This is only partially right, it seems to me, because it implies that today’s conservatives are capable of feeling “guilt,” which I think is about as likely as them feeling “respect” or “compassion.”
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The California example demonstrates that not all gerrymandering is to create a political advantage. For decades, California was gerrymandered to create a detente. Republican lawmakers realized they were never going to gain control of the state, so they worked out a stalemate with Democrats to create noncompetitive districts – basically ensuring each party would have perpetual control of their respective fiefdoms. After the independent redistricting commission redrew the maps in 2010, the state legislature became more Democratic, giving both houses a Democratic supermajority.
Also, to all commenters: the adjective of “Democrat” is “Democratic,” unless you’re intentionally using “Democrat” in the Republican slur mode.
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Because there isn’t a unifying set of positions or principals in the party. At best, it can be broken up into four main sub-groups: Bigots, Oligarchs, Religious Zealots, and Libertarians. There is minor overlap, but you can pretty much resolve an individual voter into one of these groups.
Currently, Republican voters vote based on the name on the front of their political jersey, not based on their personal philosophy or best interest. That means that, most of the time, the Oligarchs get what they want, with pretty meaningless (to them) feel-good (to them) legislation to appease the Bigots and Religious Zealots, and the Libertarians mostly get left out in the cold. Each of these groups would get a lot more out of the arrangement if they were an independent party in a coalition. (Edit: Clarification: except the Oligarchs, who are the primary beneficiaries of the status quo)
The same could be said for the Democratic party, as we also acutely learned in the 2016 election. The Dems break down a little less, into Progressives and Liberal Democrats. The LDs pretty much run the show, and use prominent Progressives like Sanders and Warren to scare the Republicans into compromises. Of course, that’s out the window with a big fat (R) sticker on each branch of government.
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The laziness and the continual doubling down on the Southern Strategy that @Brainspore mentioned is only part of the problem. The other day, I read this article by a long-time Republican titled “Trump Is What Happens When a Political Party Abandons Ideas.” I don’t buy every point he tried to make, but he basically argues that the GOP is so obsessed with winning by any means necessary that they’ve forgotten that they’re supposed to do stuff after they win. For example, they “win” by repealing Obamacare but don’t have anything to replace it with.
My theory is that it’s 35 years’ worth of influence on the pary by the Libertarians’ zero-sum view of … well, everything in life. For example, look at this Twitter thread from influential moron Grover Nordquist. People correctly and hilariously lambaste him for a ridiculous story, and yet one of the only times he’s moved to respond is when someone bets that he’s making up the story: “you lose”, he replies, because that’s all he understands.
So of course they would cheat. They don’t care about a good game, they don’t consider that winning sometimes has consequences and carries responsibilities. As long as they can say “I win, you lose” and chalk up another point on the board that’s all that matters to these so-called adults.
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That would cut into the #winning though, since that’s really what it’s all about.
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I would disagree that the Republican Party lacks ideas. They do have ideas – it’s just that most of the country doesn’t want them. The converse is also true: The Republican Party doesn’t like the ideas the rest of the country has. This is why Republicans barrel ahead with TrumpCare, even though a strong majority of the country doesn’t want it. It’s why Republicans refuse to discuss modest gun control, even though a majority of the country supports it. When Republicans are in power, they see themselves as representing only their base, not the entire country.
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And a properly structured governmental system will take into account the likelihood that most people who spend a lifetime seeking ever higher political office are instead borderline sociopaths.
The US constitution historically has worked fairly well in this respect, but lately not so much.
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To be fair, this has been an issue for a while now. It’s possible that this sort of safe districts it created allowed for a more highly partisan tone of national politics, making Trump possible, but there are lots of factors to consider there, I think.
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The fundamental problem isn’t gerrymandering (though it is, on its own, a huge problem) the problem is that America is broken. Fundamentally. Even if you kick out Trump next election, even if you wrest back control over both the houses, even if you win all that needs winning (and with gerrymandering killed dead that’d be more likely than right now) the other people, the other America, will treat whomever you elect as an occupying force. Like what’s being done to Trump now, but more. Like what was done to Obama, but far more.
