How The GOP Captured America
Breaking news! Can somebody call the DNC and try to explain how reapportionment works?
The Untold Story of How the GOP Rigged Congress and Hijacked American Democracy:
New documents expose a Republican scheme years in the making.
This is a very long and detailed explanation of precisely how GOP fundraisers and political operatives gerrymandered the American political landscape. I have excerpted a few conclusionary paragraphs of interest:
There would be 6,000 state legislature races nationwide in 2010. The RSLC zeroed in on 107 of those in 16 states. Win those, according to the report, and Republicans could “fully control or affect the drawing of 9 new Congressional districts” awarded during reapportionment in Florida, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Texas and Utah. They could also affect the redrawing of maps in five states that were losing six districts after the census: Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York.
Finally, the RSLC proposed “strengthening Republican redistricting power by flipping 15 chambers from Democrat to Republican control” and defending nine other GOP majorities. The key targets: Alabama’s house and senate, both chambers in Colorado, the Indiana and Iowa house, the Nevada and New York senate, both chambers in North Carolina, Ohio’s house, the Oregon senate, the Pennsylvania house and both chambers in Wisconsin.
If Republicans didn’t make this investment, the Democrats — who were “organized,” “well-funded” and “focused on state campaigns” — just might. Unions had spent $126.6 million on state elections in 2008, he cautioned, and donated just under $5.4 million to Republicans. What Gillespie and his team could not have known was that the highly prepared RSLC had already figured out Pokemon Go, while equivalent groups on the Democratic side were trying to get a stickball game going. Democrats lacked the imagination to see redistricting in a new way, and failed to play defense in those 107 districts — even after a March 2010 Wall Street Journal op-ed by Karl Rove laid out the plan.
Oh yeah. Breaking news except for an Op Ed written by Karl Rove and carefully concealed in the obscure publication known as The Wall Street Journal. The DLC was in peak form:
“We were prepared for the fights of the past,” Jessica Post, now the executive director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee and a key leader behind the 2017 Democratic special election wins, told me for the epilogue of my book. “We could have done a better job of communicating to stakeholders what 2010 meant. When you’re in a legislative world you assume everyone knows.”
It sure is a relief to know that the DLC is no longer preparing for battles of the past and looking to the future with fresh faced young guns like Joe Biden. Here's the outlook for taking back the House:
Indeed, even while Democrats sense momentum as we draw closer to the 2018 midterms, the path back to power is steep. Republicans control nearly 70 percent of all state legislative chambers. Democrats have not flipped a congressional seat from red to blue during this entire decade in such ostensible swing states such as North Carolina, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Those states alone currently send 49 Republicans and 20 Democrats to Washington — a 29-seat edge that’s larger, all by itself, than the overall current GOP House majority.
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/untold-story-how-gop-rigged-c...
There's a whole lot of energy being poured in to electing grass roots progressives to the Democratic party. I'm not boarding that trainwreck, but I wish them luck.
Comments
they're
aware of it. In the fall of 2016, before the election, the Obama people kicked off a "redistricting campaign"; it now has lots of money. Whether it will make a difference is another question.
The Democrats run people who are boring. The Republicans run carnival geeks. In the carnival, the geek always drew the largest crowds. Except for those adults-only night shows, where Fatima slowly dropped all her seven veils. Maybe the Democrats should start running naked people.
About Time
The DNC usual suspects trashed John Dean's 50 state strategy:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/28/martin.election/index.html
And all signs point to the DNC putting more energy into stopping Bernie Democrats from winning primaries than anything else.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
yep. n/t
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
@hecate Democrats are running
Democrats are running people they think can bring in money to the party. Win or lose, there's always the money.
the
congressman here is dumb as a stump. But he wears a cowboy hat, and can speak fluent yeehaw, jawin' about how the homos and the Mexicans and the transgender bathrooms are a threat to the white workin' man. He, of course, has never worked a day in his life: he and his kin rake in many millions from the government for not growing rice. The Dems always run against him some earnest nebbish powered by soy milk and bean curd. What they need to do is find some guy who can hit the bullseye with his six-shooter while gunning his truck through a mud bog. In his TV ads he can be shown roping bankers.
