Itâs also worth noting that if Democrats win the House and Senate today, we can stop this un-American anti-voter power grab bullshit in its tracks with legislationš through oversight, judicial review, or whatever it takes.
So, while probably no one here needs the reminder:
VOTE!
(šFor some inexplicable reason, I thought the CRA would allow Congress to block some department rule-making without being subject to presidential approval but I was wrong (as noted by georgeh below). So weâll find another way to block it.)
P.S. To any who worry about the odds against us in the Senate, who worry about being overly optimistic, I will quote Josh Marshall:
⌠We donât know the future. As an historian, I know we donât even really know the past. I wrote this the day after President Trumpâs election: â⌠Optimism isnât principally an analysis of present reality. Itâs an ethic. It is not based on denial or rosy thinking. It is a moral posture toward the world we find ourselves in. If everything seems great, thereâs no need for optimism. The river of good news just carries you along.â
Our commitment to our values and to our country, which we express through political action, is an ethical commitment, not a read of the odds. âŚ
Be optimistic today, at least until we know the outcome. And, once again, remember to vote.
Cheating:
The only path to success for the slowly dwindling Republican base.
Policy? Who needs it when youâve got your thumb on the scale
Maybe we can count undocumented people as 3/5ths of a person. That worked out well before, amirite? As I read it, the Constitution requires a decennial count of the population of this country, without regard to citizenship. Typical Republican attempt to cheat.
Somewhat unrelated to the topic here, I hope all of you in your rural red districts take your time in the ballot box to read everything very carefully 14 maybe 15 times before casting your votes. You wouldnât want to make any mistakes and if the person behind you has to wait, then I guess they will get to experience it is like to vote in certain blue districts in say Missouri or Ohio or Kansas. .
Just got back from voting. Good luck today everyone, letâs do this!
Apartheid for breakfast anyone?
Felons (who may or may not be American citizens) are not permitted to vote, but they are certainly part of the census count. Maybe Trump can pardon them all so the GOP can discriminate against the brown ones.
The term âgerrymanderingâ was coined to describe a process by which naked political power was used to further entrench the power of those engaging in the process. The founders of our country gave us the rights to free speech, to assembly, to redress of grievances, to a free press, and the entire electoral process of choosing our representatives as ways of promoting our informed self-government as a republic. If they did not wish us to govern ourselves, they would have given us a one-party autocracy. It is, after all, far more time and effort efficient than a democratic republic. The only people whoâve spoken favorably of gerrymandering since the term was coined were those who would gain further entrenched power by its application. Our country was not designed to have a permanent one-party majority created by the shameless exercise of temporary political power to convert it into permanent political power, it was designed to be a republic wherein the merits of public policy positions would be allowed to rise or fall of their own weight. We settle our political differences with the ballot box, not the ammo box; we right our personal wrongs in courts of law, not on dueling fields. That a practice existed at or near the beginning of our republic should not control whether it is allowed to persist; if it were, we would still allow slavery. We as a country recognized from the beginning that cynically applied brute force should not be the determiner of our collective ethos; we should now evolve beyond sheer brute force as we have evolved beyond owning one another. Yet some would now tell you that gerrymandering is not the institution that has been ridiculed since the founding of the republic; shame on them.
So the idea of a citizenship question is an end-run around that provisionâŚif you intimidate people into not filling out the Census form by planting in their heads the idea that theyâre being âwatchedâ, then youâve effectively dropped them out of the Census without ever having to amend the Constitution.
It is a cunning plan.
Filed this story away in my âvoter fraudâ tabs.
As a public health researcher I actually use census data. I can assure you that the citizenship question will foul up more aspects of life in this country than people can even imagine.
The Trump Court will authorize the citizenship question. There will also be a campaign to inflate the census results to favor the GOP.
What can we do? Simple. Play by the same rules as the GOP. When fascism is on the rise and on the threshold of seizing power, you really, really donât respond with a strategy of virtuous powerlessness. Itâs a disgrace that we canât control the House without a 7-8% superiority in votes, canât control the Senate without an exceptional turnout.
Dems must not debate this stuff, but just act.
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Win the presidency in 2020 and if necessary amend or postpone the census.
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Use our redistricting power after 2020 to gerrymander blue states and level the playing field nationally. Also, statehood for DC, PR at the first opportunity.
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Make it a crime to suppress votes.
go team!
Who uses census data? Right off the bat I think of: public health folks, economists, business people, city planners, dept of transportation people. Who else can you all think of?
Actually, no. The President still has to sign legislation in order for it to become law. And the Republicans can still filibuster in the Senate.
No matter what happens tonight, a tiny portion of the population will still control the Senate, even if only with veto power by filibustering.
No democracy, no justice.
So Iâm horribly confused/underinformed. If you are not a citizen, you canât vote legally anyway so I donât see what difference this makes.
Somebody âsplain me please
Census Day is 1 April 2020: 45* will be residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on Census Day (barring an MI, CVA, or a Senate conviction on a House Bill of Impeachment). We wonât be able to stop the Census, but taking back the House will allow the Commerce Committee to make Wilburâs life a living hell.
The problem is that conducting a census of 330M people is not something done on the spur-of-the-moment. Weâre already past the deadline for fixing questions on the census forms. I hope that the Census Bureau has had sense enough to delay printing until the matter of the citizenship question is fully adjudicated. Knowing the GOP propensity for wasting money, I expect theyâve already started printing (and will use that an argument that they should be allowed to ask the question this time).