4 ms·

How did the obstructionists grant themselves that power?

by Mountain_Skies 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
malcolmgreaves 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
- cryptonector 2y ago
  Gerrymandering is self-limiting. You can gerrymander to increase your party's number of House seats from your state, or you can gerrymander to make your seats more secure, but you can't do both! You can make some seats more secure while others weaker so as to strike a balance between these two goals, but you won't get as many seats as if you optimized for seat count and you won't get as many safe seats as if you optimized for seat safety. If you optimize for seat count then a wave election can easily turn many of those seats over to the other party, and with them control of the House. If you optimize for seat safety then a wave election need only turn over a few of your seats to switch control of the House. We have had lots of wave elections in the past 100 years: 1920, 1932, 1994, 2006, 2008, 2010. Three of those are in the past 20 years. Four in the past 30 years. Gerrymandering isn't all it's cracked up to be. It cannot make any party impervious to wave elections. This, anyways, only as long as all House districts in each state have roughly the same population.
  - cyberax 2y ago
    > Gerrymandering is self-limiting. It really isn't. It's self-perpetuating. A gerrymandered state might _eventually_ switch sides, but far more likely it'll become more red (and yes, gerrymandering is predominantly a Republican tactic).
    - mistrial9 2y ago
      maybe that was true a while ago, but no, it is vigorously practiced by both US Democrats and Republicans in the modern age .. source: quantitative Census demography for urban planning
      - cyberax 2y ago
        That's 100% opposite of the current state. Historically Democrats and Republicans used the classic gerrymandering. However, now it's pretty much only Republicans who rely on computer-aided models to gerrymander the districts. There _are_ Democratic examples, and the worst ones are in Maryland and Illinois. But they pale before the Republican gerrymandering.
      - autoexec 2y ago
        It's true that both parties take part in it, however Democrats feel forced into it and would rather not. Democrats have repeatedly put forth efforts to end the practice. They have little choice but to play by the rules as they are until they manage to finally put a stop to it.
    - cryptonector 2y ago
      Between 1933 and 1995 we had sixty two years of Democrat party majorities in the U.S. Congress. That was before the Internet and back when the U.S. was less polarized than today. And the Great Depression and the New Deal left the Democrats very popular for decades. Today I don't see how gerrymandering could defeat wave elections. Democrat gerrymandering did not prevent 1994, and Republican gerrymandering did not prevent 2006 and 2008.
      - cyberax 2y ago
        That's because historical gerrymandering was not as severe as now. Modern gerrymandering uses computer modeling to slice minorities as thinly as possible, creating insurmountable barriers. Here's a nice overview: https://medium.com/rantt/the-top-10-most-gerrymandered-states-in-america-bd962843ba1f https://medium.com/rantt/the-top-10-most-gerrymandered-state...
  - kelnos 2y ago
    > Gerrymandering isn't all it's cracked up to be. It cannot make any party impervious to wave elections. I think the last 15 years of elections would seem to contradict you. My guess is that if gerrymandering were completely outlawed, Democrats would easily maintain control of the House, with a healthy margin, more or less permanently. Wave elections are a thing, but as we've seen, they don't give a the waved party a massive margin. > We have had lots of wave elections in the past 100 years: 1920, 1932, 1994, 2006, 2008, 2010 2010 is a bit of a magic number, because that was the point when Republicans started their concerted, coordinated, country-wide gerrymandering campaign. So I don't think elections prior to then can support or refute any points about gerrymandering.
    - cryptonector 2y ago
      > 2010 is a bit of a magic number, because that was the point when Republicans started their concerted, coordinated, country-wide gerrymandering campaign. So I don't think elections prior to then can support or refute any points about gerrymandering. They already had done that, and they lost two big wave elections. (E.g., Texas redistricted in 2004.)
      - vel0city 2y ago
        They really started gerrymandering hard in 2010 with REDMAP. There's really an extreme delineation in technology used to abuse the system at this point. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP
    - roenxi 2y ago
      > My guess is that if gerrymandering were completely outlawed, Democrats would easily maintain control of the House, with a healthy margin, more or less permanently. It'd be better if the electoral boundaries were drawn with a polling-naive algorithm, but that isn't how it works in practice - you've probably noticed that every election is knife edge and there are regular upsets. This is because if one party is guaranteed to lose it will change its policies just enough to attract marginal voters from the other party. For example, there were confident predictions of a similar nature that the Republicans would be unable to win elections because of the shrinking white demographic. We can see in the polling that what actually starts to happen is Trump still on the ballot but they've been in a long strategic process of picking voters from non-white demographics. The elections themselves are still knife-edge. There'd be a different policy mix, but one thing we can predict about the future anyway is that there will be different policy mixes. Gerrymandering just privileges minority incumbent policies.
throw0101b 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP
winter_blue 2y ago
It’s partly (1) due to the structure (or rather, flaws) of the US constitution, (2) a ridiculous senate rule, and (3) gerrymandering as others have mentioned. On (1): needing the approval of the senate, house, and president makes it very hard to pass laws. On (2): the senate rule requiring 60% approval has already been repealed for appointments and for budgetary legislation, but it really needs to thrown out. The first two years of Biden’s presidency were mostly lost to obstructionism because of this rule. On (3): this will most likely be banned if democrats get a trifecta federal control, and repeal (2), since gerrymandering primarily just benefits republicans.

