And stop gerrymandering. Districts should be drawn in logical, geographic areas, and not to just benefit one party over another.
This is an appropriately long-sighted view of human history in general form. Unfortunately, human industrial society is facing multiple existential threats (global climate change; potential nuclear apocalypse; massive resource overuse in potable water, phosphate fertilizers, hydrocarbon energy sources, et cetera) that the ‘decades-long struggles’ view fails to encompass the effectivity of consequences. We no longer have the luxury of allowing equilibrium to advance along decadal scales; we are already in the throes of failure of industrial society spurred on by pointless nationalistic, cultural, and ‘racial’ (read: xenophobic) conflict that distracts from the severe problems facing humanity without even a broad recognition of the consequences. When a third or more of human population is suffering from the consequences of a 2 meter or more ocean rise, shifting of habitable and cultivable zones, and conflicts over potable water, fertilizers, and the effects of land overuse, the ideological conflicts of today will seem quaint by comparison in scale of destruction.
Unfortunately, gerrymandering is not that simple of an issue. In fact, it is difficult to dray electoral lines that someone will not claim as being gerrymandered in some fashion. Instead of drawing geographical or demographic boundaries, it makes far more sense to use some form of ranked choice voting to best represent the ‘will of the people’ in aggregate, although even that is a dubious measure of effectiveness when so many people are willing to vote based on personality over policy.
Stranger
None of the battles you mention resulted in the degree of erosion of your democracy as has now occurred.
Jim Crow. Red Scare.
But I don’t think trying to figure out who had it worse is productive.
Which is why IMHO irritating as it may be I think the sane and moderate need to put their more minor social goals aside for a decade or two and concentrate on the big picture, before they lose democracy altogether.
"Sharon, the NEA is a loser. Yeah, it accounts for a penny out of our paychecks, but he [the conservative panelist] gets to hit you with it anytime he wants. It doesn’t cost money, it costs votes. It costs airtime and column inches. You know why people don’t like liberals? Because they lose. If liberals are so fuckin’ smart, how come they lose so GODDAM ALWAYS!’
It sucks but that’s my view.
None of those things resulted in half your political class openly supporting a fascist who tried to overthrow your democracy.
I think we’re talking past each. The long history of slow progress on civil rights has been increasing the pressure on bigots. They’ve always fought back and now they’ve gone full fascist. And yet we still have to keep stumbling forward.
No I don’t think we are talking past one another. I understood that to be your point.
My point is that they have as you say gone full fascist, which they have not done before.
It’s a fallacy that stumbling forward towards enlightenment always works. Civilisations fall and go backward - often massively so. There is a large body of people that have been left behind in the US and other places. There is a real danger they are going to fuck everything up (even themselves) rather than let you keep going forward.
If you think I’m saying that, you’ve misread me.
I’m saying endeavoring to make things better is necessary to make things better and that it’s a slow process.
I agree gerrymandering is a problem. But I haven’t seen a proposal that provides a clear solution.
Conservatives are better at messaging.
Liberals have generally won the arguments. But after they’ve won and established a new normal, conservatives move in and claim credit for the victory. They pretend they were always on the winning side and deny the reality that they were the ones the liberals fought and defeated.
Tangent here (maybe to be moved to it’s own thread): Why not use existing political boundaries as the norm, and subdivide from there as the exception (as opposed to the other way around, which seems to be how it is being done in a manipulative way today)? Senators are constrained by state boundaries, so why don’t we use country boundaries more to determine districts within a state? Generally curious.
We’ve had plenty of threads about how to stop gerrymandering. Mathematically, there are many ways to make objectively fair districts. The problem is a political one–those in power don’t want to do it.
I think in most cases, there wouldn’t be a good fit. We wouldn’t be able to draw lines along county borders that would produce congressional districts with equal populations. So we’d have to either draw the lines along county borders and accept unequal representation; which would obviously be an easy system to manipulate. Or we’d have to adjust the borders of congressional districts off of the county borders to equalize populations; which is essentially the system we have now. The battles would be fought over where the adjustments were made.
I don’t know. We have discussions where we have been unable to agree on what “fair” even means in this context. So I don’t see how we can call any proposal objectively fair.
For example, let’s say we have a state with ten congressional districts. The voters in this state tend to vote 60% for Party A and 40% for Party B. Two district plans are proposed.
1: Ten districts, each of which have sixty percent Party A voters and forty percent Party B voters.
2: Six districts with all Party A voters and four districts with all Party B voters.
Which proposal is objectively fairer? Some people would argue that the first proposal is fairer because each district is representative of the political balance in the state. Other people would argue the second proposal is fairer because it would produce outcomes that would reflect the political balance in the state.
The reality, in my opinion, is that both sides have a legitimate argument. Neither side can claim that it is objectively the fair one. And a lot of proponents on both sides are probably basing their decision on which principle would produce the results they favor - and might support the opposite side in an adjoining state where the local political balance is different.
Not to extend this tangent on gerrymandering but a few years ago FiveThirtyEight.com put out an excellent podcast series on gerrymandering covering why it is so difficult to even come to agreement on what ‘fair’ districting looks like.
It really is a complex issue, and both major parties have engaged in partisan gerrymandering over the years, although the current Republican-dominated trend (concomitant with voter suppression efforts) has taken it to radical extremes. The only way to really get rid of gerrymandering would be to eliminate Congressional districts entirely and just have people vote for multiple representatives-at-large but that has its own problems with proportionate representation. It’s not a trivial issue to resolve.
Stranger
But hopefully we can agree that a redistricting where 4 districts are 90/10 in favor of party A and 6 districts are 40/60 in favor of party B, giving party B the majority of the representatives is not fair. That is what we are fighting against.
There are definitely systems that are objectively unfair and the Republicans are using those systems.
I think we all agree the Republicans are manipulating the system. The problem is figuring out a system the Republicans can’t manipulate.
There is the competitiveness argument (that districts should be drawn to maximize the potential for individual election races to be competitive) but can be in conflict with the geographical or demographic representation argument (where districts should be drawn along natural geographical lines or to maximize representation of demographics groups that desire special interests). Which do you favor; making races maximally ‘competitive’ even though that might end up essentially disenfranchising local special interests (such as urban minorities), or ensuring the widest representation of all interests even though it may ‘skew’ elections from the mean? Despite the assertions in this thread and elsewhere, there is not a simple mathematical algorithm for objective fairness in districting; it ultimately boils down to how to ‘best’ represent the will of the voters, and that can be quite subjective.
This is not to say that parties don’t engage in explicitly partisan gerrymandering—redrawing districts specifically to favor election of their candidates—and that the GOP has made a nationwide effort to do so in every state with a Republican governor and Republican-dominated legislature versus prior more local party machine efforts of yesteryear—but defining what is actually ‘fair’ in redistricting is a challenging, multifaceted issue that is not easily agreed upon even by reasonable people.
Stranger
Yes, but I’d be lying if I didn’t state for the record that they seem to be looking for some
“John Brown” to try to force their criminal hand to do what’s actually right at some
‘Harpers Ferry’.
They’ve got a tree all picked out as well as a noose tied with a nice new rope for anyone foolish enough to take the bait.