US Politics: The Day After The Political Earthquake

[Ormond]

The hybrid of "State" winner takes all used in Maine and Nebraska is interesting. The results of would be more representative of the actual vote than the existing "Winner of State" takes all electoral votes system currently used by 48 states.

Well, Scott, as a Nebraskan I would say that mathematically speaking you may be right in terms of small states like Nebraska and Maine. Nebraska has only 3 congressional districts and Maine 2. So when electoral votes are divided up in the one per congressional district but two statewide, the statewide total is still 50% in Maine and 40% in Nebraska.

But when you go to the larger states, I don't think the math is going to work out so that results are usually going to be "more representative of the actual vote." The combination of Democratic concentration in urban areas plus gerrymandering too easily swings things in the opposite direction when the proportion of the electoral votes given to the state's overall total goes way down. The statewide proportion of electoral votes would be only 11% in Pennsylvania and Illinois, 12.5% in Ohio, and 3.8% in California.

[lokisnow]

I think some of these predictions are awfully premature. What happened last week was one election, in which the GOP did a bit better than expected. It's not the end of the Democrats, just as 2008 was not the end of the Republicans.

It's really not premature. Democrats locked in state legislature districts and federal congressional districts after the 1930 census and that was insurmountable by republicans, even when they were nationally popular, for 62 years. Right now Republicans have locked in state legislature districts and federal congressional districts after the 2010 census and they will probably have a similar insurmountable iron grip on government for 60-ish years.

ironicly, the myopic wonks were recently bleating that policy has an inherent liberal bias, no it doesn't, that's absurd, as the next six decades of conservative policy will prove, what has an inherent liberal bias is the insurmountable advantages of the post great depression gerrymandering which made it all but impossible for republicans to succeed in policy making for any length of time.

Democrats are in the same position republicans were in 80 years ago, they can win two branches of the federal government and are locked out of all state governing for the seeable future. Democrats can still win the senate or presidency, but the presidency is largely worthless when they're locked out of everything else. Right now republicans rule more than two thirds of all the state legislatures in the country, more than two thirds of the governers, rule the senate and rule the HoR and have a permanent majority on the Supreme Court (it's permanent since Clinton won't be able to win a senate majority even if she wins the presidency and republicans will force conservative choices on her if any of the five retire or expire). The only public office democrats hold at the moment is the president. And again, that's nearly worthless given the other circumstances.

I'm not trying to exaggerate it, it is just the facts. Democrats need a fifteen point popular vote win to get a majority in the house of representatives. Even if they manage to do that, it is a worthless majority unless they also win back the state legislatures. They need a much greater than fifteen point popular vote win to earn a majority in state legislatures. Even winning back the state legislatures is pointless unless they do it in the year of a census, so the 2020 election, for example. Because any given election if it is a 20 point wave, is going to regress to the mean the next election, so a mega win in a non census year is worthless in the long run, because it confers no long term advantages.

State representative and state senator districts across the country are much more severely gerrymandered than the federal districts, but democrats haven't figured that out yet since they don't care about state elections. Republicans hold absolute power of most of the levers of government in all but the bluest of blue states. Because they're more severely gerrymandered than federal districts it is almost impossible for democrats to win a majority even in 2020.

Since a majority in state legislatures is impossible due to gerrymandering of state districts that means the only way to lessen the impact of gerrymandering is via the governor's veto.

Unfortunately, two thirds of the governors and most of the swing states are elected in 2018, not 2020. We know democrats will not show up for that election, even with a republican in the white house, so we can more or less guarantee that there will be no governor veto point on the state district gerrymandering for the 2020 census.

Since the state legislatures also draw the maps for the federal districts, it doesn't matter if democrats win back the house in 2020, because that house won't be drawing their district boundaries for the next election, the state legislatures will be drawing those boundaries, and the natural result of 66 or 76 republican legislatures to a democrat win in the HoR for 2020 would be to more severely gerrymander than 2010 in order to insure staggering 2022 losses for the democrats and a return to republican rule.

But democrats won't be able to win that many votes because those same state legislatures control who is allowed to vote. John Roberts has active contempt for voting rights and will uphold any and all restrictions on the right to vote passed by the republican state legislatures, so republicans will also effectively strangle in the cradle any nascent democrat advantages in raw numbers.

