Stephen Ohlemacher, of the AP, explains how the GOP Has Built-in Advantage In Fight For The House, due to gerrymandering of congressional districts, they were able to redraw by winning state legislatures prior to he 2010 census. Their master plan was called REDMAP. Their first big payoff came in the 2012 elections when the GOP kept control of the House, despite Democrats winning more votes. Ohlemacher says this is only the second time this has happened since World War II. He believes their next big payoff will come this fall.
The project was called REDMAP, which stood for Redistricting Majority Project. It called for targeting statehouse races in states that were expected to gain or lose congressional seats following the census. GOP strategists reasoned that redistricting could have a greater impact in these states because there would have to be more changes to district boundaries, said Chris Jankowski, former president of the Republican State Leadership Committee, which heads up the party's national effort to elect candidates to state offices.
Republicans spent more than $30 million through REDMAP to help elect legislative majorities in states like Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Jankowski said.
The 2010 election was a disaster for Democrats. Voters were angry over bank bailouts, the poor economy, ballooning budget deficits and Obama's new health law, which had just passed Congress without a single Republican vote. All these issues fueled the rise of conservative tea party groups that backed Republican candidates up and down the ballot. ...
"I think Democrats made a terrible mistake. They did not put nearly enough attention or resources into legislative races at the state level," said Matt Bennett, a former aide to President Bill Clinton. "A bunch of these legislatures slipped by very narrow margins, and some of them flipped for the first time since Reconstruction in the South."
I recommend this article for all hard-core Democratic election experts, activists, and strategists. We need to discuss and act on many important points brought up here by Stephen Ohlemacher's excellent history and analysis. We must be planning already to take back state legislatures before the 2020 census as this situation is starting to get annoying. (snark alert!)
11:32 AM PT: Also, although Ohlemacher does not mention it here, my closing point was not intended to be that we should give up until 2020, but rather that we just have to try a little harder. The informal impression I've gleaned from our experts here and elsewhere in the Democratic Party is that the "break-even" point is about a 5% national poll advantage for us -- in others words, in the last presidential election if President Obama had won by 5% we could have approximately carried the House. I might be wrong about the specifics, and it could of course vary,
Perhaps, some of our experts here could clarify. There has to be some point at which we can win back the House. If may be improbable, and it may take a more heroic effort than usual, but remember in 2010, we went into the summer recess and the Tea Party came roaring out as a surprise.
I'd like us to imagine something similar. We need a more compelling vision for our ground troops for the 2014 election than "let's keep the slaughter to a minimum."