I’m sure I’ve heard this song before. These kinds of stories can make people think “well, that’s okay then” and not vote when the time comes.
Being the worst president in US history with sycophants comitting impeachable offenses and war crimes daily does that.
One point that I don’t think gets enough attention: gerrymandering gets more districts for a party by chipping into districts usually held by opposing parties. That dilutes the strength a party has in each district.
Can you imagine if the R’s gerrymandering drive ends up gaining Democratic districts because they stretched their leads too thin? That may have been part of the reason Indiana didn’t move forward with it.
That’s called a dummymander and it has happened in the past.
It took me awhile to understand what you were saying. So basically, you’re watering down any leads in existing locations because there are more democrats in the places the republicans are trying to take over. They might lose a bigger area. I hope this happens over and over again.
Correct. Gerrymandering means several different specific ways to cheat by drawing the districts, but one way is taking a district that’s going to be a blowout for you—say, you’re expected to reliably get 88% of the vote—and sharing that 88% with a nearby district, where you’re expected to get maybe 37%. If you draw the lines right, you can get two districts where you win with 66% of the vote, instead of winning one and losing one.
But why stop there? 88% is a huge lead, and in first past the post it doesn’t matter how much of the vote you get, so long as you get more than the next most popular candidate. It may require some truly unhinged district drawing, but what if you could get, say, five districts where you’re going to win with 46% of the vote, due to a strong (but not strong enough) third party spoiler candidate? Now you’ve spread out the voters in that 88% area and used them to bolster four other districts that you were going to lose (or were going to be competitive) into solid and reliable wins, or at least turn solid victory for the opposition into a competitive contest.
Except, oops, the guy at the top of the ticket is a literal supervillain except without any superpowers, and now it’s starting to weaken that original 88%. Now, instead of one blowout district, and instead of five solid wins, you’ve got, maybe, two competitive contests and three solid losses. If you’d left well enough alone, you might’ve still been able to win that blowout district with 58%, but because you got greedy you’ve lost everything.
You’ve got a point for sure but that’s not what gerrymandering means… that is one example of gerrymandering. You could just as well have gerrymandering where a district is constituted by areas which did not previously form a majority of the now-winning party.
True, and I guess I’m not sure which one is more prevalent, but this one is the one I hear most often.
Exactly that. Sorry if my wording sucked!
It wasn’t your fault, thanks for talking about it. I just didn’t understand the implications that it could go wrong for either side.
Well I hope Democrats give it an honest try in all these red districts.
Bleak for Republicans = good for america
= Good for the world
And Canada
As is tradition
After so much has been lost or damaged, while good and necessary, it seems very late. We’ve got Israel destroying its neighbor and Trump about to give Putin everything he wants. I don’t know how things will actually go, but it seems like any victory now will be among the ruins.
Edit: Not to mention all the problems at home, like the travesty ICE is.
If we get trump out, and the Dems don’t prosecute like mad, it will never be ok. Justice needs to be so strong no one tries this shit again. Major overhauls need to happen at all levels of government.
I have very little hope for any of this
yay for liberal democracy!
Keep it quiet until the democrats win, otherwise they start more propaganda to sway kids
“What, our policies that screw the majority of Americans and favor the extremely wealthy and corporations are unpopular? Unthinkable!”
So light-red is replacing deep-red… I’m not really very excited about that.
This is partially why the world is so fucked. People who care, often utterly refuse to be pragmatic, and expect change to always be sweeping, and happen in an instant.
This is what is responsible for the US getting to where it is. They repeatedly allow democrats to lose, and therefore pull the same cycle of losing, having everyone see how much worse republicans are, and then having the democrats walk back some of the damage the republicans did.
People are so naive and angsty, they feel they need to punish the democrats for not doing what they’d like, and only end up punishing themselves, over and over and over again.
The obvious, only pragmatic way to look at this, is that you need them to keep winning so that they cannot backslide, and then you need to use primaries and state and local politics to actually shift them leftward.
Literally nothing else is practical or will work, but people on this site would rather rant about issues than fix them.
If the only solution is democrats never losing then it’s not a workable solution.
They will lose at some point, and we need to be prepared for that and not let it completely undo any changes they’ve managed to squeak through with only the presidency and a supermajority in both houses.
When they lose it needs to be cause they were not left enough they need to lose I. Primaries when they fail to support the leftist positions we need.
If that’s not workable, then it’s not going to work, and eventually it will break. I don’t like it but I didn’t design this system.
When they lose it needs to be cause they were not left enough they need to lose
This idea that you can punish the DNC by having them lose, is a foot gun.
They are 100% happy with that and it absolutely would not cause them to shift even a centimeter left. If anything, it will shift them right.
The DNC wants to please their corporate donors, and only wants to win half the time.
You want to punish them? Replace them slowly using primaries, state and local politics.
Anything else is shooting yourself in the foot by misunderstanding the incentive structures.
I didn’t mean “when they lose to Republicans, it needs to be because they weren’t left enough” I meant “when they lose an election, it needs to be because there was a farther left candidate that won”
Conservatives need to never win an election again in my lifetime. Maybe if the Republican party moved left of the Democratic party, or if a third party gained popularity and was left if the Democrats.
But realistically, it has to happen in primaries.
Sorry to say but it’s going to break
I think significant progress could be seen if they could win 4 times in a row with at least one senate super majority and house simple majority stretch near the end.
Republicans made sure we can never have another FDR
Oh, I whole-heartedly agree - pink is better than red, and it is moving the dial in the correct direction. But still I can’t bring myself to be happy about corporatist victories. Only relieved that they’re gaining ground.
Yeah, deep red districts aren’t the first place to look. They’re too unlikely to go blue no matter how disgusting and incompetent the president.
They stole the last one, and if they don’t enact martial law for midterms, they’ll just steal that one, too. Kamala had the intel and the power to force the issue, but stood down.
Politicians have recently admitted they’re afraid of AI-driven 25% unemployment rates and the resulting civil unrest.
My money is literally on this being bipartisan theatre to establish infrastructure that can quell said unrest. That was before they admitted it. Do what you will with this take.
Edit: Think of it like this: If covid-era interest rates are a parachute, someone’s gotta damage the plane engines first so the parachute gets deployed…
This embarrassing bullshit has to stop. How can you not see the damage you’re doing? The gift you are giving MAGA?
Uh, what? You think the down ballot anomalies in all swing states is normal? Say it out loud so we can have a conversation around your cognitive abilities
