Should We Be Thrilled that Gerrymandering Makes the House R's Immune?

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Now the Repubs can do the right thing, after several decades of the people refusing to do the right thing, and get gov revs to match gov spending without fear that the idiot public will exact revenge.

I am not sold, and as a believer in democracy I hate that this argument might be right, but I can not at the moment refute it.

Can you?

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Type: Discussion • Score: 4 • Views: 1,293 • Replies: 16

@hawkeye10,

Are you saying that the Republicans are going to insist that today's outlays match revenues without fear of retribution because they are in good districts? That is certainly not the case. While there are many "safe" districts out there, the massive economic collapse that cutting spending like that would produce would produce a huge backlash and a lot of the big corporate money that fuels the political machine on both sides would start to reconsider their investments. (This already happened with the fiscal cliff debate.) It's hard to believe the government had a surplus twelve years ago. Were the Republicans to ask my advice, I would tell them to hold the line on new spending and let the economy slowly grow to increase revenues (and also stop looking for expensive wars to fight.) They've created an economy addicted to government spending and they need to ween it off in a responsible manner, allowing new growth to make up for reduced spending.

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@engineer,

You have missed to trust of my point, which is asking if anti-democratic gerrymandering might be a critical part of righting the ship, because the gready and stupid masses can be ignored.

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@hawkeye10,

I think it works the other way. A random mix of greedy and stupid can average out ok but if you put all the greedy and stupid conservatives in one district and all the greedy and stupid liberals in another you end up with greedy and stupid legislators who will destroy the country before taking common sense actions. I think the days of common sense legislators who take see taking care of the country as a critical part of taking care of their districts are almost completely gone. Do you see any district today that would elect a Henry Clay aka The Great Compromiser? (He comes to mind because I toured his estate Ashland last month.) Does anyone earn respect these days for being able to work across the aisle? In general I think that any given party would run the country right into the ground without the other to balance them. If there is no incentive to work together and in fact there is a penalty at the ballot box, I really don't see how the country will solve any problems.

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@engineer,

engineer wrote:

Does anyone earn respect these days for being able to work across the aisle? In general I think that any given party would run the country right into the ground without the other to balance them. If there is no incentive to work together and in fact there is a penalty at the ballot box, I really don't see how the country will solve any problems.

this is pretty much my argument for multi-party minority governments

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@hawkeye10,

Quote:

Should We Be Thrilled that Gerrymandering Makes the House R's Immune?

Well, I may be wrong, Hawkeye, but they ain’t immune…and the Gerrymandering (which is real) may one day soon come back to bite them on the ass. In fact, I would guess that the Gerrymandering is more likely to come back and bite them on the ass than to make them immune.

Said another way: The current Gerrymandering is the Law of Unintended Consequences waiting to rear its ugly head.

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Whackeye comes up with some really stupid ****, but this one takes the cake . . .

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@Setanta,

Dana Milbank

Quote:

Using Wasserman’s tally, Millhiser ranked districts by the Republican margin of victory and calculated that for Democrats to have won the 218 seats needed for a House majority they would have had to have added 6.13 percentage points to their popular-vote victory margin of 1.12 points.

To put the Republican advantage in perspective, Democrats could win the House only if they do significantly better than Republicans did in their landslide year of 2010 (when they had a 6.6-point advantage). That’s not impossible — Democrats did it in 2006 and 2008 — but it’s difficult. Republicans don’t have a permanent House majority, but they will go into the next several elections with an automatic head start. For many, the biggest political threat comes not from Democrats but from conservative primary challengers.

In theory, the Supreme Court could decide before then that this rigged system denies Americans fair and effective representation. But this won’t happen anytime soon. For now, Democrats need to recognize that the Republican House majority will respond only sluggishly to the usual levers of democracy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-republican-gerrymandering-makes-the-difference-in-the-house/2013/01/04/f6e9bd1e-56a4-11e2-8b9e-dd8773594efc_story.html

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@Frank Apisa,

Quote:

Well, I may be wrong, Hawkeye, but they ain’t immune…and the Gerrymandering (which is real) may one day soon come back to bite them on the ass. In fact, I would guess that the Gerrymandering is more likely to come back and bite them on the ass than to make them immune.

Said another way: The current Gerrymandering is the Law of Unintended Consequences waiting to rear its ugly head.

you can say it over and over a few more times again if you like but let me know when you come up with an argument to back it up.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

you can say it over and over again if you like but let me know when you come up with an argument to back it up.

Here's one: safe districts will turn them into an increasingly ultra conservative party -- a party of politicians who can't win in swing districts. When gerrymandering finally ends they will fall and fall hard.

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@Kolyo,

Quote:

When gerrymandering finally ends they will fall and fall hard.

and when will that be? I have no confidence that SCOTUS will get into this mess, not after Bush v Gore. the court is already massively weaked itself by getting into the skirmishes of the two parties, they are likely to resist going there again anytime soon.

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@hawkeye10,

In 2020, perhaps, or they may just steadily lose ground.

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@hawkeye10,

So what? That doesn't say the idiotic things you are saying in your opening post, especially that "the people" refuse to do the right thing, or that "the idiot public will exact revenge."

You seem not to be aware that gerrymandering happens at the state level, it is not something done in Congress, nor can any solution come from Congress. As this article points out, the courts might cure it, though. This is typical of your bullshit when you post an article triumphantly, although the article doesn't say what you are saying.

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@hawkeye10,

I don't think gerrymandering will end soon because the fundamental situation that allows it to occur won't end soon. You can gerrymander districts because you can map political affiliation. As long as cities lean one way and the countryside leans the other, you will be able to group all the liberals together and all the conservatives together to form safe districts. I don't see that changing any time soon.

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@engineer,

Quote:

As long as cities lean one way and the countryside leans the other, you will be able to group all the liberals together and all the conservatives together to form safe districts.

True, but as demographics shift, Republicans are going to be less dominant in state government. If they have to contend with Democrats when drawing political maps, it won't be as easy for them to take a 4-district area where they have 50% support and divide it into 3 districts of 60% Republican support and 1 district of 20% Republican support -- like I'm assuming they do now.

(But we'll have to wait until the next census for a fair redistricting if gerrymandering is to die a natural death.)

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@Kolyo,

Quote:

(But we'll have to wait until the next census for a fair redistricting if gerrymandering is to die a natural death

this is not the first time we have seen gerrymandering in American history you know, it never dies. The courts can discourage the practice but I have no faith that they will, as neither party is pure, who ever can draw the lines to their advantage in 2021....will.

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@engineer,

Quote:

I don't think gerrymandering will end soon because the fundamental situation that allows it to occur won't end soon

i dont know what the solution would look like. does anyone in the A2K braintrust know what federal law controls this? Is the solution as simple as having the courts take this duty over?

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Should We Be Thrilled that Gerrymandering Makes the House R's Immune?

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