Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Loss of faith in our political leadership

This is a busy morning, three posts and I may not be done. Let me give a top of the morning hat tip to Lisa Taylor for alerting me to the latest Steven Hill OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Hill tries to answer the question "Why have Californians lost so much faith in their political leadership?" He does a pretty good job of marshalling the statistics to support the fact of such a loss. His references to the Public Policy Institute of California surveys. From them, he extracts the following facts:
There is a widening breach between most of the 35 million people residing in California and the fewer than 9 million who actually vote. Today, the California adult population is approximately 46 percent white, 32 percent Latino, 12 percent Asian and 6 percent black. Yet, 7 in 10 likely voters are white while only 1 in 6 is Latino. A third of California adults are foreign-born, but 9 in 10 who frequently vote are native born.
It is not much of a stretch to say that Hill is not wrong to ascribe a cause - effect relationship to this.

I do not have any such statistics, but rather just a gut feel, that there profile of the likely voter is nearly exactly the profile of the Green Party and that just maybe this is a reason why the Green Party is not benefiting from the disillusionment with the Rumpocracy.

Like Hill concludes concerning electoral reform...
The population of California is changing before our eyes, and so must our antiquated political institutions and practices. We should avoid timidity and act now. Our state can ill-afford any delay.
I would only substitue "party" for "state" above.

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