Most recent MAGA plans to gerrymander Congress because they hate representative democracy

[RockyRoadTravel]

Both North Carolina and Wisconsin are close to 50/50 states. Each of these States were gerrymandered from representative districts to rigged districts by GOP State legislatures.  Wisconsin 6 - 2 and North Carolina 10 - 4.  Those five rigged districts are the GOP majority in Congress today.  

Now the Texas GOP has on their agenda making biased districts even more biased than they already are. In a 55/45 State with 38 districts, 25 are GOP and 12 are Democratic, one vacancy.  Currently Democrats would need 60+% of the vote to get 19 of the current districts.  (The Texas GOP which last year was discussing a rule where no one could win a State-wide office if they didn't win in a majority of the counties in Texas - ignoring the popular vote.) 

I commend Newsom for being vocal about the GOP attack on democracy and their gerrymandering, however, I don't agree with his option - if you gerrymander we can too.  Rather, I would like Newsom to try and get a number of big blue States together to issue a challenge to the GOP in Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin. California challenges the Texas gerrymander. New York challenges the Florida gerrymander. Minnesota challenges the Wisconsin gerrymander. Pennsylvania challenges the North Carolina gerrymander.

Let's all have fair boundaries drawn for districts in all our States.  Call out the GOP gerrymandering across the country, rather than getting in the gutter with MAGA.   

 

[Pete1111]

Remember when Illinois re-drew their districts, and knocked Kinzinger out of any chance in favor of some MAGA clown?

Should the Dems come up with a think tank, how to win back state legislatures and Congress?  

I'm tired of bitching about Stacey Abrams, how the Dems ignored her voter registration achievement.

I'm tired of Dems clutching their pearls.  Maybe I'll stop doing that.

[RockyRoadTravel]

15 hours ago, Pete1111 said:

Remember when Illinois re-drew their districts, and knocked Kinzinger out of any chance in favor of some MAGA clown?

Should the Dems come up with a think tank, how to win back state legislatures and Congress?  

I'm tired of bitching about Stacey Abrams, how the Dems ignored her voter registration achievement.

I'm tired of Dems clutching their pearls.  Maybe I'll stop doing that.

I didn't get what point you were making? 

[stevenkesslar]

On 7/21/2025 at 7:41 PM, RockyRoadTravel said:

Both North Carolina and Wisconsin are close to 50/50 states. Each of these States were gerrymandered from representative districts to rigged districts by GOP State legislatures.  Wisconsin 6 - 2 and North Carolina 10 - 4.  Those five rigged districts are the GOP majority in Congress today.  

Now the Texas GOP has on their agenda making biased districts even more biased than they already are. In a 55/45 State with 38 districts, 25 are GOP and 12 are Democratic, one vacancy.  Currently Democrats would need 60+% of the vote to get 19 of the current districts.  (The Texas GOP which last year was discussing a rule where no one could win a State-wide office if they didn't win in a majority of the counties in Texas - ignoring the popular vote.) 

I commend Newsom for being vocal about the GOP attack on democracy and their gerrymandering, however, I don't agree with his option - if you gerrymander we can too.  Rather, I would like Newsom to try and get a number of big blue States together to issue a challenge to the GOP in Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin. California challenges the Texas gerrymander. New York challenges the Florida gerrymander. Minnesota challenges the Wisconsin gerrymander. Pennsylvania challenges the North Carolina gerrymander.

Let's all have fair boundaries drawn for districts in all our States.  Call out the GOP gerrymandering across the country, rather than getting in the gutter with MAGA.   

 

 

I get the point about having the slenderest of Democratic House majorities.

I assume Nancy Pelosi's goal last year, at a minimum, was to get Biden out of the way. And thus remove an obstacle to a narrow House majority that could serve as a firewall.  And she came very close.  The Democrats won one House seat.  Had they won a few more, all the tax cuts to Elon Musk and all the Medicaid cuts and all the looming hunger could have been blocked.  Or at last much of it.

That said, there are two problems with gerrymandering in California:   1)  Gerrymandering, and 2) California.  What message does this send?  Why are so many voters cynical about politics?

Here are a list of US Senate seats Democrats won in 2008, and the winning percentages:

 

Alaska:  Mark Begich 47.8 %

Arkansas:  Mark Pryor:  79.8 %

Iowa:  Tom  Harkin 72.8 %

Louisiana:  Mary  Landrieu  52.1 %

Montana:  Max Baucus  72.9 %

North Carolina:  Kay Hagan  52.7 %

South Dakota:  Tim Johnson  62.5 %

West Virginia:  Jay Rockefeller  63. 7 %

 

Democrats did briefly enjoy a 60 vote filibuster-proof Senate majority.  They could have raised taxes on Elon Musk.  They could have made a popular child tax credit that helped tens of millions of working class families and cut child poverty in half permanent.  They could have, and did, enact affordable health care initiatives to help the working class that Republicans now want to take away.

If Democrats want to solve problems, instead of just block bad things, this is the problem they have to solve.  How do you win in these states again?  It won't be easy.  If and when they do solve it, they will also solve the gerrymandering problem. 

