Discussion: Obama To Take On Redistricting In Post-Presidency Project With Eric Holder

Obama and Holder are going to face tremendous push-back, from one of the most powerful and effective Republicans in the nation: Gerry Mander.

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Agree wholeheartedly.

Priority has to be in getting traditional Democratic voters out for the midterm. Some people denigrate PBO’s background as a community organizer. I’m not one of them. It’ll come in very handy for this project.

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Obama was always a strategic thinker with the long view. These two are our best chance to see this through and break the Republican stranglehold on the democratic principle.

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Nice point - he has been and I would be wiling to bet he has a little list of the things he knows we are going to have to do to rescue this country from the GOP.

Your ability to marshal evidence and speak thoughtfully about it is Trumpian. Perhaps sub-Trumpian.

Nah.

I’m not at all like you.

And you are lying about Obama, who has been one fo the most consequential presidents in US history.

This is the best news of my day.

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“…you need to vote in Democratic politicians at the state level…”

Yep, and that’s why we should try to get the practice outlawed at the level of the Sup Ct.

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“one fo the most consequential” - REALLY! Wow!! I had no idea. True he got the sub-par Obamacare passed. Possibly Hillary will be able to save it. It’s sinking fast. What else did he do? He banned private prisons, which I think was good. He didn’t close Gitmo.

What else? Of course, he extended the OPT program, which has cost hundreds of thousands of US IT/STEM workers their jobs - did you know (I’m sure you don’t) that OPT employers get a tax break? They get a tax break to hire foreign scabs instead of American workers. Thanks, Obama. Also he revised the H-4 program to allow wives of H-1Bs to get jobs. 100,000 more foreign workers. In Obama’s 2 admin, every single added job can be accounted for by a foreign worker.

Another great revolutionary act he made was instituting the 29 hr week. Because Obamacare calls a full time worker a person working 30 or more hours, hundreds of thousands of jobs now cap workers at 29 hours/week. Thanks, Obama.

Also he greatly expanded the “drone-strike” program, in which we kill American “enemies” from the sky by visual identification. Now that’s a program which is the hallmark of the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, isn’t it? Did you know that EVERY single person killed by a predator missile was the second in command of ISIS? Every single one!! It’s amazing.

He looks good on TV, and has a fine jump shot. He hasn’t done SHIT for the American worker.

You’re as full of shit as a two-hole outhouse.

As per usual, you have no argument, not even a bad one. Just ad hominim stuff. You’re a pathetic excuse for a liberal wackadoodle. My opinions are based on clear evidence. Yours - spleen, invective, and bad judgement. Have a nice day!

“I belong to no organized party…”

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Your only skill is psychological projection.

Still true!

(A few years ago, I was a delegate to my state party convention. During the chaos I ran into Barney Frank on the floor. I said to him, “Barney, Will Rogers was right.” He just nodded.)

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I don’t discount your statement at all. Completely agree. The billionaires shifted elections.

However… I am of the firm opinion that the DNC and Democrats in 2010 and 2014, in general, were flaming idiots and cowards… their actions lent more power to the Koch’s spending.

In 2014 especially they distanced themselves from Obama and the factual positive results of 6 years of his policies, trying to play both sides of the field and as a result, appeared like weak willed and unsure… versus the Republicans that were tripling down on lies, failed policies and intolerant propaganda. Voters perceived the Dems actions as weak and Dems were destroyed in elections they should have won.

I put a lot of blame on the DNC for failing to keep a consistent message and unity. The Repubs have thoroughly demonstrated why this is important.

Although I’d like to agree, my impression is that gerrymandering is sorta in the eye of the beholder, i.e., it’s gerrymandering if you’re against the ropes, and it’s redistricting if you’re wearing the belt. How to ban it? We’d have to define the specific effects, intents and methods of a technique that has survived umpteen major demographic shifts in this country and more than just two major parties, and none of which have ever been willing to let go of the option for fair-weather use.

There’s hope to be had. In the recent federal decision against NC voting restrictions, a clear intent and method was apparent to justices in that the legislature demonstrably ordered research on black voting habits, and “with almost surgical precision” restricted those prevailing methods. Similarly it should be possible for a court to catch a redistricting committee looking for where black people live and drawing as many lines through that area as possible. All that’s required is a paper trail…in an age of less and less paper. But when Democrats do this to white people in increasingly majority-minority cities, as they have done, they’ll be culpable as well.

I trust Mr. President to take this task up with an even hand, clear eyes, and with honor…although in no small way he must have a bone to pick.

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I think Dems underestimated how long-term the GOP “strategery” could be prior to 2010. They were stuck in the old election-cycle thinking, while the GOP was calculating that if they poured their money into local races, they could win themselves a long-standing majority by gerrymandering every state they could get in their grasp. By outspending the Dems at the local level in 2010, they got control of statehouses and governorships in enough cases that they were able to control redistricting and eventually get a difficult to break majority in the House. The Senate has wavered back and forth depending upon presidential politics (fingers crossed this year), the House is now a tough nut to crack without redistricting.

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This is a rabbit hole for this thread but still. I am amazed at comments like this… you seem to forget the exponential escalation of healthcare costs prior to the implementation of the ACA. While expenses continue to go up, and flaws continue to be identified… the ACA has helped far more than it has harmed. Just the pre-existing condition component is world changing to many people.

The ACA has flaws and holes. Competent and ethical politicians of the GOP could have campaigned and lobbied to address these issues over the last 7 years. But instead the GOP has ran a platform for 7 (!!) years to obstruct and repeal the ACA. At times, causing millions of their own constituents higher healthcare costs.

The GOP has control of the Senate and the House, they could have passed bill after bill (ones to fix the ACA flaws or even ridiculously partisan ones to slowly tear down the ACA) tweaking the ACA that Obama would have been forced to accept or veto. Which would have been bad optics for Dems in general. They chose all or nothing and got nothing.

So if you have a real issue with the ACA… the true failure rests with the GOP.

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Since you are a veritable Gish Gallop of lies, I will only take on one of them. According to official numbers (blah, blah, blah, cooked gummint statistics, blah, blah, blah aside), per capita health care costs doubled during the lovely Bush years. Since then, they have only increased by about 15%, so ACA has been wildly successful at bending the cost curve. Now, some people out there intentionally confuse the cost of healthcare with the premiums charged by for-profit insurance companies who are desperately trying to maintain their historically high, obscene profit margins even in the state exchanges. They do this to suck in the dimwitted who then blame ACA for the ridiculous price increases, which are totally on the insurance companies. Now the GOP made sure the ACA was structured in a way that separated the exchanges from the other healthcare programs (Medicaid/Medicare and SCHIP), because they wanted to protect the enormous profit the insurance companies were making there. But, of course, shrinking the pool leads to higher costs and more volatility in pricing, and now those same GOP buttfucks are trying to make political hay out of their own poison pill. And shits like you come along to try to exploit it at the retail level of blogs like this, fancying yourself some sort of well informed contrarian, rather than a tool of the GOP.

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In all of the darkness of Trump lately, this is a truly refreshing and hopeful piece of news to me. Gerrymandering is a tough nut to crack but we’ve now got good people on it.

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