Bonkers: The Democrats & Congress

It doesn't matter that John Boehner is as unpopular as Nancy Pelosi on the generic ballot or whatever.



A. Pelosi's unpopularity all came from one side of the aisle, unifying an opposition and allowing them to sell that unpopularity to independents. There is no similar marketing campaign to turn independents against Boehner.



B. If Democrats are somehow able to make Boehner's popularity an issue in national congressional elections, they'll be asking independents to exchange his leadership for....Nancy Pelosi. In a contest between two incredibly unpopular choices, the incumbent has an edge, and the best marketing has an edge. The GOP has both.



C. Republicans and Independents-who-vote-Republican will not express their displeasure with incumbent Republicans by voting for Democrats.



D. District boundaries matter. Both in how many likely voters live in each district (favors the GOP) and how much campaign infrastructure can be organized for Congressional elections (favors the GOP).



E. You have to have electable Democratic candidates to run in those Republican-leaning districts, and they have to be able to organize campaign infrastructure.



The Republicans will maintain control of the US House of Representatives. They will actually increase their majority. The Senate will be under the control of the GOP, possibly to a supermajority. The President can get reelected, but only if Democrats nationwide start realizing how many disadvantages they are actually facing in 2012.



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More Reality With That?

There are still a lot of folks who aren unwilling to accept the reality presented by the loss of the Wisconsin recall effort. I know it is a lot of reality to accept, and it isn't the reality that was thought to exist before the polls closed. But you can take your medicine now and start figuring out how to do things differently, or you can hold fast and keep losing.



Here are six things the Wisconsin votes showed us, the most important of which is that unions, under their current SOP, are finished as a major political force in this country.



As I've been telling people, union-busting, defund public education Republicans hold the government of Wisconsin. They took them in general elections, and survived a mulligan set of special recall elections in which the full force of union political power and money was brought to bear. Again, in Wisconsin.



You don't get more game-set-match than that.



Time to reinvent the wheel.



(HT: Andrew Sullivan)



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National Repercussions

The focus of Peach Pundit is on Georgia state politics, so when the politics of other states show up on the front page, it is generally for a purpose. Here's their thoughts on the Wisconsin recall elections, and if you were looking for a quick summary of what those elections meant, you won't find it put more succinctly:

The election results will likely embolden Washington conservatives to stand their ground in upcoming budget debates.

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Imagine the crushing effect that a Wisconsin Democratic takeover victory would have had on state-level conservative reformers across the country. After all, our state governments are often the place where new ideas are incubated and then carried to Washington.

I added emphasis to that last part, because that statement by itself is of vital importance to understand why Democrats, Liberals, and Progressives continue to lose elections as well as policy and political questions. The GOP has gone after the states first, have built up their party organization, and have no end of ideas or candidates to bring off the bench into the national spotlight. Those ideas and candidates almost always have a support structure, press, and political review ready when they debut. Not only that, but they already have some idea what opposition to expect and how best to counter or discredit that opposition.



It didn't take long before another Peach Pundit front-pager chimed in:

Republicans are quick to note that Democrats just spent an amount that could run three competitive U.S. Senate races and their result was to pick off two State Senators, one with serious personal baggage. Moreover, they point to the fact that national union interests flooded a major union state with cash and workers, only to have the majority of Republican reformers affirmed by voters.

It isn't just Republicans who should note this dynamic. As I said before, the DLP needed to win or tie the Wisconsin recall elections. They did not. If DLP's can lose to Republicans in Wisconsin over the issue of union-busting and defunding public education, the rout is officially on: in 2012, expect the GOP to add to their number of state legislators, to bolster their majority in the US House of Representatives, to gain the majority in the US Senate, and probably oust the incumbent President of the United States.



And that's just national politics; as far as unions go, this election consigns their current political clout to the dustbin. They are finished under their current operating model. Their two options now is to deny that reality and continue losing competitive elections by inches or come up with a new way of organizing, adding value for their membership, and marketing themselves poltically.



Kyle Wingfield at the AJC puts it more succinctly:

Republicans held onto four of the six — and thus a one-seat majority in the Senate — by an average of 6 percentage points. The cumulative vote was 53 percent to 47 percent in the GOP’s favor.

A union-busting, defund public education GOP in Wisconsin.