The way to solve the gerrymandering problem is simple.  Be popular.  And win.  Broadly.

This is also a way to solve the Texas gerrymandering problem, even if nothing else happens.  Republicans will do well if every election is like 2024, when people want to throw the bums out.  And if the bums are Biden and Harris.  If the bums are Trump and Vance in 2026, gerrymandering Texas into more thinly Republican districts will backfire.

That's not a defense of what Republicans did in North Carolina and Wisconsin.  Democrats should go over that.  But the best way to go after it is by winning in states and districts we used to be able to win in.

 

 

 

 

[stevenkesslar]

 

Another really good article on this subject:

 

Democratic memo: The party's redistricting problem goes much deeper

Quote

“It turns out that the road to power is not necessarily through Pennsylvania Avenue,” said Paul Begala, a strategist who worked for both the Clinton and Obama campaigns. “It runs through Lansing and Austin and Albany and Frankfurt [and] Columbus.”

Quote

Begala said in an interview that Democrats’ current deficit in state legislatures is a result of the party’s constant search for a messiah like Clinton or Obama to lead them to victory. He said that search has pushed the party to misallocate the broad resources it has at play — investing in hard-to-win high-profile races rather than thinking long-term about building power.

Quote

“I’ve watched this party pour $110 million into Jaime Harrison’s campaign against Lindsey Graham. That was a fool’s errand,” Begala said. “How many Michigan Senate seats could we have picked up for that?”

 

I both strongly agree and disagree with Begala.

I doubt he really meant that somehow Democrats "misallocated" resources by electing Clinton and Obama to serve 16 years as POTUS.  Arguably, he even misspoke when he said "Messiah."  The word I would use is more down to earth:  "leader".   We need a leader like Clinton or Obama.

I just posted a great essay by John Halpin from the Liberal Patriot saying to win in 2028, progressives and centrists have to be able to come together around an economic populism agenda that attract Independents.  @lookin also just posted a somewhat similar article in Jacobin saying there is a segment of working class Trump supporters that are socially moderate and liberal on many economic issues that Democrats should be going after. 

I don't think this can happen without a leader at the top doing it.  Clinton did it.  Obama did.  Now Trump is doing it.  Once again, AMLO is the best next door model of someone who did it in Mexico.  So Democrats don't need a Messiah.  But we do need a leader who can build a coalition and win.  And right now the more working class that leader is, the better.

Where I strongly agree with Begala is the idea that it was just dumb to invest $110 million in Jaime Harrison's South Carolina race.  Amy McGrath in Kentucky comes to mind as well.  She is a very nice Democrat who sucked up a huge amount of resources with almost no chance to win.

This kind of effort is also easy to say and hard to do.  ACT BLUE has been a great tool for grassroots Democratic fundraising.  But it lends itself to the idea that small donors like me will be attracted to high profile races.  As opposed to state legislative battles for some politician I never heard of.  I don't think there is any way to change that.  And I have no regrets that in 2024 I sent much of my money to high profile races like Jon Tester in Montana and Sherrod Brown in Ohio, even if they lost.

In 2010, Republicans ‘Weaponized’ Gerrymandering. Here’s How They Did It.

That's a good summary of how Republicans did it in 2010.  It has to be said that they had the wind at their back.  The Great Recession was both a blessing and a curse for Democrats.  We won enough seats in 2008 to control the White House and Congress.  And also to win state legislatures in places we usually don't.  Like Iowa and Ohio.  But precisely for that reason all the blame was put on Democrats by pissed voters in 2010.

That said, this was probably my biggest disappointment in Obama.  Circa 2008 I was simply amazed with the idea that a Black community organizer could even be elected President.  Gradually building power in state legislatures is definitely a community organizing project.  So I would have guessed Obama would be better at it than most. 

Ultimately I decided Obama was really more a law professor who happened to work as a community organizer for a while.  Again, he got the brunt of a Great Recession he did not cause.  But it was during the Obama era that the Democratic bench was wiped out in what we now call "red states" like Iowa and Ohio.  One of the virtues of a community organizing project to win state legislative seats in swing states is that it would keep Democrats more in touch with local working class voters.

I think the lesson of Obama is that any POTUS is going to look at the party machinery first and foremost as his own tool to serve his own interest.  Gavin Newsom is doing that right now.  Most people seem to think he is not really serious about a California gerrymander.  He just wants to be the POTUS candidate who will stand up to Trump.

It's probably not a coincidence that REDMAP got off the ground when there was no Republican POTUS.  Just smart operatives plotting to win back power, who had access to $300 million at the time.

This would be a great project for some Democratic version of Elon Musk.  It seems far too inside baseball to attract lots of small donors on ACT Blue.  But some billionaire Hollywood or Wall Street liberals could make a big difference by funding a long-term Democratic version of REDMAP.

[RockyRoadTravel]

It'll be interesting to see if Virginia and New Jersey join the counter offensive on the GOP gerrymandering (GOP attempts to steal future elections) of Congressional maps, after the upcoming fall elections for Governors.   

[Mavica]