[Shryke]

Why won't the Democrats be able to win the Senate in 2016 with Clinon on the ballot again?

[TrackerNeil]

Why won't the Democrats be able to win the Senate in 2016 with Clinon on the ballot again?

No reason at all, especially considering that Republicans will be defending 24 seats versus the Democrats' 10. A number of those -- NV, PA, IL, NH, FL, OH, WI -- are eminently winnable by Democrats, so 2016 may well see another swing in Senate control. Then we'll no doubt have a bunch of punditry about how inept Republicans are, Democrats reached voters, blah blah.

[Kalbear]

Even that is exaggerating it. The left generally approves of Obama quite strongly. The right just absolutely hates his guts.

I don't know about all of the left. This lefty is pretty bothered by Obama and feels fairly betrayed. The massive national security blunders and lack of due process, the militarization of the police, the continued state of emergency laws and drone strikes, the complete lack of tax reform and inequity in the US, the poor education system and its lack...it's all not good to me. Some of this would have been a hard sale - like the tax reform of the rich (though I still don't get why 99% of the populace supports the rich getting richer, but whatever) but other things - drone strikes, presidential powers, gitmo - these were things that Obama could have fought to get.

And where are the big US volunteer and works projects that were so touted? Ugh.

I think under his presidency the US has been fine. Not great, but fine. But I also think he has done very poorly in getting things done, and his track record vs. his goals has not been great. Part of that is that no democrat president is going to get anything done any time soon. Part of it seems like it is on Obama.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Let me amend my earlier statement to add "if the districts were not gerrymandered all to hell and gone."

:)

[lokisnow]

Why won't the Democrats be able to win the Senate in 2016 with Clinon on the ballot again?

Strategic stripping of Voting rights in swing states with empowered republican legislatures and governors.

And flipping that many seats is statistically unlikely even without the systematic voter abuses coming down the pike in the Thom tillis mold.

Given the advantages they're going to build in preventing people from voting and denying the franchise it seems unlikely democrats will be able to flip those seats now that the rules of the game are about to change.

[Mr Fixit]

May I ask why the US, unlike many other democratic countries, doesn't have independent bodies that draw district lines? Why is it left to politicians to freely and legally cheat? How is gerrymandering any different than stealing elections outright? Am I missing something? Why does American public go along with such blatant rigging of what should be the most sacred tenet of democracy?

[Ormond]

Lockesnow is reminding me of the comment I heard from a pollster a few years ago -- when you tell Republicans polls aren't going well for their party, they want to kill you. When you tell a Democrat things aren't going well for their party, they want to kill themselves.

I think that also goes along with the research from Europe on that other thread I started about how it's the conservative voters in liberal countries who have the highest sense of well being.

In other words, I think those on the left tend more to pessimism in general than those on the right. That in and of itself probably helps to explain the drop off in midterm voting among Democrats -- more of them are pessimistic cynics who convince themselves that voting won't be worth it anyway because of all those factors running against them that Lockesnow is sure exist.

I think the future is probably less bleak than that -- if only because the parties aren't going to stay exactly the same over 60 years. The Democrats and Republicans of the 1990s were very different coalitions from the Democrats and Republicans of the 1930s, after all.

[Sivin]

like the tax reform of the rich (though I still don't get why 99% of the populace supports the rich getting richer, but whatever)

C'mon, Kal. Everyone knows that there are no poor Americans. There are only rich Americans, and Americans who aren't rich yet.

So is this what you guys always do in these threads? I gotta tell you, this is imminently depressing.

[Ormond]

May I ask why the US, unlike many other democratic countries, doesn't have independent bodies that draw district lines? Why is it left to politicians to freely and legally cheat? How is gerrymandering any different than stealing the elections outright? Am I missing something?

Because it takes a while to move in that direction. We have several states now where there are such independent bodies (Iowa, California, and Arizona being among the best examples.) There really is hardly any gerrymandering in Iowa because of that.