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"Unable to Move"

Athenae at First-Draft talks about what is at stake this week in Wisconsin.

I feel like most people know what kind of country we are. They know we're mean and paralyzed and small. They know we've talked ourselves into being unable to move, and either they can't see how we can get out of it, or they don't care if we ever do.



This is how it works: You start out just not doing one thing because it's too hard, and pretty soon you can't do anything. We are a country that cannot button our shirt in the morning because we actually cannot conceive of the process by which we would do that, no matter how many shots of brandy we take to steady our nerves.

This election will mean different things to different people. To me, it will show us just how hard people are willing to fight for those things that defined America from 1929 to 2001. Win or tie, and there are still some things left of the old consensus, that cultural belief that we were on an bending arc towards a more perfect union. Lose, and the whole modern political complexion of the country will be forever changed, and the march to pre-1929 philosophies, so long consigned to the dustbin of history, will continue nearly unopposed.



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Illegitimate Elections

After all that bellyaching we heard about ACORN affecting elections in our representative republic, I'm shocked, SHOCKED there isn't more mainstream media outcry over stunts like this.

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Everybody's Doing It

Gerrymandering, I mean redistricting, is going on across the country. You'll notice how little the actual opinions of the voters comes into play in this analysis. The only time that matters is if the voters get angry at blatant redistricting overreach. Everything else makes it sound like a bunch of horse tradin'.

And, no, I still don't think Democrats will win control of Congress for the next decade, precisely for this reason.

(HT: Peach Pundit.)

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"Resegregating the South"

Cynthia Tucker at the AJC reexamines the unintended consequences of the Voting Rights Act of 1984. She starts with a mea culpa and then blisters the effect gerrymandering redistricting has had on our nation as a whole, and particularly the South.

And if it is to change, we will need many voices ready to overcome the racially-based demoagougery we are sure to hear from the left. Especially the machine politicians who benefit the most directly from turning majority-minority districts into personal fiefdoms.

If black voters think they have made substantial gains simply by having more black representatives in Congress, they’re wrong. They’d have more influence if they were spread through several legislative districts, forcing more candidates to court them.

I'm glad to hear someone saying it. Y'all what has been going on is bad for everyone. We need more demographically balanced districts all over the country, and we will need them if we ever, ever hope to rationally address the problems this nation is facing.

Case and point: Louisiana just got some new Congressional districts. Take a moment and look at the map. See if you can guess which one is specifically drawn to concentrate as many minority voters as possible.

Then look at the demographics. For a state that is one-third African-American, African-Americans have a voice in only one-sixth of the state's Congressional delegation.

Unintended consequences don't begin to cover it.

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2012

I'll say it now, the Democrats will not retake the House of Representatives in 2012. As a matter of fact, I'm of the opinion that the Democrats won't even have a chance to retake the House of Representatives again until after 2020.

And they'll only do that if they can expand their influence in state legislatures in time for the next census figures. Remember, with the GOP sweep of so many state houses during the redistricting process, they get to politically consolidate congressional power through demographic manipulation. Not that the Democrats were any angels when they controlled this process, but the GOP isn't even going to have to play ball with Democrats in the South this time around. That'll free up resources to fight this out in other states in other regions.

Maybe that will teach the national Democrats not to ignore the state parties. Especially in the South.

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Obama's Primary Challenge

Make no mistake, I think a liberal challenge to President Obama in the run up to the 2012 general Presidential election is a fantastic idea. As a matter of fact, if there is a strong enough Democratic primary challenge from Obama's left for 2012, I think it virtually guarantees a second term for the Obama Presidency. I came to this realization while speaking to former Hurricane Radio contributor SAWB last night on the phone.

As a libertarian/conservative who gets most of his information from talk radio, he's not blisteringly happy with the tax deal Obama just negotiated, as Democrats got more out of the deal than they have any rational reason to believe, but he thinks that only the liberals in the Democratic Party are angry with it enough to do anything about it. He played down the DeMint faction's lunacy on the topic (not voting for a bill where they get almost everything they want), and played up the idea that the liberal interests that "control the Democratic Party" (you know, the ones powerful enough to shoehorn the public option into health care over everyone else's objections < /sarcasm>) will challenge Obama in the 2012 primaries - and Obama will lose.