You might say that Obama won with a mandate (yup, he did—just look at what the Other America did and it kinda liked him, seeing as they voted for him) and Trump lost the popular vote (sure did) and deserves to be resisted (on account of the vote, no, on account of the policies, sure thing), and that’s all fine and dandy, but that doesn’t change the fact that people still voted him in and that they’d see what your preferred candidate would try to do as as much an affront as the Orange One’s most depraved act.
They don’t have to be right to be a voting bloc.
This widening gyre of political opinion that threatens to leave the Overton window paradoxically bare is, as I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, how democracies turn into failed states. I’ve no earthly clue how it might be arrested and it scares me.
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Good points. I win, you lose, does seem to be their only goal. They do have this mantra that the gummint should get out of everything, so I can see that eliminating programs without any idea of what to replace it with would go along with that. They don’t want to replace it with anything. Repeal repeal repeal is all they care about.
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I agree. It’s been a long time in the making, and the end I just can’t see.
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A political party’s idea does it no good if the party can’t present it honestly to the public (including its own base). Usually a policy idea is presented as “here’s what we want to do, here’s why we want to do it, here will be the anticipated result”; the GOP can only state the first part, because one or both of the other two stated honestly will be (as you note) horrifying and/or completely unworkable to most of the country (again, most white rural and exurban voters included).
Thus, the “ideas” presented by the modern GOP are hollow ones, sold with chicanery. The party, lacking an honest rationale or results for their policies is left with only the “here’s what we want to do” part, and so is left only with this childish “win/lose” mentality.
You often see the same thing occur, albeit in a less democratic fashion, inside corporations when the kind of borderline sociopath who spends a lifetime seeking ever higher management positions achieves them. They put in place policies that have no reason for existence other than the fact that the policy getting instituted solidifies and enhances their own power (and perhaps benefits a patron higher up the org chart).
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Welp, thanks for explaining America’s problems to me.
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Why are you not properly grateful, woman!?
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Yeah, this is very toxic, and that’s exactly what gerrymandering is - politicians spending their time of policies that do nothing other than try to get them re-elected.
I hear everyone talk that way on political talk shows. Will the republicans get to 51 on their Senate healthcare bill is all about whether people are going to lose their seats next election. What a wreck.
Do something because you think it will make things better, then either get re-elected or don’t. Is the problem that America’s economy is too terrible a place for a former house representative to seek employment in?
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I apologize most humbly for worrying about a country that I don’t live, and a people I don’t belong to, and for expressing this worry on a public forum. I am aware that this is a terrible insult to you for reasons I am too foreign to possibly understand and I can only hope that a lifetime of America ruining the planet I live on will, in some small, minuscule part, represent penance for this terrible deed.
I go now to bewail my iniquity. May future generations find it in their hearts to forgive me.
The wingnut welfare machine takes care of its own, but as with all things in modern American conservatism there’s a quid pro quo. In order to land post-Congress gigs (speaking engagements, book deals, media pundit spots, appointments at fake universities, think tank positions, board seats, etc.) amounting to about $1-million a year they first have to stay in office long enough to deliver billions in tax breaks and other goodies for America’s wealthy human and corporate persons.
One or two terms isn’t going to do it, and once they’ve been in office long enough to accomplish that the antes are upped such that they have to stay in or lose everything.
Which is an example of the fundamental way that America’s economy is a terrible place for everyone.
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So what explains the 1/3 of states where the Democrats benefit from Gerrymandering. Is it because they have little choice but to game the system to win?
Both sides do it. Both sides are guilty. The complaint is that the GOP is better at it, not that they are the only ones. I will grant you, though, that the GOP’s success has allowed it to remain more conservative than would be the case if they needed more centrist votes.
You know us ungrateful women! 
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