Thank you for the comprehensive evaluation of the election, Klaus, but you missed something important. That voter turnout was low does not excuse incumbents for showing poorly, neither should it diminish the one who garnered enough votes to win. Your disdain for the Governor elect (or the democrat loss?) ironically illuminates hope that forces beyond the pall of government can and probably more often make a difference. I guess losing any match to an inferior player encourages introspection. It can be revealing and to me it's always a lesson in leadership.
How things will turn out and whatever or whomever is responsible for the miracles that improve life for all - solar farms, bridges, social security, high speed rail systems, or fracking for that matter - one thing they have in common. It's leadership. It turns out, after all the analysis, people want leaders to do that. Leaders love that "sheepish" human nature and the great ones are willing to sacrifice something of themselves to move us along. And voters select winners often by tiny margins, suggesting that differences in leadership and parties are quite narrow too? Even so, never disrespect the electorate.
Of course those voters make mistakes, too, small and major, but disrespect, no. I tend to be seduced by politicians into the polls, and sometimes in spite of these questionable political affiliations, it really does make a difference. In all cases, the electorate says, this is the better leader. I always say, I know the better candidate in any election - the day he wins! I sometimes predict that after the election, admittedly.
-------------------------------------------
Allen E Neyman
Rockville, MD
-------------------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 11-07-2014 10:01
From: Nikolaus Philipsen
Subject: How does the Republican Mid-term Victory Square with the Age of Cities?
This message has been cross posted to the following Discussion Forums: Committee on the Environment and Regional and Urban Design Committee .
-------------------------------------------
How does the Republican Mid-term Victory Square with the Age of Cities?
Larry Hogan, the newly elected Republican governor of the progressive blue state of Maryland, explained the shock and awe that his election has brought to the defeated democratic electorate and parts of the media that he says dwell inside an echo chamber: "The pollsters and the pundits and the talking heads and the media all seem to talk to each other, and it creates sort of an echo chamber," Hogan said. "I was talking to Marylanders. What we were hearing, from everywhere, was an overwhelming sense of frustration." Urbanists and planners reading CityLab, Urban Land, and Brookings research may have wound up in just such an echo chamber, with references to millennials, urbanism, and the sharing economy ricocheting around and around. In this world view cool millennials sit in sidewalk cafes sipping lattes and designing a new society where Uber and transit replace the personal automobile, where innovation districts are springing up in aging warehouse districts, and issues of gender and race are a thing of the past.
The mid-term elections sent a sonic boom through this echo chamber, leaving progressives scrambling for cover and searching for meaning. 69 of 99 state legislative bodies in Republican hand, 31 Republican governors to only 18 Democratic ones. |
| Map of US House of Representative races 2014 |
After decades of anti-urbanity, urban flight, sprawl, and .....
Read full article
-------------------------------------------
Nikolaus Philipsen FAIA
Archplan Inc. Philipsen Architects
Baltimore MD
-------------------------------------------