Someone in another thread (could be this one, fuck it I've had too much wine) pointed out there's an inbuilt gerrymandered advantage to the Repubs of 9% in a lot of states. I wish I could say it was unique to the US but the Tories are trying that shit here in the UK too.
The number is 10% to 15%. Due to gerrymandering. That is in red states. That is how large the shift must be to over come gerrymandering.
Virginia is back to being undecided. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-poli...72/virginia-house-delegates-recount-democrats A three-judge panel in charge of certifying the recount’s outcome found that one ballot for the Republican candidate hadn’t been counted — but should have been. (The person filling out the ballot appeared to have marked it for the Democrat, but then crossed that out and marked it for the Republican instead.) So the race between Delegate David Yancey (R) and Shelly Simonds (D) is tied at 11,608 votes for each candidate. And under Virginia state law, that means the winner will be determined by a random drawing (scheduled for next week). Things are even more complicated than that, since according to the Washington Post, the loser of that drawing can request another recount. The gist is that we probably won’t know who won this race for a while— and, accordingly, whether next year’s Virginia House of Delegates is likely to have a 51 to 49 Republican majority, or a 50-50 even split between the parties.
Fun fact: Democratic candidates won 230,000 more votes in the last election, for a margin of 53% to 43%. The fact that this seat will make the difference between a 51-49 Republican majority or a 50-50 split shows just how much the Republicans have the state rigged.
Dave Wasserman (Cook Political and FiveThirtyEight) on Twitter is an essential follow on this subject. Among the things he's noted since the Moore election: As currently constructed, Dems have been posting aa +4% advantage in total vote but still don't control the House: Larry Sabato says a +4% will deliver the House which Dave disagrees with and suggests 7-8% He expressed agreement with Harry Enten's comment here: which was from February and essentially concluded the GOP's natural advantage is about 5.5 and that the trends suggest the Democrats need to win the overall vote by 8% to retake the House right now all the generic polling has the Democrats well into double figures. ETA - this is about the national House race, obviously some legislatures are much worse.
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/...uld-lose-both-house-and-senate-in-2018-report http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/...aring-midterm-disaster-seek-course-correction
Dems have repeatedly did well in generic polling only to fall completely apart when comparing actual candidates.
This is a big reason why McConnell is shitting himself and pushing back against the idea of gutting "entitlements" in an election year. Instead he wants to fuck over welfare and food stamps but not touch third rails like Social Security or Medicare the way Paul Ryan is cuming his pants to do. I am under no illusions that Mitch wouldn't love to do the same but he is a ground hog who saw his shadow and now wants to go back into hiding until after the election.
Put a fork in Latvala. He's done.. http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article190803584.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...plan-tax-signing-jan-3-due-to-technical-issue "Technical issue": Making sure the tax "reform" doesn't kick in until after the midterms.
no more or less so than any other attempt to analyze future outcomes. Should we just ditch all that and get up every day and say "Let's see what the fuck happens next?!"
Why don't people that scream about "gerrymandering" ask themselves how the Republicans ever got in the position to gerrymander in the first place? Answer: They did it by WINNING elections.
At this point, it's little different than taking a poll to see who people are going to vote for in 2032.
Yes, and when we give them free reign to do as they please it always turns out soooo well, doesn't it?
And the facts remain, in order to get ahold of the new tools to gerrymander, the Republicans had to win state legislature seats. The majority of them in many states.
Because the DNC was more interested in national elections than state, or local ones. IF they'd have put some effort into them, the political landscape in the US would certainly have some differences compared to what it has now.
Well damn. I guess that was their mistake wasn't it? Perhaps if the Democrats had not embraced the entire "demographic destiny" fiction then they might not have lost so much in so many places and be whining now for direct popular vote for president (something that will never happen).
A lot of this hinges on Dems getting off of their asses and actually bothering to go out and vote. That would be made easier if Dems fielded candidates who the electorate were actually excited about instead of boring insiders who are milquetoast career corporatists. Will the DNC understand that fact or will it be business as usual with more rigging of the primary process by elites? The refusal to more than just cosmetic reforms after the Hillary debacle got rammed down our throats says they still don't get it so maybe Trump deserves to win a second term even though he is such a shit sandwich. I mean if Dems refuse to clean up their act and get their shit together...
So you are a one election and done sort of guy when it comes to democracy? If not then not only do you not have a point but you seem to be missing the point entirely.
No. I'm an "elections have consequences" sort of guy. The big change in the Democratic Party came in the 1990s and it revolved around fundraising. When Bill Clinton was dominating the Democratic Party his people resolved in the words of one "not to unilaterally disarm" when it came to campaign finance reform. In this and similar veins the Democrats swore that they were not going to ever be "outspent" by the Republicans again. Partly this was inspired by the candidacies of Ross Perot in 1992 and the 1996 Republican primary candidacy of Steve Forbes which raised the prospect of an ultra rich person self financing a successful presidential campaign. A major irony given what happened in 2016. To avoid this possibility meant going after corporate donors big time. Naturally this to an extent transformed what was supposed to be the self described "party of the working man" to basically a "tool of Wall Street 2.0" (the GOP being the tool of Wall Street 1.0). The 1980s era failure of the major unions to deliver Democratic votes encourages this trend.
Gerrymander should be illegal because its only purpose is to subvert the democratic will of the people. You can't allow stuff like that to happen and still pretend to be a democracy.
Gerrymandering is required by the courts sometimes. Like in requiring "minority supermajority" districts to guarantee a certain number of legislative seats go to members of minority groups. Republicans can argue with considerable justification that if legislative boundaries can be required to be drawn to ensure a minimal number of minority legislators, given that the almost always caucus with the Democrats, the drawing districts to ensure the election of Republicans is equally justified.
