{"id":14094,"date":"2014-11-10T00:01:19","date_gmt":"2014-11-10T08:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=14094"},"modified":"2014-11-10T00:01:19","modified_gmt":"2014-11-10T08:01:19","slug":"oregon-leads-the-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/11\/10\/oregon-leads-the-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Oregon Leads the Way"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">As I have mentioned earlier, Oregon was the exception to the national disaster, and with good reason.&#160; We did what the rest of the country did not.&#160; We have a solid progressive government here, because we earned it.&#160; This is what we won.<\/font><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"font-family: ; margin: 0in; line-height: normal\"><font style=\"font-size: 12pt\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"1110Hood\" style=\"border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; float: none; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-left: auto; display: block; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; margin-right: auto\" border=\"0\" alt=\"1110Hood\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/1110Hood.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"516\" \/><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-family: ; margin: 0in; line-height: normal\"><font style=\"font-size: 12pt\"><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-family: ; margin: 0in; line-height: normal\"><font style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Oregon has mail-in voting, no serious efforts at voter disenfranchisement, and an engaged populace. Here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oregonlive.com\/politics\/index.ssf\/2014\/11\/oregon_ballot_turnout_as_of_no.html\" target=\"_blank\">the big one<\/a><font color=\"#0066cc\"><\/font>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-family: ; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.375in; line-height: normal\"><font style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Out of the 2.2 million registered voters in Oregon, <strong>69.5 percent<\/strong>, or 1,519,804, returned ballots.<\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-family: ; margin: 0in; line-height: normal\"><font style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Which is actually a point and a half down from the 2010 midterm. <\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-family: ; margin: 0in; line-height: normal\"><font style=\"font-size: 12pt\">And the result?<\/font><\/p>\n<ul style=\"margin-bottom: 0in; unicode-bidi: embed; direction: ltr; padding-left: 0px; margin-left: 0.375in; margin-top: 0in; line-height: normal\" type=\"disc\">\n<li style=\"margin-bottom: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin-top: 0px\"><span style=\"font-family: \"><font style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Despite a <strong>huge Koch cash dump<\/strong>, liberal Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley re-elected in a landslide.<\/font><\/span> <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul style=\"margin-bottom: 0in; unicode-bidi: embed; direction: ltr; padding-left: 0px; margin-left: 0.375in; margin-top: 0in; line-height: normal\" type=\"disc\">\n<li style=\"margin-bottom: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin-top: 0px\"><span style=\"font-family: \"><font style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Despite a <strong>relentless smear campaign by the state&#8217;s largest (but shrinking) newspaper<\/strong>, Democratic Governor John Kitzhaber re-elected to an unprecedented fourth term.<\/font><\/span> <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul style=\"margin-bottom: 0in; unicode-bidi: embed; direction: ltr; padding-left: 0px; margin-left: 0.375in; margin-top: 0in; line-height: normal\" type=\"disc\">\n<li style=\"margin-bottom: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin-top: 0px\"><span style=\"font-family: \"><font style=\"font-size: 12pt\">The Democrats&#8217; <strong>state House majority expanded<\/strong>.<\/font><\/span> <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul style=\"margin-bottom: 0in; unicode-bidi: embed; direction: ltr; padding-left: 0px; margin-left: 0.375in; margin-top: 0in; line-height: normal\" type=\"disc\">\n<li style=\"margin-bottom: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin-top: 0px\"><span style=\"font-family: \"><font style=\"font-size: 12pt\">The Democrats&#8217; <strong>state Senate majority expanded<\/strong> by the critical seat that will neutralize a conservadem who had been gumming up the works, with a second possible pickup still too close to call.<\/font><\/span> <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul style=\"margin-bottom: 0in; unicode-bidi: embed; direction: ltr; padding-left: 0px; margin-left: 0.375in; margin-top: 0in; line-height: normal\" type=\"disc\">\n<li style=\"margin-bottom: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin-top: 0px\"><span style=\"font-family: \"><font style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Marijuana easily legalized.<\/font><\/span> <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul style=\"margin-bottom: 0in; unicode-bidi: embed; direction: ltr; padding-left: 0px; margin-left: 0.375in; margin-top: 0in; line-height: normal\" type=\"disc\">\n<li style=\"margin-bottom: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin-top: 0px\"><span style=\"font-family: \"><font style=\"font-size: 12pt\">An equal rights amendment resoundingly passed.<\/font><\/span> <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul style=\"margin-bottom: 0in; unicode-bidi: embed; direction: ltr; padding-left: 0px; margin-left: 0.375in; margin-top: 0in; line-height: normal\" type=\"disc\">\n<li style=\"margin-bottom: 0px; vertical-align: middle; margin-top: 0px\"><span style=\"font-family: \"><font style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Top two primaries resoundingly rejected.<\/font><\/span> <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"font-family: ; margin: 0in; line-height: normal\"><font style=\"font-size: 12pt\">A couple of other good ballot measures failed, but overall this was a wide and deep sweep for Oregon <strong>Democrats, who continue to hold all statewide offices, and four of five Congressional seats<\/strong>\u2026<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Inserted from &lt;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/story\/2014\/11\/06\/1342546\/-Oregon-voter-turnout-was-69-5-and-Democrats-won-BIG\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Kos<\/a>&gt;<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Our vote by mail system makes a big difference, but we wouldn\u2019t have it, if progressives didn\u2019t earn it.&#160; You can be sure that big money pulled out all the stops to keep us from getting it.&#160; Oregonians are politically involved.&#160; Neighbors talk to neighbors.&#160; This year I helped five people fill out their ballots.&#160; I resisted the urge to proselytize a Republican.&#160; Two of the five did ask my opinion on candidates and issues and followed my advice.&#160; Like any other state, Bubba Bagger lives here too, but we make him sit in the back of the bus, and we never let him drive.&#160; Most important, we not ashamed of being liberals and progressives.&#160; We talked about the issues that matter.&#160; In spite of our disappointment that our President has failed to follow through on his promises far too often, we have not thrown him under the bus.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">And don\u2019t tell me Oregon has always been liberal.&#160; We weree the very last state in the nation to give up Jim Crow laws.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">So once again, Oregon leads the way.&#160; If you want your state to perform like ours, do what we did.&#160; For starters, replace the Republican dog catcher with a Democrat.&#160; Work up from there.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I have mentioned earlier, Oregon was the exception to the national disaster, and with good reason.&#160; We did what the rest of the country did not.&#160; We have a solid progressive government here, because we earned it.&#160; This is what we won. Oregon has mail-in voting, no serious efforts at voter disenfranchisement, and an <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/11\/10\/oregon-leads-the-way\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}