Long past due
They don’t even want “Fair”
The republicans want the status quo where a 50/50 vote yields 2/3rds of the seats.
Meanwhile in Georgia, we have a race between Brian “Jim Crow” Kemp and Stacey Abrams. It is a race that could well delineate old and new Georgia. Real Clear Politics has this race listed as a tossup.
Enthusiasm for this election has been in evidence at the polling locations. Waiting times to vote have averaged an hour or more. My wait to vote clocked in at an hour yesterday. In some areas, the wait has been much longer, as long as three hours.
It is difficult to see these many people waiting in line to vote for the status-quo. It certainly was the case in 2008, the last election with long lines, when a sea-change in the political landscape occurred.
I love your name/image…i count it as Monty Python and it’s ranked #3 on my favorite’s list (way better than Meaning of Life).
I think/hope that 2018 will follow a lot of the 2017 special elections where MSM and pollcasters saw one thing (no chance, Dem!) while people on the ground in those states had a more accurate view (we can win this!).
I think Robert Reich pretty much nailed what is coming
The Trumpification of America hardly ends if Democrats take over the House or possibly the Senate. Trump will blame them for everything that goes wrong. He’ll make up problems they’re supposedly responsible for. He’ll ridicule them and call them traitors.
He’ll do the same to anyone who shows serious interest in running for president against him in 2020.
Trump and his Republican enablers will fight back, condemning Democrats for weakening America, engaging in fishing expeditions and witch hunts. Trump and his lawyers will tie up the subpoenas in court, claiming executive privilege.
Aspiring Democratic candidates for president will join in the brawl.
Opinion writers, editorial boards and pundits will argue over the best ways for Democrats to proceed against Trump — going low or going high. Pollsters will tell us which Democratic candidate is seen as being most effective against him.
But all of this is a giant trap. It accepts and enforces Trump’s worldview that nothing is more important than Donald Trump, that he embodies all that’s good or bad about America, and that our most significant choice is to be for him or against him.
It allows Trump to continue to dominate the news and occupy the center of the nation’s attention.
We’d talk about nothing else for two years. We won’t be discussing how to restore wage growth, get health insurance to all Americans, reverse climate change or get big money out of politics.
We won’t be envisioning how a new America can widen opportunity, expand voting rights, end racism, reduce poverty and work constructively with the rest of the world.
We won’t be aspiring to be more than we were before Trump. We’ll debate and dissect the damage done since Trump.
Of course Democrats have to fight him. But they also have to lift America beyond him.
The central question shouldn’t be whether we’re pro- or anti-Trump, or whether we go low or high in fighting him.
The question is where America should go — and what we, together, can become.
Naturally, Democrats will want to defend themselves. Naturally, they’ll also want to attack Trump.
If they flip the House, they’ll use their subpoena power to dredge up whatever dirt on him they can find — summoning his tax records, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Mueller’s investigative findings — and perhaps even beginning impeachment proceedings.
Given Republican demonstrated inability to govern, their willingness to run cover and interference for #treason including attacking any institution, their attacks on America going back fifty years (Trump is simply willing to be open about what they are), I am arguing that “fairness” has no place in 2022 redistricting.
You don’t equitably share power with someone who is intent on and demonstrated their willingness to destroy you.
You destroy them.
Very topically -
Trump et al are engaged in Stochastic Terrorism.
Words matter. Framing matters.
Consider this:
- Faux, InfoWars, Breitbart, etc spent decades programming human WMDs.
- Trump’s rhetoric since 2015 has been arming the human WMDs.
- Now they (all of them) are triggering the human WMDs.
Think about that. Republicans are waging a proxy war against Democrats and anyone else who’s not a True Believer.
For some reason (cough #MichelleWolfWasRight cough) our “free” press refuses to call it was it is.
So let’s use the correct term: #StochasticTerrorism to describe what our press won’t.
This happened in the first place because Democrats sat on their butts in 2010.
For those states under Democratic control, there should be three political policies that should be passed:
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Process to fix and prevent gerrymandering
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Automatic voter registration, incentives to vote (early voting, etc.), even free and easy Voter ID
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If your state has passed Convention of States legislation, withdraw that.
The article did not mention NC. We have a Democratic governor and if the 2020 election takes away the Repug super majority, we could have fair maps here also, which should yield several more House seats where the Dems have a shot at winning.
Good luck from over here in Texas!
This article is good, but it’s also trapped in the horse-race mentality. Very little hint of how massively immoral the GOP continues to me in insisting on “One white man, two or three equivalent votes.”
Stopping the gerrymander of state legislatures also helps to prevent a future 2030 gerrymander. Those statewide seats are so important, because they help decide future national House seats.
Democratic-led statehouses are the key to future Democratic gains in the country with turning back voter suppression efforts at the top of the list.