Yeah, and the boundaries show up from one election to the next, due to the sensitivity to turnout on election day. The winner is the candidate who can get their supporters concerned enough to actually vote on the day. So its a sort of multiplexed, time based diversity.
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Obligs:
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FYI, I fully, 100% support Calexit.
As for this point: “the idea that the state that gave us Nixon, Reagan, and Schwarzenegger is uniformly progressive”: Those politicians would have ZERO chance of winning. California’s demographics have shifted enormously from the days of Nixon and Reagan, and Arnie was the last Republican to be able to capture California’s dwindling conservative demographics and win. Every state-level office is Democratic now, and the Republicans can’t even run serious candidates, and the legislature is a super-super-majority, and all this is driven by demographics. If there were a Calexit, the demographic changes would actually accelerate, with an open border with Mexico and also an influx of poor non-whites fleeing conservative states too. California would become extremely and permanently progressive. Which would be amazing.
No no… look… Breaking up California according to the “three Californias” plan would be a net benefit for progressives nationally. If you look at the map of the three Californias, it’s drawn in such a way that there’s no conservative majority in any of them. Possibly conservative rural northern California is lumped with San Francisco and the Bay area for example, so the rural conservatives would still be a minority. Doing so would add four liberal senators.
California leaving the USA, however, would deprive liberals of two reliably liberal senators, plus all of California’s reliably Democratic electoral college votes. It would be a huge victory for both California progressives, who would be free to do whatever their dream is, and also USA conservatives, who would have a path to long-term existence, which they currently don’t have due to America’s demographic trends. The big big losers would be progressives left behind in the USA, who would presumably choose to move to California in large numbers.
Not sure I agree with you. Cory often says that the best science fiction predicts the present, and I can think of several amazing films and novels that are basically thinly veiled current events: Oryx and Crake, The Lost Boys, The Fly, Aliens, The Forever War and so on. Even Star Trek and Doctor Who! Sometimes that’s the only way to reach your audience.
Ugh, no please. I live in southern Oregon, within the imaginary borders of Jefferson, and the people who live here and really, really want to create The State of Jefferson are anti-tax, anti-government white supremacists. Think Cliven Bundy, sovereign citizens, and the armed militia that took over the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. Throw in ammosexuals who believe that gun ownership should be compulsory (not kidding, it comes up as a petition about once a decade), and that K-12 students should be allowed to carry guns to school. Finally, throw in some hardcore, know-nothing libertarians who oppose government over-reach, like drivers’ licenses, and you’ve got your state of Jefferson.
I mean, unless you’re hoping to gather all of these idiots in one place and fence it off foverever… I could get behind that, I guess.
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Well yeah, I know none of this is going to happen. Those initiatives struggle to get on the ballot and then they get completely crushed and even if they did pass, it would still need to pass through congress and so on, where it would also get zero support.
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Like this midterm election that just passed, you mean?
I went to the polling place all set to vote against it, only to find that it had already been rescinded from the ballot.
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Huh. The country of California might have a little problem to work out.
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It was such a supremely bad idea. Imagine waking up and having to suddenly commute into another state and deal with filing taxes for two states.
On top of all the billions spent just changing shit and the hell that would be water rights.
It just the fever dreams of libertarian nut bags.
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They try to get them on the ballot many times. I pay attention to politics and that whole thing is so low on my radar I didn’t even notice it was denied even getting on the ballot. Just now reading the Wiki article:
The recent efforts have been by some VC named Tim Draper. He tried to get Six Californias on the ballot and that failed to get enough signatures. Then Three Californias got kicked off by the courts, saying, “On 12 September 2018, in another unanimous decision, the Supreme Court of California permanently removed Cal 3 from all future ballots”
This guy must have spent $10mil or so on all this nonsense.
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Well, for what it’s worth, there are a lot of interesting new ideas gaining traction in politics. Eliminating the Electoral College is not new, but certainly interesting. Eliminating the effing Senate , on the other hand, is another matter altogether.
In one act, the government would be solely dominated ny the will of the majority; the Senate came into existence as a way to ‘balance’ the influence of smaller states with those of more populous ones, but it also means that a private interest only needs to buy two politicians to control any state’s actions in Congress, rather than the majority of the ones from any given state. Kind of makes sense, to me.
Actually that could be the one good morsel in the shit sandwich. Water rights are currently a shitshow, so change in that regard would be a huge environmental victory.
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“Balance” is one person, one vote. All this other shit is IMBALANCING.
Fuck the Senate and the Electoral College.
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That would effectively eliminate the point of the Senate’s existence in the first place. Congress has two Chambers (Representatives and Senate) so that small/sparsely populated states would have at least a decent chance of defending their interests.
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Oh, I agree. The American system got set up way before modern communication existed; they’re both as outdated as horse-and-buggies.
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I can see your point for local governance. Give it a Governor and state legislature with robust powers. But why should every Wyoming person have outsize national congressional influence? If their geography, distance and lifestyle make Wyoming people distinct from the rest of us, why do they get disproportionately more power?
You collate majoritarian with “might makes right”. Why? They’re two very distinct concepts. I have been following national politics for four decades, when people voted majority Republican, I was disappointed and thought it sad they were voting against their own interests, but never thought we should override democracy. When have progressives been against democracy?
Majority rule, while not nothing, is one of the least important aspect of cobbling together a democracy, IMHO.
That’s one of the definitions of democracy. Unclear why you feel it’s a trivial aspect of it.
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In a “no taxation without representation” style of thing, surely each state that wants to send someone to congress and the senate should pay the same amount of tax; otherwise low population states are get more representation for their tax dollar?
@Carl_Pietranton I think you might need to work on your sales pitch 
@Brainspore I find it weird how Orwell just seems to become more and more on the nose with each passing decade.
@reactionabe " The reality is that we’re missing how important inertia is in these equations." And apathy! As a Brit I value apathy as a national trait.
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