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FlamingLiberal posted:I have to think she's done, much like Martha Coakley in Mass, right? Let's not diminish Martha Coakley's accomplishments by blowing two elections in Massachusetts as a Democrat by comparing them to losing in a less blue state 
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Nov 10, 2014 16:40
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Forums Terrorist posted:So what's up with the Permanent Republican Majority thing, I thought demographics were dooming them to a slow lingering death In the presidential election. When it comes to the House, as people have mentioned, it's both naturally gerrymandered (Democratic areas tend to be more highly Democratic than Republican areas) and very effectively intentionally gerrymandered. The Senate is also naturally gerrymandered, though obviously not intentionally gerrymandered.
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Nov 10, 2014 16:41
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Ardennes posted:Should the idea be more to create more competitive districts for both parties rather than accept "natural districts"? State borders are inflexible, but there isn't a reason for district to be. It would help Democrats more theoretically but it would also open up the potential for Republicans to take once "safe" Democratic districts. Either way it makes even less sense when the very nature of a responsible representatives breaks down because of it, not just because of party balance but that those districts will be so ultra-safe that they don't really need to be as responsive. You've got two opposite inclinations here. The first is that the point of a district is that it has its own unique interests and needs someone to represent those particular interests. That tugs in favor of 'natural' districts: you'd want to put like people together in a district so that their representative represents those interests. The second is democracy - there's a problem when the elected representatives do not represent the electorate, and you've got a, say, 50-50 state that sends 75% of one side to Congress. This leans in favor of making each district competitive so that you avoid wasted votes as much as possible. Going to pure competitive districts solves the second problem, but not all that well. At that point you're better off just doing a pure proportional representation system. Given our political limitations independent redistricting with the mandate to create competitive districts is the way to go. You have to be aware though that what you are doing is basically gerrymandering - you're explicitly drawing the map to favor specific types of elections instead of creating natural districts. That's going to lead to the sort of absurd districts you see bandied about as examples of extreme gerrymandering and you've got to be aware of that and able to defend it.
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Nov 10, 2014 17:00
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tsa posted:All considered, Romney did pretty drat well considering the incumbent advantage, Obama's campaigning skills, and the state of the country (economic recovery was 2-3 years underway by then). This is just not true - the economy may have been in technical recovery but unemployement was still extremely high. Romney significantly underperformed relative to the state of the country (though not compared to the incumbent advantage and Obama's campaigning skills). Every economic indicator would have suggested in a vacumn a massive Obama defeat. tsa posted:Failing to do so gives the republicans a huge senate advantage, 2/3 of it is elected on the offterms. Half is. Every seat alternates between being elected in a Presidential year and a non-Presidential year.
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Nov 10, 2014 17:09
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computer parts posted:You're using "conservative" as a one dimensional axis, though. Maybe they are more conservative about economic issues than their parents and grandparents (although being saddled with lots of debt tends to stymie that trend), but that doesn't mean they'll vote for the party that is basically explicitly white supremacist, it just means they'll make the Democrats more conservative. I think that analysis of Hispanics basically assumes that Republicans solve the problem of the immigration rhetoric, at which point you probably would see a greater split of the hispanic vote.
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Nov 10, 2014 17:13
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Ardennes posted:It would be better, but it would require massive constitutional changes. I actually think our system is drastically inferior compared to a proper PR system. It wouldn't actually, there's no constitutional requirement for single-district House voting. A state declaring it will elect its representatives at-large through a proportional representation vote is completely consistent with the Constitution.
