Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/02/08/red-seawall-v-blue-wave.html
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If the Democrats don’t immediately attack redistricting and create a ton of (very strictly enforced) anti-gerrymandering laws if and when they’re pushed into office by Trump’s bumbling, I’m giving up on political participation entirely.
The amount of spineless rolling over they’ve done for decades now has been frustrating me more every year, and I was sorely disappointed that they didn’t address this aggressively under Obama’s first two years.
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Gave us tRump
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I’ve mentioned this before, but when I talk to the younger generation about politics, I frequently hear that “the Republicans are evil, but they’re competent at evil. The other political parties are all so incompetent and ineffectual that they’re worse than evil”.
I do not endorse or agree with this sentiment, nor will I defend it; I merely pass it along. I believe this meme is something that political parties today need to actively counteract if they wish to gain traction with younger voters.
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When you decide to rig the system to get elected, I start to think that perhaps you’re not actually as big a fan of democracy as you say you are.
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I’ll have a beer ready when you get here, good luck getting politicians to take food off their own plate for us!
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So we have evidence that elected officials conspired and colluded to create a process whereby they can damage the nation and subvert democracy despite their sworn oaths to the contrary and no one is calling for arrests?
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Most of those have been dead for generations. You want to start now?
What do you think the American Way, is??
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I am surprised, I thought they were doing this much earlier.
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I don’t think it’s “We have been doing this for a while now”. Americans don’t seem very interested in how it used to be done but they do get excited about doing things a new way.
The Democratic party is just as corrupt unfortunately. People seem to forget the other option was Hillary Clinton.
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Yeah, if only she’d gotten more votes than Trump. It is a shame.
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False equivalency much?
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Yes, that is perennially true. As are the lack of consequences. You want to change this?
Excited != effective or, in this case, != busy
Sadly, I’m not sure not gerrymandering this badly would have made a difference. Between embedded crap in our national psyche in general, propaganda about “big government bad, deregulation good” since the 1980s and worse since Fox News came online, and the decline of the Rust Belt combined with very long term suppression of everyone poor in the South via poor education and shitty jobs also got us in this mess. Gerrymandering and the Russian meddling just tipped it over the edge.
I just wish I knew what I could do to fix it.
At this point, I think it’s safe to say that we’re not going to maintain even a basic democracy. I just think it’s sad that people are too apathetic to push back. I really wish there was something I could do (I’m sure plenty of folks feel that way too) but WTF can you do when the existing institutions are built to corrupt? Frankly, I’m going to put good money that we’ll see a revolution in the next 40 years because of these kinds of things. I hope I’m not alive to see it.
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Was she the email lady?
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…Daley points out that prior to the Obama election, Democratic state legislators had infuriated their Republican rivals by engaging in their own gerrymanders (think, for example, of hereditary DINO Dan Lipinski’s ridiculous district) and they vowed to do the same, but using new, sophisticated computer models that could leverage the census to create undemocratic outcomes…
For a technically incompetent bunch, it amazes me that the republicans have figured out how to use powerpoint and computer models!
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I think the D’s best chance is to threaten the same treatment when they come to power - the fear of the tables being turned is the only way to bring Rs to the table
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LOL, at the foot-stamping and false-equivalency in this thread. We’re in a situation of our own making, blaming the perfidy of Democrats and the competency of Republicans will solve nothing.
What happened to us over the past 8 years has been the result of a once-in-a-generation phenomena; the overlap of mid-term elections with the decennial census returns, which are traditionally what triggers the redistricting process. 2010 was one of those years, where the quadrennial self-own of 40% turnout also happened to coincide with census returns AND the immense backlash to the election of our first black president. The predictable thing happened, and Republicans were quick to capitalize on their gains to rig the system as well as they could for the next decade.
2020 isn’t one of those overlap years, but 2030 is. We need to either fix midterm turnout or fix redistricting before then.
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