I submitted a comment to Top Comments on the 11th by a member named RevBobMIB. It focused on gerrymandering, but it highlighted a truth I want to revisit. RevBob said this:
The blunt truth is that the GOP holds the House despite the majority of votes going to Democrats, because REDMAP worked. Pack most of the Democratic voters into a small number of districts, then split the rest into 60-40 “safe GOP” districts, and the GOP doesn’t have to care what The People actually want.
Doesn’t. Have. To. Care. What. The. People. Actually. Want.
Man.
More below.
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That truth applies equally to Republican voters. Those voters may get what they want, but it won’t be because their representatives need them for anything. It won’t be because their representatives fear defeat in general elections because of fall-out from political moves the representatives make. In real terms, they have no accountability concerns, because their re-election is essentially guaranteed by this hideously undemocratic form of cheating.
A Washington Post column on Feb. 10 singled out the practice of gerrymandering as the single ‘biggest obstacle to genuine democracy in the United States.’ From its author, Brian Klaas …
On average, between 10 and 15 percent of Americans approve of Congress – on a par with public support for traffic jams and cockroaches. And yet, in the 2016 election, only eight incumbents – eight out of a body of 435 representatives – were defeated at the polls.
If a representative is elected in a ‘safe district,’ the article notes, there is ‘no incentive to compromise. Ever.’ In fact, compromising can result in an unwinnable primary challenge. So ever more polarized, ever more obstructionist trends develop, and pick up momentum.
But the article also states that it undermines citizen impact in the democratic process, which has perhaps one of the greatest long-term voter suppression consequences, since people feel their vote doesn’t matter.
I particularly loved the slogan on the t-shirt of an activist whose picture accompanied the WaPo article. It said:
Because voters should choose their elected officials.
Elected officials should not choose their voters.
A Slate article in January suggests judicial improvement could be on the way.
Legal challenges to Wisconsin’s extreme gerrymandering could result in legal blockage of the practice. The importance of the legal challenges can’t be overstated.
As that article notes (referring to the success of REDMAP, the Republicans latest strategy for gerrymandering-style cheating):
In 2012, Democratic House candidates won 1.7 million more votes than Republicans, but Republicans wound up with a 33-seat advantage—a clear result of gerrymandering. The imbalance was particularly apparent in Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, where Democrats won more than half the votes but less than half the congressional seats. A huge part of Democrats’ down-ballot collapse during the Obama era, especially in state legislatures, can be attributed to gerrymandering.
In other words it is not so much our failure to consider and focus on those contests, it is a reflection of the success of their strategic cheating.
The approach I use in discussing this is to emphasize Republican cowardice and refusal to compete in the ‘free market of electoral politics.’ They trumpet ‘free market to the skies, and on this playing field, so critical to the health of our country, their cheating acknowledges the bankruptcy and inadequacy of their political ideas, now taken to its ad absurdem extreme in Drumpf. His campaign declined at every point to offer ideas for dealing with the very real problems our country faces, and his penchant for secrecy and anything-but-transparent dealings only makes it worse.
No conservative I have ever spoken to had an answer for that criticism, for that clear political cowardice and underhandedness on the part of Republicans, and no Republican politicians can answer it, either. But neither do they usually have to, as they are never confronted with it.
On to tonight’s comments! Formatted by one of my best friends ever, brillig!
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