Part of me is still thinking, “fine, let people discover that total republican rule means subsisting on whatever rodents they can catch.”
But I really think republicans are overplaying their hand here. There’s some indication that, in trying to erase blue districts, they’re making many red districts more competitive. I’m not going to be Pollyanna about it, but I’m not convinced all is lost yet.
And I don’t think Grindr Mike is doing them any favors by keeping the House of session indefinitely.
It all comes down to whether democrats can get behind a strong message of health care, wages, and cost of living.
Prop 50 is going to win big in Cali, and it's fun to hear all the repub whining about the unfairness of it all. This, coming from the same guys who were always crowing about "elections have consequences" before this hit the fan.
Those four or five extra seats aren't going to amount to a hill of beans next year when there's a BLUE TSUNAMI forming off the coast of DC. Dems won HUGE in 2018 and that was only in Trump's first term which looks like a school rendition of "Schindler's List" compared to the outright jackbooted fascism we're witnessing today.
"Even if blue-leaning California, Illinois, New York, Maryland, and Virginia all succeed in re-districting in time, that still leaves Republicans with an advantage of between two and six seats."
I would contest that number. Y'see, Republican district "gains" will happen in states that are already heavily gerrymandered. Pressing that further is fraught with the risk that it will make other, currently safe districts dangerously close, especially in a wave election. In fact, some of these Republican redistricting schemes are getting pushback from Republican incumbents for this very reason.
For example, I expect that the "even offset" between Texas and California will actually turn out to be a net gain of one or two seats for Democrats in an actual election.
Republicans are counting on Latinos to vote heavily in favor of them next November. That is NOT a safe assumption to make. In fact, Latinos are RAPIDLY abandoning the Republican Party as their communities get ripped apart by Trump's ICEstapo goons.
TIL that one anagram for Cleta Mitchell is "Tall Hectic Elm". What a piece of 💩 she is, as are all the rest of the fashy vote suppressors/oppressors/intimidators.
If I were a betting man I imagine that Prop 50 will somehow be unfair to California according to SCOTUS in ways that all of the gerrymandering in red states is not.
I'd love to see the GOP sue to stop CA's redistricting, and then CA demand that ALL these redistricting plans get combined into one case and presented to the SCOTUS Six. Make them decide an "all or none"......
Without getting too recondite, redistricting might be accomplished by the two political parties agreeing to use some form of the cake cutting algorithms used in social science. I don't know if anyone has written a paper on this as applied to redistricting but it is fascinating to speculate.
That the house numbers would shift only by the number of newly gerrymandered districts assumes no blue wave like we had in 2018, that the people now wouldn’t be even more pissed off than they were by the Republican 2017 Tax Scam Act.
Point. I read an article somewhere which postulated that the TX redistricting could backfire, because they only have so many kommitted kultists and this enfuckening spreads them thinner than they were. So instead of all the “heavily-favored” GOP districts they used to have, they had to divvy up those folk and now they have a number of only “lean Republican” districts. And given that areas of the country which voted Grampa Assmouth by 10% or more in the past are now voting Blue, 🤞.
The math on extreme Gerrymandering is that in order to have more seats, you have to mix up the precincts to make the seats closer, but still keeping the party in power in the majority in more districts. So some districts have to shift from "safe Republican" to "lean Republican." The problem for them is that while it works out for them in an average election, in a wave election, it results in more flipped seats rather than fewer. Here's hoping all those concerned and disturbed independents vote against Republican extremism and flip a bunch of those new "lean Republican" districts.
I assume they will add voter suppression to their plans in order to stretch their thin majority. Here's hoping the good guys will be able to counter it.
From the editor's letter in The Week: "Chief Justice John Roberts, behold your dysfunctional handiwork. In 2019, the Supreme Court had a precious opportunity to restrict or ban gerrymandering—the antidemocratic dark art of drawing bizarrely shaped election districts designed to ensure that only one party can win. But in a 5-4 decision, the conservative majority ruled in Rucho v. Common Cause that while partisan gerrymandering may be “incompatible with democratic principles,” federal courts cannot manage the “political questions” created when legislators give their parties unfair advantage. In her fiery dissent, Justice Elena Kagan predicted that the court’s cowardice would enable further “polarization and dysfunction” that “may irreparably damage our system of government.” And so it has."
Marcie, I love your essays but this one has me reaching for my Zoloft. It's so depressing to see how the Republicans will rig the votes to give themselves a permanent house majority and there's NOTHING WE CAN DO TO STOP THEM.
I don't want to live in a Republican run country. Maybe it is time for the West Coast to join Canada.
We ABSOLUTELY can stop them by VOTING. Remember 2018 and how a record number of people turned out to vote? Next year's midterms are going to be WAY worse for Republicans.
I absolutely hope so. 🙂 But I'm a board-certified, professional grade paranoid doomer and I can't rule out the possibility that under some specious "national emergency" excuse, Trump might declare martial law and suspend elections. The worst thing is that his lapdog Supreme Court would likely let him get away with it, since Roberts seems to want to return the country to the male white privilege Ozzie and Harriet 1950's.
Ta, Marcie. They can't make people vote for them, so they're doing their best to make sure people can't vote. It's an outrage.
Part of me is still thinking, “fine, let people discover that total republican rule means subsisting on whatever rodents they can catch.”
But I really think republicans are overplaying their hand here. There’s some indication that, in trying to erase blue districts, they’re making many red districts more competitive. I’m not going to be Pollyanna about it, but I’m not convinced all is lost yet.