Progressive Dems Outraising Establishment
From The Intercept:
Grassroots politics are very confusing:
Back to basics:
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/02/six-insurgent-candidates-just-out-ra...
Keeping my fingers crossed.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
@Meteor Man I hear you, and hope
I hear you, and hope it's enough. The Dccc and other alphabet committees care more about what cash the candidates can bring to the party. Just a few more hundred million, and then watch what they can accomplish. I mean, who knows better what to do with the campaign cash, the party or the candidate?
@Snode
Not to mention that it seems unlikely that high-ranking Dems such as, for example, Pelosi or Schumer, (why do I keep thinking he's Republican?) would bring in more money naked than not...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
DCCC Candidates Suck: Update
From Down With Tyranny:
A list of primaries the DCCC admits trying to rig, so:
In conclusion:
For the details:
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2018/02/my-budding-romance-with-dccc...
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
I'd love to see that article posted on ToP
Would direct evidence even be enough for them to see how rigged the system is and how the democrats are just fine with it and even helping them?
If ICE were hunting down Trump’s critics, that would be bad but would make sense.
But ICE is hunting down Israel’s critics.
How is Russia ruining our democracy?
Looks like the republicans and the democrats are doing a fine enough job of it for them. How hard have the democrats fought back against gerrymandering? Hell they don't even bother to get enough voting machines in heavy democratic districts to keep people from having to wait in line all day to vote.
I'm thinking that at one time a democrat went to a Harlem Globetrotters game and came up with the idea that could be a great way to run congress. This shit has been going on for much longer than we knew. I recently read an article on JFK which showed that he was just a big a capitalist protecting president as Obama was. He hid his too behind his charming character. Robert was right there with him.
This is why I refuse to play this voting game any longer. Oh look, Curly just dribbled bye with Meadowlark Lemon
If ICE were hunting down Trump’s critics, that would be bad but would make sense.
But ICE is hunting down Israel’s critics.
@snoopydawg I've been saying for
I've been saying for decades that the Democrats are the Washington Generals of politics. They're supposed to lose.
Translation of the following paragraph
is now provided for those who are politically illiterate (thus excluding most of our communitarians) but potentially useful for independents and wayward conservatives.
= Democrats fought using Napoleonic tactics in the age of the machine gun--shoulder to shoulder, using outdated techniques.
= we didn't inform our mega donors of our outdated techniques so that they might supply tactical and strategic input.
= we really don't know jackshit about the people we allegedly represent--nor do we care.
The myth of demographics
All of this goes to the point that demographics will not save the democratic party. The republicans have made it structurally impossible to win in many areas. Add in election cheating. The democrats are very good at cheating each other in the primaries. However, the republicans save their cheating for the general and have continually added new ways to make the happen.
Good points
- not that either CorpoDems or many among those forming the other wing of the Corporate Two-Vampire-Party Trade-Off seem to hear anything beyond money talking, that figure of speech being what the majority of the Supreme
ly CorruptCourt obviously based their contemptuously ironic definition of '(big) money being political speech' for only the very wealthiest on, (since The Poors can't afford to get a political word in edgewise, or even a letter,) making it evident that it spoke very clearly to a certain majority among them. Considering money's an accepted symbol of value most often used to purchase something which shouldn't include politicians, judicial decisions or public policy, but, previously which has been used to buy silence, generally from blackmailers but, since the Orwellian 'citizen's United' outrage, purchases fashionable solid gold earplugs for the political representatives of actual citizen's so they can never hear them scream.All of 'what you said', and adding that the CorpoDems themselves have made it very clear not only that they think their potential voters are fools but that they count on them being fool enough to vote for them no matter what they do or don't do. Even after they've been exposed on enough of it to show that 'the donkeys' and their notion of applying what they term 'law' is 'an ass, an idiot'.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.