Get Ready for 8 Months of Negative Ads; Former Assemblyman Brian Nestande Has Died–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: March 7, 2024

Indy Digest: March 7, 2024

Well, the primary election is over … and now we have eight looooong months to go before the general election.

That means eight months of negative campaigning—and a lot of same ol’, same ol’ as far as election choices go.

Here’s how The Washington Post headlined its post-Super Tuesday story on the presidential choices: “The Biden-Trump rematch feared by many voters has now arrived.” The subheadline: “The contest between two elderly candidates, unleashing apocalyptic rhetoric at each other, will be one of the longest presidential campaigns in memory.”

Sigh.

The next eight months will not only be annoying; it may also be damaging to our democracy. Jared McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington, writes for The Conversation that the extreme negativity and polarization is turning people—especially younger voters—away from politics:

Having come of age during an era of high polarization, younger people are less likely to idealize politics and the right to vote. In prior research, my colleagues and I found that younger people worldwide were just as interested in politics as older citizens but were less likely to view voting as a civic duty. Protesting or joining an organization offers social benefits to young people—an opportunity to feel like they are part of something bigger. Voting, by contrast, is perceived as a more solitary act.

If younger American voters aren’t excited about the choices on the ballot, they may be more likely not to vote at all.

In a recent survey I conducted in collaboration with IGNITE National, an organization seeking to bolster young women’s engagement in the political process, we asked Gen Z Americans, adults born after 1996, what drove their disillusionment with American politics. Consistently, Gen Z respondents noted that the candidates appearing on the ballot did not look like them, contributing to their feeling of detachment from the political process.

And what does all this mean? McDonald writes: “This lack of engagement is dangerous for democracy. Voters who cannot evaluate the merits of contrasting policy positions, or who cannot accurately assign blame and give credit for the state of the American economy, will ultimately fall back on cheap cues such as partisanship to make their choices.”

This is a disconcerting time in U.S. history. We need a more informed electorate, not a less-informed one—and we are going in the wrong direction.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• Brian Nestande, a former member of the state Assembly and the husband of Palm Desert City Councilmember Gina Nestande, has died. Assemblyman Greg Wallis put out a press release earlier today. Here’s a portion of it:

• A woman and her 2-month-old son suffered minor injuries when a palm tree skirt fell on them over the weekend in downtown Palm Springs. Our friends at the Palm Springs Post have the details: “(Meghan) Brtnik remembers trying to shield her son from the sharp palm fronds. When the shock wore off, she said Benoit started crying, and she saw he had dirt on his face, in his mouth, in his diaper. He also had cuts on his head. Brtnik said her back looked like some wild animal had scratched it, and ‘it was bleeding like a wolverine had scraped me.’ … The answer to why some trees aren’t trimmed dates back to May 6, 2009, when the city adopted Resolution No. 22475 proclaiming the following: ‘All California and Mexican fan palms on public property must have their fruit pods removed; California fan palms should keep their skirts and fronds, only shearing enough to allow a minimum clearance of 12 feet and tidy the skirt’s appearance.’ … A city representative could not say whether the City Council plans to revisit the decision to trim the tree skirts. At a recent Main Street Palm Springs meeting, however, Mayor Pro Tem Ron deHarte acknowledged the issue was ‘a long and ongoing concern’ and said he would be in favor of having the conversation.”

• Thanks to anti-science vaccine denialism (with a big assist from Florida, well, being Florida), measles is becoming more and more common again in the U.S. Medicine/health-focused Stat News reports: “On Sunday, public health officials in two Michigan counties warned their residents that they may have been exposed to measles. … Both counties urged unvaccinated people who had been in the listed locations at the listed times to contact public health or their health care provider, warning them to phone ahead if they needed to seek in-person care. These kinds of notices are standard public health practice during measles outbreaks. Alerts of this sort may also warn that someone with measles had been in a crowded public location—an airport, a shopping mall, a theme park. But in Florida, where 10 residents and at least four non-residents have been diagnosed with measles in the past month or so, the Department of Health has released scant information about those cases. The seeming reticence to speak openly about measles leaves in the dark anyone in the public who might be concerned about whether they may have had an exposure. Likewise, people considering vacations to Florida who want to avoid measles exposures have almost no information on which to plan their trips.“

• Our partners at CalMatters report that more and more single-family homes are being bought up by corporate investors—a trend that has some state legislators concerned: “Defenders of the business model applaud the role it played in propping up local housing markets and quickly filling homes that would have otherwise sat vacant and derelict. Critics liken these investors to financial vultures depriving would-be homeowners of a shot at the American Dream while hoarding the profits of the last decade’s run-up in national home prices and rents. That debate ratcheted up again during the pandemic when millions of white collar renters, suddenly freed from the office, sought out more space further from the country’s urban cores. Today’s high interest rates have slowed that boom, but most analysts predict that the industry is here to stay, absent new restrictions. California may be the first to enact some. … Assembly Bill 2584, written by Assemblymember Alex Lee, a Milpitas Democrat, would ban an institutional investor from buying or investing in additional single family home properties and then renting them out. Senate Bill 1212, by Senate Housing Committee Chair Nancy Skinner, a Berkeley Democrat, would go a step further. It would ban institutional investors from ‘purchasing, acquiring, or leasing’ a single-family home or duplex for any reason.”

• A new federal regulation, being pushed for by the Biden administration, will cap most credit card late fees at $8. CNN reports: “The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimates the new regulation, first proposed in February 2023, will save families more than $10 billion a year by cutting fees from an average of $32. The new rule applies to large credit card issuers—those with more than 1 million accounts. These companies represent more than 95% of total outstanding credit card debt, according to the CFPB.”

• And finally … a man in Germany has gotten 217 COVID-19 vaccines. Yes, really. Time magazine explains that this man’s, uh, vaccine zealotry gave scientists a unique chance to see what in the heck this would do to a person. The verdict: “The researchers concluded that overall, while the man’s excessive vaccination history increased his antibody levels and apparently protected him from infection, hyper-activating his immune system did not seem to have a negative effect on his ability to mount an adequate response. At the same time, his extreme measures did not seem to afford him a level of super-immunity that distinguished his response dramatically from others who followed the recommended vaccination schedule. ‘His immune system was neither positively nor negatively affected,’ says (Dr. Kilian) Schober.”

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