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Nov 10, 2014 17:25
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ComradeCosmobot posted:Yes, but that's PR on the state level, which still gives a structural advantage to Republicans (because most one-to-two-district states will go 100% Republican, while pretty much every multi-district state will have both Democrats and Republicans in a more even split.). I assume Ardennes was talking about national PR, which would, in fact, be unconstitutional. That's an extremely minor structural advantage in the grand scheme of things. Far, far less than the simple existence of the Senate, which the Democrats are still able to reasonably contest even with their inherent disadvantage. Ardennes posted:It really would have to happen on a Federal level though which would necessitate a constitutional change. That would be fine and everything, but I wouldn't hold my breath. No it wouldn't (besides that irritating multi-member district law). Why do you think it would have to happen on a federal level? Deteriorata posted:I suspect that would prove incredibly unpopular, however. People don't want a passel of representatives representing their state at large. They want a specific name that is designated as their representative that they can call when they need a pothole fixed. I disagree. I'm reasonably interested in politics and I couldn't actually name my congressman 99% of the time (the only exception would be shortly after filling in the actual ballot) and I doubt I'm alone on that. Most people have a generalized desire for a party to control the House and wouldn't ever really actually think they can call their congressman. The only people who actually do that are political activists. evilweasel has issued a correction as of 17:56 on Nov 10, 2014 |
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Nov 10, 2014 17:54
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Chantilly Say posted:Purely out of curiosity, was there a specific thing that happened, or was threatened to happen, to prompt that law? I am almost certain it's because Southern states were going to use it to eliminate the black vote, but not a PR system - instead you'd vote individually on every at-large representative so that 51% would always get 100% of the seats. edit: wow, I'm extremely wrong, they were banned in 1842 http://archive.fairvote.org/library/history/flores/apportn.htm evilweasel has issued a correction as of 18:03 on Nov 10, 2014 |
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Nov 10, 2014 17:58
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ComradeCosmobot posted:Later apportionment bills lifted that prohibition. What's the current law?
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Nov 10, 2014 19:59
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Pauline Kael posted:How do you explain the R wins in the TX border areas? They're majority Latino, but put Rs into office. It would appear that they voted against your perception of their self interest. Why don't you link something to support your claim and I expect we can debunk it in about thirty seconds.
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Nov 10, 2014 20:44
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Pauline Kael posted:My, you're sure impressed with yourself. The article you linked is paywalled, but another article that has the same opener has this: quote:Gallego indeed outpolled Hurd in heavily Hispanic border areas around Eagle Pass and El Paso, but Republicans believe Hurd could not have flipped the district without winning a significant portion of Latino votes. Basically all of the races referenced in your two articles bear out that Republicans slightly outperformed 2012, but not by a whole lot - by a few percentage points (and as was discussed in the other thread this is still worse than 2010 which suggests it's the usual midterm thing). Basically, what this all bears out is that you can indeed find rare examples of Republicans outperforming the baseline but the baseline is there and solidifying. The conclusion you want people to reach - that latinos are going to start voting Republican - is obviously false from the Pew link.
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Nov 10, 2014 21:07
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Pauline Kael posted:Sure, what I actually said, repeatedly, is that Republicans don't need to carry the Latin vote, but peel a few points off to augment their strong and growing advantage amongst white voters. If it makes you feel better to imagine demographics are going to save the D party in 2016, 2020, or beyond, then you can continue to do so. Well, there's many problems with your post. The first is the most trivial - we can look at what you did post relatively easily and it's a throwaway attempt to talk about Texas border districts. As to that Republicans do not need to carry the latino vote, that's based on a pretty basic lack of understanding of the demographic problem. The basic problem is that whites do indeed tend to vote Republican, but the percentage of voters who are white are steadily declining. What you're basically trying to claim is the Romney playbook which lead to the hilarious voter unskewing nonsense - the idea that 2008 represented a high-water mark in minority turnout. 2012 showed that wasn't the case and that Republicans could no longer hope that although minorities are a steadily growing part of the populace perhaps they just wouldn't vote. That's what the demographic issue really is: relying on winning the white vote gets you less and less as time goes on and Obama still handily won re-election while losing the white vote pretty badly in the worst economic conditions for an incumbent to hold the White House in a generation. To be fair though you manage to have blundered near, accidentally of course as you're referencing Presidential election years, something that is actually correct - the demographic advantage the Democrats have is not of much use in the House and won't be for some time. The reason that immigration reform is going nowhere, though Republicans agree it's necessary for the party to compete in Presidential elections, is because the amount of Republican congressmen who actually require a single latino vote to hold their seat is astonishingly small. It's not in the interest of any of them, who face primaries full of people who go into a screeching rage at the very thought of 'amnesty' but aren't going to be running for President.
