Mic: What Dems still fail to understand about white women voters

CNN exit polling data shows Democratic candidates in key races in Texas, Florida, Georgia and elsewhere won overwhelming support from black, Hispanic and Asian-American women as well as men. But a majority of white women voted for Republican candidates in those same races. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) received 60% support from white women, compared to just 39% for his Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke. Fifty-one percent of white women chose Ron DeSantis over Andrew Gillum in Florida’s gubernatorial race. This political reality has persisted through election cycle after cycle after cycle after cycle over the years, vexing both liberal feminists and Democrats along with their grassroots allies in the process.[...]

However both male and female voters tend to place defending abortion rights low on their list of priorities. Another 2016 Pew study showed abortion placed 13th of 14 top issues for American voters regardless of sex. The economy, terrorism and foreign policy ranked first, second and third respectively among voters’ priorities, the study found. [...]

“Using gender politics for many Republican women can actually backfire,” study author Melissa Deckman said via email on Wednesday. “There are lots of white women who are pro-life and find the GOP more appealing for that reason; or they are more generally socially conservative and oppose LGBT rights, or are concerned about religious liberty. Moreover, they are very much opposed to feminism more broadly, which they view as a philosophy opposed to men, so attempts to frame a campaign about gender equality aren’t going to work.”

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Politico: Winners and losers from conservatives’ Helsinki lovefest

But the big prize comes with big risks. Weber becomes the man-to-beat for all the other EU political families, but he is also in danger of becoming ensnared in an institutional fight between the European Council and the Parliament over the “lead candidate” process itself. The Council has already said it cannot be legally bound to nominate a Spitzenkandidat as Commission president, as the Parliament has demanded. Weber’s lack of prior experience as a former head of state or government makes him particularly vulnerable to the Council going in its own direction. Resistance to the “lead candidate” process from the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe also raises the possibility that Weber’s time to enjoy his grand prize could be limited. [...]

Best Actor — Alexander Stubb: The former Finnish prime minister is an Ironman triathlete — and who better than a marathon runner to understand winning is not as important as getting to the finish line with your head high? Especially if you score a personal best. Stubb is virtually guaranteed a prominent role in the EU leadership going forward, perhaps as a digital czar, given his interest in the risks and opportunities of technological disruption. He will no longer be a target of opposition parties, and he faces none of Weber’s risks. If the Spitzenkandidat process unravels, Stubb could even emerge as a compromise candidate — someone who participated fully in the campaign, but may be more appealing to liberals and socialists than the conservative Weber, who is already being criticized as a longtime ally of Hungary’s self-proclaimed “illiberal” prime minister, Viktor Orbán. Stubb knew the EPP establishment was arrayed against him, but never resorted to criticism or complaint. In the EU, knowing how to lose is a winning trait.

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The Guardian: Pushing up trees: is natural burial the answer to crowded cemeteries?

Added to that was the environmental consideration. Modern cremators use the equivalent of 40 litres of petrol per corpse, on average – enough to drive from Sydney to Port Macquarie – while older cremators can consume twice that, according to 2011 estimates from the Department of the Environment and Energy. “It’s not that cremation of itself is one of the most massive polluters in our society,” Hartley says. “Motorcars, transport, planes would eclipse it, no problem at all – but when you think about it, it’s just a thing that we don’t need to do.”[...]

Cemeteries have long been preoccupied with the problem of space. There’s been talk of building skyward with multi-storey mausoleums and going subterranean with carpark-like catacombs; upright burials, feet first into deep graves, are on offer in Victoria’s Corangamite Shire. In a world-first trial at Rookwood, 120 pigs have been buried and exposed to additives in an experiment in speeding up decomposition in order to bury more human bodies in the same plots.[...]

Hartley wants the project to convey an optimistic message: the earth is surprisingly resilient. Decades from now, if all goes to plan, the pasture would be transformed by 20-metre tall eucalypts, including peppermints and snow gums, as well as tea trees, bottlebrushes, and acacias. People who want to be interred there would have their non-embalmed bodies placed in a biodegradable coffin or shroud and be buried at the minimum legal depth (90 centimetres in NSW) to promote natural decomposition. Native vegetation would then be planted on top and on another acre along Saumarez Creek. The idea is to restore a native wildlife corridor connecting Saumarez Ponds and Dangars Falls, a long-term goal of the Armidale Tree Group.

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Politico: Matteo Salvini, peacemaker (of sorts)

In an interview in his office in the Viminale, the interior ministry headquarters in downtown Rome, Salvini held out several olive branches to Brussels, which has been the main target of his anger since he was elected leader of the far-right League in late 2013. The one exception is the Italian budget, which the European Commission rejected for breaking its deficit rules.[...]

The 45-year-old, who has taken his party from 4 percent support when he became leader five years ago to 17 percent in March’s general election, to about 34 percent in the most recent polls (“for me that’s too high,” he said), reckons it’s clear that austerity budgets don’t work. [...]

Nor does Salvini believe that the Commission would ever cut EU funding to Italy, as some diplomats have suggested. “Italy is one of the [EU] founding countries, Europe’s second manufacturing power, they cannot treat us like Luxembourg [also a founding EU member],” he said.[...]

Sanctions on Russia, a country with which he has close ties, are “counterproductive and useless,” he said, adding that “we’ll try to convince as many countries as possible of how useless they are.” However, he said that at the December EU summit, when leaders will decide whether to roll over the Russia sanctions, “no veto” will be used by Rome. [...]

He said he still believes the single currency “has been an experiment that was socially and economically wrong” but at the same time “we are not in government to leave [the eurozone], or to destroy it. We work with what we have, we stay in the EU and in the single currency system.”

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Politico: The sack of Rome’s mayor

Since taking office in 2016, the mayor of Rome has been unable to clean up the city’s filthy streets and make its badly maintained transport system work. Last month a tube station escalator collapsed, injuring 24, including one man who lost a foot. Almost no one is pleased with her work. [...]

According to the 5Stars’ code of ethics, a conviction of any kind would result in her resignation. Yet while her boss, 5Star leader and Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio, and the movement’s founder, Beppe Grillo, don’t like Raggi, they also don’t want her to resign because they fear losing control of Rome to their coalition partner and chief political rival, the League. [...]

Before the 5Stars took over a major city for the first time, Rome was briefly governed by the center-left Democratic Party’s Ignazio Marino, and before that by the right-wing Gianni Alemanno. The latter is currently facing trial for corruption and Marino — who denounced the city’s systemic corruption to prosecutors, triggering the “Mafia Capitale” scandal — resigned over a restaurant expenses scandal.

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