And I don’t think Grindr Mike is doing them any favors by keeping the House of session indefinitely.
It all comes down to whether democrats can get behind a strong message of health care, wages, and cost of living.
Prop 50 is going to win big in Cali, and it's fun to hear all the repub whining about the unfairness of it all. This, coming from the same guys who were always crowing about "elections have consequences" before this hit the fan.
A soundtrack for this article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc1uDRJTvf0
Those four or five extra seats aren't going to amount to a hill of beans next year when there's a BLUE TSUNAMI forming off the coast of DC. Dems won HUGE in 2018 and that was only in Trump's first term which looks like a school rendition of "Schindler's List" compared to the outright jackbooted fascism we're witnessing today.
"Even if blue-leaning California, Illinois, New York, Maryland, and Virginia all succeed in re-districting in time, that still leaves Republicans with an advantage of between two and six seats."
I would contest that number. Y'see, Republican district "gains" will happen in states that are already heavily gerrymandered. Pressing that further is fraught with the risk that it will make other, currently safe districts dangerously close, especially in a wave election. In fact, some of these Republican redistricting schemes are getting pushback from Republican incumbents for this very reason.
For example, I expect that the "even offset" between Texas and California will actually turn out to be a net gain of one or two seats for Democrats in an actual election.
Republicans are counting on Latinos to vote heavily in favor of them next November. That is NOT a safe assumption to make. In fact, Latinos are RAPIDLY abandoning the Republican Party as their communities get ripped apart by Trump's ICEstapo goons.
100% of this white person disapproves of him.
37%?!? wtaf
TIL that one anagram for Cleta Mitchell is "Tall Hectic Elm". What a piece of 💩 she is, as are all the rest of the fashy vote suppressors/oppressors/intimidators.
https://wordsmith.org/anagram/anagram.cgi?anagram=Cleta+Mitchell&t=500&a=n
Pick your personal fave, yo
If I were a betting man I imagine that Prop 50 will somehow be unfair to California according to SCOTUS in ways that all of the gerrymandering in red states is not.
I'd love to see the GOP sue to stop CA's redistricting, and then CA demand that ALL these redistricting plans get combined into one case and presented to the SCOTUS Six. Make them decide an "all or none"......
They can't do shit about it. Redistricting rules are determined at the state level, as are elections.
Without getting too recondite, redistricting might be accomplished by the two political parties agreeing to use some form of the cake cutting algorithms used in social science. I don't know if anyone has written a paper on this as applied to redistricting but it is fascinating to speculate.
That the house numbers would shift only by the number of newly gerrymandered districts assumes no blue wave like we had in 2018, that the people now wouldn’t be even more pissed off than they were by the Republican 2017 Tax Scam Act.
Point. I read an article somewhere which postulated that the TX redistricting could backfire, because they only have so many kommitted kultists and this enfuckening spreads them thinner than they were. So instead of all the “heavily-favored” GOP districts they used to have, they had to divvy up those folk and now they have a number of only “lean Republican” districts. And given that areas of the country which voted Grampa Assmouth by 10% or more in the past are now voting Blue, 🤞.
I REALLY REALLY REALLY hope Texas Republicans just fucked themselves in the ass over this.
They may have fucked themselves by diluting their vote in some districts that will be competitive in a -7 R election… make it so!
The math on extreme Gerrymandering is that in order to have more seats, you have to mix up the precincts to make the seats closer, but still keeping the party in power in the majority in more districts. So some districts have to shift from "safe Republican" to "lean Republican." The problem for them is that while it works out for them in an average election, in a wave election, it results in more flipped seats rather than fewer. Here's hoping all those concerned and disturbed independents vote against Republican extremism and flip a bunch of those new "lean Republican" districts.
I assume they will add voter suppression to their plans in order to stretch their thin majority. Here's hoping the good guys will be able to counter it.
From the editor's letter in The Week: "Chief Justice John Roberts, behold your dysfunctional handiwork. In 2019, the Supreme Court had a precious opportunity to restrict or ban gerrymandering—the antidemocratic dark art of drawing bizarrely shaped election districts designed to ensure that only one party can win. But in a 5-4 decision, the conservative majority ruled in Rucho v. Common Cause that while partisan gerrymandering may be “incompatible with democratic principles,” federal courts cannot manage the “political questions” created when legislators give their parties unfair advantage. In her fiery dissent, Justice Elena Kagan predicted that the court’s cowardice would enable further “polarization and dysfunction” that “may irreparably damage our system of government.” And so it has."
I'm shocked.
Roberts and the rest of the gang of six cowards have a lot to answer for.
Marcie, I love your essays but this one has me reaching for my Zoloft. It's so depressing to see how the Republicans will rig the votes to give themselves a permanent house majority and there's NOTHING WE CAN DO TO STOP THEM.
I don't want to live in a Republican run country. Maybe it is time for the West Coast to join Canada.
We ABSOLUTELY can stop them by VOTING. Remember 2018 and how a record number of people turned out to vote? Next year's midterms are going to be WAY worse for Republicans.
I absolutely hope so. 🙂 But I'm a board-certified, professional grade paranoid doomer and I can't rule out the possibility that under some specious "national emergency" excuse, Trump might declare martial law and suspend elections. The worst thing is that his lapdog Supreme Court would likely let him get away with it, since Roberts seems to want to return the country to the male white privilege Ozzie and Harriet 1950's.