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Nov 10, 2014 21:32
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Ardennes posted:Ultimately which is why the Democrats will have an advantage in holding in presidency but the GOP will have an iron hold on the House. They don't need to have a disadvantage in the House - if they redistricted in 2020 they could easily fix that. But until then, yes.
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Nov 10, 2014 21:55
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Pauline Kael posted:No, my point, explicitly stated a number of times in this and other threads, is that Republicans can tread water or peel off a few points of Latinos and even Blacks, since I seriously doubt (and would love to hear you rationalize otherwise) that an elderly white grandmother will generate the same level of excitement in either community as Obama did in 08 and 12. Also, you may want to consider the actual demographic trends and stop thinking that tomorrow we're going to wake up and all the road signs will be in Spanish. We're a LONG way off from the 'ascendent coalition' from being in the majority. The ascendant coalition is already in the majority. That's why Obama won twice. Seriously, it's like you're Mitt Romney a week before the election.
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Nov 10, 2014 21:55
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Pauline Kael posted:Oh, good point, the Republicans will run Mitt Romney every 4 years henceforth. I hope he does better against Barack Obama next time! Obama also beat McCain. And Romney was the strongest candidate by far of the bunch in 2012 and Obama had four years of pretty terrible economic conditions. Sure, the next candidate won't be Romney - but they also won't have the last four years be some of the most miserable years economically since the Great Depression. GWB did indeed get 44% of the latino vote. It's what happened after that that started significantly increasing the share of the latino vote the Democrats receive: the xenophobic Republican backlash to the idea of immigration reform. It's that base that's the problem, and the constraints they place on any Republican candidate. It forces people like Romney, who probably has no personal animosity to hispanics, to toe the party line with such stuff as self-deportation and gets the high profile candidates in a primary attacking each other for being too soft on undocumented immigrants. And that's not even counting the new explosion we're expecting from that base in the next few weeks.
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Nov 10, 2014 22:12
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Captain_Maclaine posted:You may not have noticed, but the GOP as a whole has changed a wee bit in its attitudes towards latinos in the intervening decade, and even W himself got shredded by his own party when he belated attempted to do something about immigration in 2007. Much as has been the ongoing existential crisis of the whole party, I don't see how they can pivot away from that without getting killed by their own base. It's not so much "it'll never happen again" as "as things stand right now, I don't see how it can happen anytime soon." It could happen if Obama shelved the EO and immigration reform advocates decided that neither party was going to help them. But I think Obama's been pretty clear since the election that's not happening and if he was going to cave he'd have done it shortly after the election.
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Nov 10, 2014 22:15
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Pauline Kael posted:Then no doubt, we are entering a permanent era of Democrat dominance at the Federal level! See, this is why I don't usually bother to hide my contempt for you. This thread has people clearly explaining the issue and even explaining it's limits - that it does no good at the legislative level - and what you have is a lot of feelings and not a lot of thought. So we're left with you sort of spluttering dumb lines like this. As to this line itself as was pointed out a lot after 2012, the Republicans managed to win the popular vote once in the past six Presidential elections, and that was only with the advantage of incumbency. We are pretty solidly into the era of Democratic dominance of the Presidency, the question is to what degree it matters without control of Congress. Really, the only thing that saved Republicans was the mathematical quirk of 2000 - but as the Democratic majority has strengthened the odds of a split like that have decreased and in fact a split like that is now more likely to favor Democrats than Republicans.
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Nov 10, 2014 22:20
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Ardennes posted:That is going to require both major wins of state level legislatures and governor seats outside of traditional D strongholds and the courage to actually follow through. I am not going to hold my breath. Oh it's definitely not guaranteed. But at least it's a presidential year (unlike 2010) so you've got the Democratic turnout advantage at least. What I am really concerned about is if those state legislatures themselves are gerrymandered. Like Pennsylvania should be an easy target - you can flip 10 seats or so with a redistricting and it leans D so it should be attainable in a Presidential year. But if their legislature also was able to gerrymander itself in 2010, is that even possible?
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Nov 10, 2014 22:26
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My Imaginary GF posted:Another issue is that traditional D strongholds cannot be taken for granted with the movement of white suburbanites to cities. That would help Democrats, not hurt them. Bringing in Republican votes so they have less wasted votes in the cities would be a good thing.
