I wonder if this is really holds water anymore. Certainly it’s what I want to believe is true and it’s the path I’d rather walk. I applaud Michelle Obama for having said that “when they go low we go high”. But more and more it looks like this is not enough to win elections.
We’re now beginning to see the GOP embrace tactics used by the Russians in the 2016 election. There are a few “Fake News” sites set up by GOP campaigns like the Nunes campaign and another by a GOPer in Maine.
I’m not saying that progressives should stoop to these levels, just that we must acknowledge them and firewall them as effectively as possible. Recognize that there is a hard core base of perhaps thirty percent that chooses to be willfully ignorant and that these rubes will never vote Democratic. But their screeching needs to be muted as gracefully as possible.
I really hope he pulls this off. I’m donating and phone-banking for him, and he probably gives Dems their best possible shot at winning here. But be prepared for a moral victory: he could get a 15-percentage point swing from 2015, and still lose by five percentage points.
The proposed Republican map was also not “adopted” by the legislature. It was just suggested by a cohort of Republican lawmakers. It certainly wasn’t signed by the governor, and I am pretty sure that in no state can a law be adopted by a legislature without the signature of the governor, unless the legislature overrides the veto. It’s like the legislature wants to eviscerate every other aspect of the legislative process that doesn’t involve the majority doing whatever it wants.
Just in case anyone here is unfamiliar with legalese, “intriguing”, “resourceful”, and “creative” are almost always pejoratives. They are polite terms (legalese is almost unfailingly polite on the surface), but you really don’t want to hear a judge describing your brief in those terms.
The Republican Party has a platform that can’t prevail in democratic competition. This is one of the big themes of this book, and why I think this situation is so dangerous. When highly committed parties strongly believe [in] things that they cannot achieve democratically, they don’t give up on their beliefs — they give up on democracy.
they’re like democracy terminators, they just keep coming until they’ve accomplished the mission.
Having made many trips to PA since I was a kid, this is a very fair map for the people of PA. That Democrats may get a net benefit in 2018 just underscores how gerrymandered the prior map was, and that PA just ain’t that red. The key thing about the new map is that districts are aligned to county and region voting patterns. There’s no more slicing and dicing of Philly and Pittsburgh to attach a piece of a county like Bucks to a larger GOP sliver like ice cream on a cone.
Voters in Chester and Delaware counties each get their own member of Congress. Berks County gets its own member of Congress. Montgomery County gets its own member of Congress. The Lehigh Valley has its own member of Congress. NEPA gets its own member of Congress. SW PA, North West Central PA, North Central PA are GOP voting and get their own members of Congress. Pittsburgh gets divided appropriately - SW PA - deep red, gets its own member and doesn’t dilute Pittsburgh’s vote. Pittsburgh city gets its own member and the Pittsburgh suburbs get their own without being too diluted by harder red GOP districts. Erie has its deal in NW PA. Harrisburg will be swingy.
This is a fair map for the people. It will likely result in a 9-9 map, with a shot for Dems to get to 11-7 (or better). That pickup means that the Dems have an easier lift to win the House, but the correct way to look at this is that for the last 6 years, the GOP had seats it didn’t deserve due to partisan gerrymandering. This is a legally enforced correction.
Two issues jump out to me. The “win at any cost” directive is the fuel that drives the objections over losing this case. From a legal standpoint, as mattinpa underlines, the basis for appeal remains an exercise in creative argumentation. Any argument waged before any higher court premised on the point that this decision has caused harm to the GOP is spurious, at best.
The second point that seems abundantly clear to me: Republicans cannot exercise what they see as their birthright, to possess power. Power is the agenda. Nothing else. Arguments either in favor of the contorted electoral map or critical of the court’s decision read like a litany of shrill butt-hurt excuses.
No, this decision will harm the GOP – that’s not questionable. But the decision harms the GOP because they violated the PA constitution to gain an illegal advantage in districting.
What’s more, they had the opportunity to correct the violation and chose not to generate a map acceptable to the Governor of the state. Of course, a map acceptable to the Governor would have to look a lot like the map the Court drew.
It harms the GOP in the same manner that forcing a thief to return the stolen goods harms the thief. It is doubtful that such a ‘harm’ is legally cognizable.
The Republican approach is to use power to stay in power. I would like the Democratic approach to be to use power to prevent the misuse of power. We need to put in place mechanisms to prevent gerrymandering.
U.S. states’ efforts to counter extreme gerrymandering won a victory Monday, as the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a bipartisan Arizona panel that draws the state’s districts. The court’s vote was 5-4; Chief Justice John Roberts dissented, as did Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
If the issue gets to the SC again Gorsuch will vote the same way Scalia voted.
The four conservative justices made the Article I, §4 argument that “[elections] shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.” In the Arizona case the independent commission was established after the state’s voters approved an amendment to the state’s Constitution to take redistricting power away from the Legislature. The minority decision basically said the US is not a direct democracy and that the voters are not the legislature.
The Supreme Court rejected the initial application because there was no federal issue, the case involved interpretation of the state constitution. The GOP has now raised the Article I, §4 issue because it was the state supreme court and not the legislature that redrew the voting districts. The USSC might reject the case based on the precedent of its own decision in the Arizona case, but it could also choose to revisit the issue and hear the Pennsylvania case.