(This manufactured overestimation of the power of the ultra-left in the Democratic Party is one of the ways the GOTP has gained so much traction in the South and Midwest over the years, and is a constant theme of talk-radio. Like much of talk-radio, it has very little bearing on any existing or current political reality.)

While this narrative is being cooked up on right-wing radio (and I have grown to hope they continue), it has spread from there (as it always does) into a few on the left who are generally displeased with President Obama and who are deluded enough to see expediency in political purism. Because of this, some folks are now arguing against a Democratic primary challenge from Obama's left. While they have to say this, I surely hope someone on the far-left won't listen, and will go ahead and start their campaign yesterday.

Here's why:

1. Despite two years of the most virulent, reality-bending criticism from the right-wing, Obama's approval/disapproval among the general voting public remains roughly even. They've literally thrown everything at him, and the kitchen sink was first, setting their narratives that he is the next coming of whatever is considered the most evil character in world history that afternoon at the radio station. A challenge from the left would put Obama's pragmatic centrism on display to a greater degree than any academic comparisons can. Right-wing narrative, their greatest tool, will lose a great deal of power when compared to a reality the media will actively focus on.

2. Next: governing Obama might get a lot of things done, but he and the Democrats absolutely lose the political narrative concerning those things, and cede the terms of the debate to the right-wing. Campaigning Obama is a force of nature. As Dante has said, the GOTP wants to avoid "Campaign" Obama as long as possible. A Primary challenge from the left will get Obama in campaign mode, fighting for the center and the independents while the GOTP fights over their rabid, lunatic, War-On-Christmas-is-real believing base. The contrast to the general public will be night and day.

3. Democrats will be seen by the center and the independents as making the more mature, rational, responsible, pragmatic choice. While the best challenger would be Nancy Pelosi herself, someone close to her will suffice.

4. Finally: it will spool up and activate Democratic locals all across the land earlier, at a time when most of the GOTP assets will be in the heat of a much more fluid primary season. While the GOTP nominee will have a primary-tested campaign organization ready to go in the general, an Obama reelection campaign organization will already have the proverbial high ground.

This needs to happen.

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When Gerrymanders Attack

Unlike ACORN, the New Black Panther Party and mythical voting patterns of illegal immigrants, Gerrymandering is a real threat to electoral legitimacy in this nation. It depresses participation in the political process, protects incumbents and incentivizes political extremes. Just looking at the districts, as drawn, exposes incredible absurdity to the situation.

Yet, it is a situation downplayed by the political and media castes. You have to wonder why that is.

If you are interested in "taking back your country" or making any improvements to State or National political systems, you're going to need to educate yourself on this continuing problem.

Slate has an old slideshow on some of the more ridiculous districts out there, and the Daily Dish is taking note and displaying the evidence.

Thought most of the Dish information comes from readers writing in.

Now, before you get all up in my grill about how most of those terrible districts are represented by Democrats, consider this:

In Georgia, Republicans are complaining about Congressional District 2, because it is a competitive district, and the GOP candidate just barely lost. District 2 was created by the GOP legislature after they threw out the terrible districts drawn by the previous Democratic legislature. If you look at a a map of Georgia Congressional districts (PDF) you can see that District 2 was drawn specifically to concentrate black (ie: Democratic) voters and increase the access to suburban and exurban Atlanta (ie: white, Republican) voters to as many districts as possible.

Those of you not from Georgia may be questioning how that is the case, as district 2 is a big and contiguous bloc, with few -manderish traits apparent. Look towards the northwest and southeast parts of this district, and you start to see the proof in the pudding. Columbus, Georgia, the state's 3rd largest city, is locaded in Muscogee County (northwest). Valdosta, Georgia, a medium sized city with a large minority population, is located in Lowndes County (southeast). District 2 cleaves both counties in half.

Guess what neighborhoods ended up where. I'll not even get into how district 2 cuts down the Dougherty County line, dividing the city of Albany and this area's western neighborhoods away from the area's eastern suburbs (in district 8, that goes all the way up to suburban Atlanta, represented by a Republican).

So, before anyone gets into how the Civil Rights Act of 1964 isn't still relevant today, you don't have to look far to see why we still have to have it on the books. Because these Republicans, who designed district 2 to be the Democratic minority seat, are now complaining about district 2 being won by a Democratic minority vote.

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