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The leader of the US Federal Election Commission, the agency charged with regulating the way political money is raised and spent, says she has largely given up hope of reining in abuses in the 2016 US presidential campaign, which could generate a record $10 billion in spending.
“The likelihood of the laws being enforced is slim,” Ann M. Ravel, the chairwoman, said in an interview. “I never want to give up, but I’m not under any illusions. People think the F.E.C. is dysfunctional. It’s worse than dysfunctional.”
Her unusually frank assessment reflects a worsening stalemate among the agency’s six commissioners. They are perpetually locked in 3-to-3 ties along party lines on key votes because of a fundamental disagreement over the mandate of the commission, which was created 40 years ago in response to the political corruption of Watergate.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Wednesday May 06 2015, @11:25AM
If merely being female magically got all kinds of other women to vote for the candidate, one of the female national third party candidates (like the Greens' Jill Stein) would've won by now.
Conservative or libertarian Blacks largely didn't vote for Obama in 2008; likewise, conservative women won't vote for Hillary if she becomes the Democrat's candidate in '16 as they've disliked her for over 20 years.
That Obama won the nomination in 2008 demonstrates that women didn't only care about gender. Black people only make up maybe 16% of the US population, so even if a large chunk of them weren't religious conservatives, non-Black (or even just White) women would've simply voted Hillary into the Democrat candidacy.
In case you've forgotten, the deciding factor for Obama was a mix of his team's groundbreaking use of technology to win over voters, boosted by his own charismatic ability to make voters feel he was their personal ally. They turned potential voters into his personal army of "true believers" thrilled to volunteer to help spread the word or donate to his campaign. Combine that with national sentiment swinging sharply against the Republicans in 2008, and it's not remotely surprising that he won. That's actually well-established and has been studied to freaking death from pretty much every angle, so it's going to return a more trustworthy result than guessing at the motives of someone totally different from you. ;-)
Right now, "supporting" any particular candidate is meaningless as we're so early in the proverbial game that we don't even know who most of the candidates are. A woman (or man) is likely to say that they favor Hillary simply because they recall liking her in '08; after 7 years, chances are they can't name details about her candidacy right off the top of their head, but they probably can't name five things Sarah Palin did that they'd thought were stupid at the time, either.
Finally, keep in mind that the minority of people that do vote for her based on gender (or who voted for Obama due to his race) are effectively just counteracting some of the people out there who will (or did) vote against them for the same reasons.
PS. You made a comment implying Black people voted for Obama due to being on support benefits; I just wanted to point out that according to our government's demographics tracking [statisticbrain.com] as of mid-April, White people take up 38.8% of the rolls and Black takes up only one more percentage point at 39.8%.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday May 07 2015, @07:49AM
Blacks have been outvoting whites since 2012 [cnn.com], and 96% of black voters voted Obama [politico.com], and again I get to actually talk to these people working retail....have YOU done any kind of "man on the street" style polling? I did with black folks in 08 and 12, and I've been doing the same for women and Hillary since she announced and in both its the same story, you ask "What are the policies of this person you like? What is it about them you support?"...crickets. HAND.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.