Chart: Why The House is A Fortress the Dems Can't Win..Talking Points Memo

[Stuart G]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/chart-why-dems-cant-win-house


ByTom Kludt Published
November 7, 2014, 6:00 AM EST


After Republicans expanded their majority in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, giving the party its largest number of seats in the lower chamber since World War II, "Meet the Press" moderator Chuck Todd made an observation that probably triggered even more Democratic heartache.

"So this really secures the House Republican majority for the rest of this decade," Todd said during NBC's election coverage. "Not until 2022, I think, at the earliest, will you see Democrats have a chance at winning the House."


A closer look at the numbers shows why the GOP House majority is basically impenetrable until the next redistricting, and maybe beyond. It was never more stark than in 2012, when Democrats received about 500k more votes nationwide than Republicans but still ended up with substantially fewer seats. Some of this is due to an extremely effective gerrymandering effort by Republicans after the 2010 election. But it's not only that. Democrats are also increasingly concentrated in small geographical areas, which greatly amplifies the effect of gerrymandering and is also a significant and growing issue in itself.

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While this has been discussed before, this is still pretty ugly when one looks at it this way.

[yeoman6987]

1. Just a thought and it might be totally crazy

But what about if we just use zip codes or actual counties. Gerrymandering was started to help minority representation. Well that failed. How about just going back to having actual counties being represented. Sure some minorities might lose out but in my estimation they are clearly not being represented now. It is horrible for not only minorities but all of us.

[Fred Sanders]

3. Any fucking plan is better, but the courts and legislatures are locked down tight, no amount of

common sense or citizen protest can unlock it. And the corporate media have told us to just accept it and never report on the fundamental unfairness of it, the fundamental hypocrisy of America exporting their own fucked up democracy, forcibly if need be, as if it were a gift to the world.

[unrepentant progress]

7. "Gerrymandering was started to help minority representation."

Last edited Fri Nov 7, 2014, 09:38 PM - Edit history (1)

Huh? The term wasn't coined until 1812 to describe Jeffersonian Republican Mass. Governor Elbridge Gerry's redrawing of Mass. Senate districts, one of which was said to resemble a salamander, but gerrymandering in the U.S. goes all the way back to 1788 with Patrick Hale and the Anti-Federalists who redrew a Virginia Congressional district trying to keep James Madison out of Congress. They failed.

[Fred Sanders]

2. Gerrymandering is a cancer, a raping of democracy. It has to go back to court again, somehow.

It leads to candidates shunning their own President and party leader to try to get a few more opposition softie Republicans to vote for them in the gerrymandered district, it is a cancer, it spreads like one in all directions.

[msongs]

4. dispersal of half million excess california democrats who vote would gain us 6-8 senate seats nt

[Old Nick]

5. Pure Bull

Before 1994, it was common "knowledge" that the GOP would never again control the House as they had in the 1950s.

[blkmusclmachine]

6. The Party apparatus is criminally incompetent, or criminally compromised.

I strongly think it's the latter. That's why they sit around with their thumbs up their asses with the "aww, shucks, let's compromise" stupor on their faces. They're just placeholders until the Republicans get their turn back in the White House.

[yurbud]

8. in large states with more than a handful of reps, they should do diverse, multi-seat districts

So the results in seats looks roughly like the percentage of people who vote for each party.

It would also get people whose party preference is in the extreme minority or majority to vote and actually make a difference.

I used to live in one of the most liberal districts in California then moved to one of the most conservative. In the first, Dems were safely going to win no matter what, and in the second, they were going to lose no matter what. My vote only counted for statewide ballot measures.

Of course, politicians here did the exact opposite with open primaries, so here in orange county, I had a choice of a republican OR a republican to represent me in Congress.

Oddly, my old liberal district, Santa Monica, ended up with a Democrat and a Republican using the same process.