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Nov 10, 2014 22:28
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My Imaginary GF posted:Those suburb-to-urban migrants still follow suburban voting trends, though, so it really doesn't help democrats. Unless you mean in a larger, "socially liberal and economically conservative republicans are easier to do a deal with" way? I mean that cities are like 80% democratic, so every Republican vote you mix into there is wasted in a district by district election so it's to the Democrats advantage. If it was significant enough to disrupts their safe city districts it also disrupted whoever they used to vote for. Moving people around only changes wasted votes not the overall total.
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Nov 10, 2014 22:32
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None of this stuff does anything to support that people moving matters. I don't want to get into the rabbit hole of your apparent breakdown over the IL results and I'm going to ignore that part. But people moving around does not change the vote totals, it changes where those votes are. The biggest problem that Democrats have is that their votes are in the wrong places (i.e. either in massively democratic areas like cities with 80+% Democratic support, or in weakly republican areas with 55-60% Republican support), so they waste far more votes than Republicans do.
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Nov 10, 2014 22:54
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twoot posted:Do states lock in House re-districting to the post-census only? No. Texas brought a mid-census redistricting to the Supreme Court and won back in 2002 or 2004 so there's precedent it's constitutional. That said, that's something that neither side has really gone for yet because the instant someone starts doing those routinely then everyone does it everywhere every two years (and not just that, you'd also redistrict your opponents into each other's districts routinely to make it so that none could develop a stable base). It's basically one of the few things that are technically possible but are simply not done that are left. The only other ones I can really think of are adjusting the size of the Supreme Court for partisan reasons, and removing subjects from the Supreme Court's appellate jurisdiction.
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Nov 11, 2014 00:29
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The Monkey Man posted:Pennsylvania did pretty well too, it was the only state where an incumbent GOP governor was unseated. Pennsylvania is one of the key targets for the 2020 redistricting: in Presidential years Democrats tend to have a bit of an edge, but their seats are 5D/13R. That's a 16-seat swing if they can take Pennsylvania for the redistricting. Ohio is more of a reach but another key target as well.
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Nov 11, 2014 21:47
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Nameless_Steve posted:2018. That's when we'll need high voter turnout. (...pun intended) Actually you need it in 2020, the redistricting happens between 2020 and 2022.
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Nov 11, 2014 23:02
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PupsOfWar posted:What does the state legislature in Pennsylvania look like? Currently Republican controlled. Not exactly narrowly, but in an amount that eyeballing it and knowing nothing about the local politics should be doable.
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Nov 12, 2014 00:08
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Joementum posted:Tammy Duckworth is expecting a daughter next month and not expecting to challenge Mark Kirk in 2016. You know there's a guy who will be looking for a job in 2016 that has been successful in Illinois races 
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Nov 12, 2014 17:11
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CubsWoo posted:A Cassidy internal poll (the most reliable kind) has Landrieu down 56-40 in the runoff. Cassidy has been promised a seat on the Energy committee if he wins and Landrieu is trying to push through a bill with her name on it to approve the Keystone pipeline in the lame duck session. The democrats are also pretty much openly saying Landrieu has no viable path to victory.
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Nov 14, 2014 05:20
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computer parts posted:The Democratic Party as a whole has not focused on local and state elections that much and that's how you develop state candidates. That can be part of it but there's also other causes. One is that there are states where there's a local machine that rewards people for being able to work the machine more than people who are actually electable. For example, Massachusetts, which thought it was a great idea to let Coakley run again. So the people who have the heft to run are lovely candidates, while the people who would be good candidates were less successful at the internal politics and never got the right profile or experience. Florida might also fall into this category given how Sink keeps getting to run. There's also states where the high-profile people who would otherwise be good candidates have flopped for one reason or another - corruption, scandal, etc. This is more random and can wipe out the star that has taken all the attention and good experience from the last few years.
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Dec 1, 2014 18:42
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My Imaginary GF posted:Its better to win consistently than it is to win by going full populist. Public whims change far too often to implement the structural reforms necessary to fully transition America, with the least harm, into the digital era. eripsa?
