Opinion: If Trump hatred doesn’t get L.A. to vote, what will?
Good morning. I’m Paul Thornton, The Times’ letters editor, and it is Saturday, March 11, 2017. Consider this perhaps your fifth but certainly not your final warning: Because this weekend will be 60 minutes shorter than the one before thanks to daylight saving time, don’t forget to set your clocks one hour ahead before going to bed tonight. Before we travel into the future Sunday morning, let’s take a look back at the week in Opinion.
Every few years Los Angeles seems to be getting closer to answering the question, “What if we held an election and no one showed up to vote?” You might have heard there was a countywide vote on Tuesday that included city of L.A. contests for mayor, several
Yes, the potentially catastrophic, recklessly anti-development Measure S deservedly went down in defeat, the homeless-services ballot initiative Measure H is on its way to victory (but only barely), and Los Angeles Mayor
Politicians and activists, eager to combat the usual off-year, off-season voter apathy, certainly tried to inject
Trump in the race.His name and face were everywhere and a part of almost every campaign. He was on mailers, mobile ads and door hangers. Candidates and interest groups worked overtime to show that their opponents were somehow supportive of, aligned with or of similar cast of mind to the unpopular man in the White House.
And after millions of dollars were spent making Trump the issue on everything from land use decisions to fixing potholes, Angelenos stayed home.
That could mean trouble for Democrats nationwide.
The message to liberals from the top down has been that activism starts at home; the Democratic Party is in so much trouble in part because Republicans have paid much closer attention to less glamorous races, like ones to control the city council.
Arguably, Tuesday’s election was the first test of Democratic energy in the age of Trump. Or, more precisely, the first test of whether that energy will manifest itself at the ballot box. The party’s core constituencies — urban progressives, Latinos, the last remaining unionized workers and the poor — are also L.A.’s core constituencies.
They came nowhere near to passing that test. Twelve percent is an F, even with grade inflation.
The question for Democrats: If these core groups in L.A. didn’t show up on Tuesday, will their counterparts elsewhere show up for the 2018 midterm? ...
The middle class is in decline. And as it declines, so, it seems, does voting. That’s the story of Los Angeles, but perhaps it’s also the story of the Democratic Party.
If Democrats want voters to show up — and they’ve long argued that when more people show up, they win — they may have to prove to people who have less and less of an economic stake in our society that voting really matters. And to do that, they’re going to have to do more than remind everyone that Donald Trump is in the White House.
Yay, Measure S is dead. But L.A.’s land-use policies desperately need fixing. The slow-growth ballot initiative tapped into the anxiety many Los Angeles residents have about their rapdily changing, crowded neighborhoods, and their distrust of City Hall over its relationship with developers. The message to the mayor and City Council members is clear: Update Los Angeles’ outdated General Plan, and stop running your districts like fiefdoms in which developers are too often granted exceptions to zoning rules. L.A. Times
To black Americans, Trump behaves like a classic Southerner. Erin Aubry Kaplan lists the president’s ethnic offenses — his ugly attitudes about blacks, his sense of white entitlement, his unapologetic attitude about his racial ignorance — to show why black Americans regard his presidency with dread. “Seeing our historical gains dissolve at the whim of white rage is all too familiar for black folks, which is not to say that the last two months haven’t been a shock,” Kaplan writes. “That Trump is not just another white politician but one who is spectacularly unqualified to be president makes the setback that much more racially charged, and ominous.” L.A. Times
It’s finally hot and dry in L.A., but the California dam crisis is far from over. A Pacific Standard magazine piece sums up all the federal and state negligence over the years that conspired to produce the crisis last month at the Oroville Dam, the nation’s tallest such structure. Finally — and after decades of deferred maintenance, slashed infrastructure spending and ignored warnings that the dam was structurally flawed — California is trying to play catch-up. Pacific Standard
Warning to Trump and the Republicans: The party that owns healthcare reform will come to regret it. Columnist
It already seems like a long time ago, but it happened only last week: Trump accused his predecessor of feloniously ordering his “wires tapped” during the campaign, and the evidence he produced to back up this bombshell accusation amounted to … nothing. Rather, the president seemingly based his allegation on a speculation-heavy article posted on the right-wing website Breitbart, and Congress appears ready to indulge Trump’s conspiracy theorizing by conducting an investigation of the Obama administration. This is unfortunate, says The Times Editorial Board. L.A. Times
Reach me: paul.thornton@latimes.com
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