[Shryke]

I don't know about all of the left. This lefty is pretty bothered by Obama and feels fairly betrayed. The massive national security blunders and lack of due process, the militarization of the police, the continued state of emergency laws and drone strikes, the complete lack of tax reform and inequity in the US, the poor education system and its lack...it's all not good to me. Some of this would have been a hard sale - like the tax reform of the rich (though I still don't get why 99% of the populace supports the rich getting richer, but whatever) but other things - drone strikes, presidential powers, gitmo - these were things that Obama could have fought to get.

And where are the big US volunteer and works projects that were so touted? Ugh.

I think under his presidency the US has been fine. Not great, but fine. But I also think he has done very poorly in getting things done, and his track record vs. his goals has not been great. Part of that is that no democrat president is going to get anything done any time soon. Part of it seems like it is on Obama.

Sure, but if we look at polling to see the democrats or the left as a whole, Obama has high approval ratings. Like very high 70s at the least.

I would agree that he's failed in some keys ways, but that doesn't change that he's still very well liked by his party and the american left in general.

[Shryke]

Strategic stripping of Voting rights in swing states with empowered republican legislatures and governors.

And flipping that many seats is statistically unlikely even without the systematic voter abuses coming down the pike in the Thom tillis mold.

Given the advantages they're going to build in preventing people from voting and denying the franchise it seems unlikely democrats will be able to flip those seats now that the rules of the game are about to change.

Not certain to be enough to counter a predicted democratic presidential year turn out. If it even manifests in some of those states.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

Since we've gotten an expression of the bleakest possible view, I'll give the most optimistic view. I still think changing demographics spell doom for the Republican Party as it currently exists. They cannot be electorally viable for much longer if they don't improve among non-white voters. I suspect that their overwhelmingly white base will not allow them to make the changes necessary to improve among non-white voters without a fight; as the country gets less white, these same voters will become more and more angry about America's un-whitening, dragging the Republican Party to even more deranged extremes until it finally changes or goes defunct.

[Commodore]

No reason at all, especially considering that Republicans will be defending 24 seats versus the Democrats' 10. A number of those -- NV, PA, IL, NH, FL, OH, WI -- are eminently winnable by Democrats, so 2016 may well see another swing in Senate control. Then we'll no doubt have a bunch of punditry about how inept Republicans are, Democrats reached voters, blah blah.

If Sandoval runs, Reid is toast. That and perhaps CO again are really the only GOP pickup opportunities.

D's could flip FL/IL/OH/PA/WI/NH/NC

[Frog Eater]

Republicans can make an effort, right now to bring Hispanics into their fold. Many Hispanics share the conservative beliefs that form the base of the Republican party. If they can reach out to Hispanics and come up with meaningful immigration reform that doesn't vilify the Hispanic community, they can solidify their place as a political party moving forward.

The problem with that is there is a large portion of the Republican Party who wont allow that to happen.

[The Fallen]

Hey Prince,

Are you still tallying up all the cases of fraudulent voting?

[lokisnow]

I think the future is probably less bleak than that -- if only because the parties aren't going to stay exactly the same over 60 years. The Democrats and Republicans of the 1990s were very different coalitions from the Democrats and Republicans of the 1930s, after all.

True but patronage systems are self reinforcing even and perhaps especially in the face of coalition changes. It took until 2010 to purify the Democrats of the blue dog turds despite the realignment that had taken place the system still advanced candidates who won regularly for a party they were part of but had no agreement with. The system will easily recruit and promote candidates who will win no matter the changes in coalition the system will survive until there is another large exogenous shock like the great recession or depression that occurs near a census year.

I just wish dems would vocalize their beliefs and fight for their ideals like in 2006 and 2008. This strategy of preemptive failure, of a pacifist refusal to fight for what you believe in is the thing I really hate in democrats right now, it took that disastrous first debate to snap Obama out of its hypnotic spell, before that he was trying to lose in his stalwart refusal to give people a reason to vote.

[Inigima]

I just wish dems would vocalize their beliefs and fight for their ideals like in 2006 and 2008. This strategy of preemptive failure, of a pacifist refusal to fight for what you believe in is the thing I really hate in democrats right now

lockesnow for president

[aceluby]

If Sandoval runs, Reid is toast. That and perhaps CO again are really the only GOP pickup opportunities.

D's could flip FL/IL/OH/PA/WI/NH/NC

I thought Reid wasn't running.