the GOP will not pressure Romney into selecting a VP choice that will alienate all but the base (happened with McCain)

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