How did the obstructionists grant themselves that power?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

malcolmgreaves 2y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering

cryptonector 2y ago
Gerrymandering is self-limiting. You can gerrymander to increase your party's number of House seats from your state, or you can gerrymander to make your seats more secure, but you can't do both! You can make some seats more secure while others weaker so as to strike a balance between these two goals, but you won't get as many seats as if you optimized for seat count and you won't get as many safe seats as if you optimized for seat safety. If you optimize for seat count then a wave election can easily turn many of those seats over to the other party, and with them control of the House. If you optimize for seat safety then a wave election need only turn over a few of your seats to switch control of the House. We have had lots of wave elections in the past 100 years: 1920, 1932, 1994, 2006, 2008, 2010. Three of those are in the past 20 years. Four in the past 30 years. Gerrymandering isn't all it's cracked up to be. It cannot make any party impervious to wave elections. This, anyways, only as long as all House districts in each state have roughly the same population.
- cyberax 2y ago
  > Gerrymandering is self-limiting. It really isn't. It's self-perpetuating. A gerrymandered state might _eventually_ switch sides, but far more likely it'll become more red (and yes, gerrymandering is predominantly a Republican tactic).
  - mistrial9 2y ago
    maybe that was true a while ago, but no, it is vigorously practiced by both US Democrats and Republicans in the modern age .. source: quantitative Census demography for urban planning
    - cyberax 2y ago
      That's 100% opposite of the current state. Historically Democrats and Republicans used the classic gerrymandering. However, now it's pretty much only Republicans who rely on computer-aided models to gerrymander the districts. There _are_ Democratic examples, and the worst ones are in Maryland and Illinois. But they pale before the Republican gerrymandering.
    - autoexec 2y ago
      It's true that both parties take part in it, however Democrats feel forced into it and would rather not. Democrats have repeatedly put forth efforts to end the practice. They have little choice but to play by the rules as they are until they manage to finally put a stop to it.
  - cryptonector 2y ago
    Between 1933 and 1995 we had sixty two years of Democrat party majorities in the U.S. Congress. That was before the Internet and back when the U.S. was less polarized than today. And the Great Depression and the New Deal left the Democrats very popular for decades. Today I don't see how gerrymandering could defeat wave elections. Democrat gerrymandering did not prevent 1994, and Republican gerrymandering did not prevent 2006 and 2008.
    - cyberax 2y ago
      That's because historical gerrymandering was not as severe as now. Modern gerrymandering uses computer modeling to slice minorities as thinly as possible, creating insurmountable barriers. Here's a nice overview: https://medium.com/rantt/the-top-10-most-gerrymandered-states-in-america-bd962843ba1f https://medium.com/rantt/the-top-10-most-gerrymandered-state...
- kelnos 2y ago
  > Gerrymandering isn't all it's cracked up to be. It cannot make any party impervious to wave elections. I think the last 15 years of elections would seem to contradict you. My guess is that if gerrymandering were completely outlawed, Democrats would easily maintain control of the House, with a healthy margin, more or less permanently. Wave elections are a thing, but as we've seen, they don't give a the waved party a massive margin. > We have had lots of wave elections in the past 100 years: 1920, 1932, 1994, 2006, 2008, 2010 2010 is a bit of a magic number, because that was the point when Republicans started their concerted, coordinated, country-wide gerrymandering campaign. So I don't think elections prior to then can support or refute any points about gerrymandering.
  - cryptonector 2y ago
    > 2010 is a bit of a magic number, because that was the point when Republicans started their concerted, coordinated, country-wide gerrymandering campaign. So I don't think elections prior to then can support or refute any points about gerrymandering. They already had done that, and they lost two big wave elections. (E.g., Texas redistricted in 2004.)
    - vel0city 2y ago
      They really started gerrymandering hard in 2010 with REDMAP. There's really an extreme delineation in technology used to abuse the system at this point. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP
  - roenxi 2y ago
    > My guess is that if gerrymandering were completely outlawed, Democrats would easily maintain control of the House, with a healthy margin, more or less permanently. It'd be better if the electoral boundaries were drawn with a polling-naive algorithm, but that isn't how it works in practice - you've probably noticed that every election is knife edge and there are regular upsets. This is because if one party is guaranteed to lose it will change its policies just enough to attract marginal voters from the other party. For example, there were confident predictions of a similar nature that the Republicans would be unable to win elections because of the shrinking white demographic. We can see in the polling that what actually starts to happen is Trump still on the ballot but they've been in a long strategic process of picking voters from non-white demographics. The elections themselves are still knife-edge. There'd be a different policy mix, but one thing we can predict about the future anyway is that there will be different policy mixes. Gerrymandering just privileges minority incumbent policies.

throw0101b 2y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP

winter_blue 2y ago

It’s partly (1) due to the structure (or rather, flaws) of the US constitution, (2) a ridiculous senate rule, and (3) gerrymandering as others have mentioned. On (1): needing the approval of the senate, house, and president makes it very hard to pass laws. On (2): the senate rule requiring 60% approval has already been repealed for appointments and for budgetary legislation, but it really needs to thrown out. The first two years of Biden’s presidency were mostly lost to obstructionism because of this rule. On (3): this will most likely be banned if democrats get a trifecta federal control, and repeal (2), since gerrymandering primarily just benefits republicans.