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Dec 2, 2014 04:10
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computer parts posted:At the state level they're not. The Democrats have an overwhelming supermajority in both legislative chambers. The senate is 36-4, and the house is 128-32. That is pretty overwhelmingly Democratic, Coakley pratfalls aside. Basically the new Republican governor can't even veto a bill credibly unless it massively split the Dem caucus.
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Dec 3, 2014 01:13
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Amused to Death posted:drat what are we doing wrong in Connecticut. I mean yeah on one hand we re-elected our Democratic governor, but on the other Dems have in the past 3 elections consistently had their majority chipped away at. After 2008 they had a super majority in both houses. Come January it will be 21-16 in the Senate and 87-64 in the House. Have Mitt Romney campaign for the Republican candidates, that's what got the Mass. democrats get such a huge supermajority.
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Dec 6, 2014 18:53
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Nameless_Steve posted:You shouldn't base a majority on redrawing anything, period. That's nice. It's also completely irrelevant to reality, where a majority absolutely depends on favorable district drawing as the fact that Republicans have had a lock on the House despite losing the House popular vote in 2012. Gerrymandering is a reality regardless of if you like it or not, and refusing to play won't get you anywhere.
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Dec 9, 2014 16:31
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WhiskeyJuvenile posted:what's the problem with the jungle primary? A 60-40 district where the 60% party has four competitive candidates and the 40% has two.
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Jan 13, 2015 17:08
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dorkasaurus_rex posted:Wrong thread. My bad. But yeah the Democrats didn't exactly inspire my faith in there ability to get out the vote in the weeks prior to the November midterm. It was like making the arrangements for a funeral. So defeatist. This guy misses that the Democrats couldn't pass any of this stuff in 2013 either. The sticking point is the House, if you can get any of this stuff past a Republican House it's getting through the Senate even if the Democrats have lost the Senate (because hell has frozen over).
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Jan 22, 2015 15:10
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Cliff Racer posted:I had forgotten that it had happened, remembering only the John McCain by acclaimation thing the Republicans did in 2008 instead as the only blatant non-democratic vote at a convention. The fact that both occurred during publicly funded events is, in itself, scandalous to me. If parties want to bend rules during their own time that is fine with me but when they are doing things with millions of dollars of state and local money they had better do stuff to the letter. Voice vote is 'by the letter', it's even used in congress and the senate.
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Jan 23, 2015 15:23
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Joementum posted:They did the state-by-state delegation voting at the DNC both times with Obama. It was supposed to start during the network broadcast in 2012 right after Clinton's speech, but that went a bit long and they didn't start the vote until after midnight. I believe in 2008 halfway through Clinton called for Obama to recieve the nomination by acclimation.
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Jan 24, 2015 16:30
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Bob Ojeda posted:Is there some reason independent redistricting commissions don't work? How do you select the independent members of the redistricting committee and what objectives do you give them?
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Feb 24, 2015 00:26
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The other question is "does removing the provision that prevents an amendment from altering the equal representation in the Senate" count as altering the equal representation in the Senate. Because if not (and there's no good reason it would be) then you just do it as two amendments.
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Feb 27, 2015 20:19
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Nintendo Kid posted:The point of them is that forcibly merging two states in any way is already going draw just as much pushback as completely abandoning current state borders, both legislatively and even constitutional. So given the fact you'd need massive support to do it, why wouldn't you go full speed ahead and do things attempt to eliminate all cross-state-lines metro areas by turning them into single state areas, massively adjust borders to ensure more equal population distribution (admittedly the 38 state one chopping up Alaska into two states fucks that up), and so on? Because creating states out of other states (either merging, or cutting part out) requires the consent of each affected state as well as Congress. So Delaware and Wyoming and all other tiny states can keep mashing Betray and refuse to be incorporated into larger states which would dilute their voting power.
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Mar 2, 2015 21:22
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Nintendo Kid posted:This is equally true of any attempt to make states fake-merge for shared senators and the like though. Only you'd also need to get a constitutional amendment first and that'd be even harder. Your plan requires the consent of every state, which is 12 states harder than a constitutional amendment.
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Mar 2, 2015 22:12
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