As long as they can keep Congress through gerrymandering and various forms of vote suppression, everything’s just peachy.
This is so true and it’s not just the young who are getting turned off, but the older moderates as well, like me.
You can’t gerrymander the statewide elections for Senate and governor, and the gerrymandering in the House isn’t what kept them in control. There are simply more red districts than blue districts because Democrats only have appeal in big urban areas.
When Democrats figure out why they keep losing in those places, they’ll win more elections.
For now, they’ll keep on just lying to voters there, supporting candidates who talk red at home and vote blue in DC.
If it was my party that controlled the White House and Senate, I wouldn’t be asking why Democrats suck so bad. I’d be like, “Why the f%&#&*k don’t we control the House yet? Let’s work on that!”
Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that.
See this map. The “red states” are those that have gone for the Republican in all four of the last four presidential elections. There are 23 of them.
This map shows the 2008 presidential results by county, and shaded from red through blue to purple. A clear pattern emerges: The geographic divide is not North v. South nor East v. West nor Coasts v. Heartland, it is City vs. Countryside. Urban areas are mostly blue, suburbs/exurbs purple, countryside red.
And, historically, in American history and elsewhere, whenever a political conflict comes down to City v. Countryside, the City usually wins and usually deserves to win.
This map is a cartogram of the above with the size of each county adjusted to reflect its relative population. With that adjustment, note how that great sea of red shrinks to insignificant rivulets trickling through the purple and the blue. (Note also how Florida now looks even more like a . . . well, never mind.)
I’m no longer a child, but I care about childhood vaccination policies. I’m no longer a college student, but I care about student loan reform. I no longer live in Ohio, but I care about attempts to limit the voting franchise there.
More generally, I have never been a woman/black/homosexual/insert-latest-group-targeted-by-GOP-bigots, but I care about their rights.
It’s called empathy–something that seems to be in short supply on the right side of the aisle.
- a portion of that demographic turned 31 in the interim.
And thus, cannot be trusted.
Just more anecdotes, but in the 2008/2012 elections, my lifetime Republican, “Greatest Generation” parents (89 & 82) voted Democratic for the first time in their lives…
The chamber where Republicans currently hold 46 out of 100 seats; is that the sort of control you mean?
Ever?
OTOH, I daresay there are some Dems who voted Pub for the first time in their lives in 2008 . . .
It will happen because it’s happened with every single other ethnic group to immigrate here.
It only takes 41 Senators to control that chamber when they’re patriotic Republicans using the God-given filibuster to protect our Freedoms from the homosexual baby-killing terrorists.
Of course if 41 Democrats (or even 59) used a Devil-worshipper’s Parliamentarian trick to subvert Democracy, they’d be rebuffed by a public outcry led by noble Americans in the best traditions of Thomas Jefferson, Paul Revere and the Baby Jesus. I refer of course to leading American intellectuals like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity. (And if the Devil worshippers were to persist with their tricks … well, we still have our Second Amendment remedies available.)
ETA: I’d better admit that the above is a joke. The more I try to make my caricature of Republican “thought” obviously absurd, the more it tends to approximate the real thing. :smack:
The Republicans are forecast to gain seats in 2014, perhaps even control of the Senate.
The Republicans have been underperforming because of poor candidate selection. They would already have the Senate if not for Sharon Angle and Christie ODonnel and Todd Akin-type picks.
BTW, one thing that hasn’t been discussed is what effect the Democrats becoming the party of gun control will have on red and purple state Senate races.
The people stupid enough to think so-called gun control should sway their votes against the rational thinkers are voters we don’t want.
Anyway, a few recent highly publicized cases where gun murders were legalized by “Stand Ground” or “Texas Night-time” may awaken us enough to weaken America’s perverse and stupid obsession with guns. Yes, the zaniest dingbats will just get dingier, but these are people that would never have voted rationally anyway.
Glad to help.
Except I think the Tea Party will double down and get more extreme candidates to run and maybe win primaries. They’ll probably do more of that in the House and some will probably win. The Party is getting wrenched more and more to the far and extreme right and the sane adults in the party don’t seem to be able to or seemingly want to put a stop to it.
The problem with the sane adults is that they were and often still are, corrupt. The Tea Party is as much a reaction against logrollers as it is against Democrats.
Adaher, by ‘logrollers’ do you mean legislators who only pass laws to maintain the status quo? If not, then please tell me what you mean by that term. This is an honestly serious question. Thanks.
Have any evidence they have learned their lesson? Sarah Palin says she may run for the Senate seat from Alaska, where polls have her getting beat by Mark Begich by 16 points.
No, I mean politicians who can be bought with earmarks or other parochial benefits into voting for bills they wouldn’t otherwise support.
One of the positive things the Tea party did was end the practice of trading earmarks for votes, which is basically just bribery.
The wikipedia definition:
Logrolling is the trading of favors, or quid pro quo, such as vote trading by legislative members to obtain passage of actions of interest to each legislative member.[1] In an academic context, the Nuttall Encyclopedia describes logrolling as “mutual praise by authors of each other’s work.” In organizational analysis, it refers to when an entity assists others to promote and achieve their agendas, in the expectation that it will receive such support in exchange.