The GOP rigged the House: Even a massive Donald Trump defeat wouldn’t give Democrats control

[Xipe Totec]

Enter REDMAP. The RSLC strategists decided to target as many state legislative chambers as they could in 2010, with an eye to maximizing the number of states where they could have total control of drawing new maps the following year. They spent $30 million — a steal when you consider that’s the cost of some Senate races — in local elections in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina, all with the goal of asserting GOP dominance in purple states. They were aided by the fact that 2010 became an anti-Obama wave election and many discouraged Democrats stayed home. But by the end of Election Night 2010, the GOP had attained several hundred new state legislative seats (hitting a decades-long high point) and captured some two-thirds of state legislative chambers nationwide. They pressed that advantage big-time in 2011, using the most advanced map-making and demographic technology ever to super-glue their gains in place.

As we head into the 2016 election, it’s worth taking a look at how well those new maps performed in the last presidential cycle, a solid 2012 win by Barack Obama in which he defeated Mitt Romney by 126 electoral votes. It was a good year for the Democrats nationally; taken in the aggregate, Democratic House candidates earned 1.4 million more votes than their GOP counterparts. Despite that plurality, Democrats gained merely eight seats in the House; the GOP retained a big majority of 33 seats, down a little from the previous 41-seat edge.

What this means is that Democrats start in a hole — with these electoral maps, it is not enough for more people to vote for Democratic candidates. That 1.4 million edge in 2012 amounted to 50.4 percent of the two-party vote overall for the Democrats. You would need something upwards of 55 percent to get in the ballpark of the chambers switching, which would require many millions more votes. It would require Republicans to punish their party not only by voting for Hillary Clinton, but to further punish them by taking away the House, instead of keeping it in GOP hands as a check on Clinton and the Democrats.

http://www.salon.com/2016/04/01/no_democrats_wont_take_the_house_pretending_otherwise_isnt_just_bad_journalism_its_punditry_as_fantasy/

[AxionExcel]

1. K & R

[cprise]

2. Probably their biggest friend ever

http://washingtonnote.com/venting_about_d/

[SCantiGOP]

3. Is she responsible?

For several decades of gerrymandering by GOP state legislatures?
Until there is another re-districting - the next one can't be in place until the 2022 election- the GOP can't lost the US House.

[Chan790]

5. To some real extent in FL, absolutely.

She regularly campaigns and supports her long-term GOP friends in their races, both at the Florida state level and in the US House of Representatives. That has an impact on our ability to retake the US House...of course, I don't think DWS is really interested in retaking the House because everywhere we see Democratic gains in recent elections, it's among progressives as moderates like Debbie Downer continue to lose ground and offices to both progressives and Republicans. She's not all that interested in gaining seats for Democrats that aren't her kind of centrist Democrats.

On a national level, it's a bit less clear to put the blame on Wasserman-Schultz...she's certainly responsible for not more aggressively contesting state level races for Democrats and engaging in the same kind of targeted politics, even now...but it's possibly a bit far afield to retrospectively blame her for not combating REDMAP in 2010 better, it's not like she foresaw it happening and did nothing. By the time it was clear the impact it was having and going to have, it was a bit late to fight back against it in that electoral cycle. The 2.5 since then...I think we can blame her for. The DNC under her leadership still doesn't contest state-level elections with any real effort, leaving it to state parties to do so and pay for it.

[SCantiGOP]

6. Please give one example

of her supporting and campaigning for a Republican running against a Democrat??

Didn't think so.

[Chan790]

7. Her support of both brothers Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen...

in their House races in 2008.

When called on it, she said it wasn't her job to work against the reelection of members of her own state's House delegation; that they were friends and good colleagues.

[Judi Lynn]

9. She wouldn't have dreamed of leaving her pact with Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario & Lincoln Diaz-Balart,

which is a real shame for ANYONE purporting to be a Democrat, since they are truly rabid, monstrous reactionary right-wingers and war-mongers of the ugliest kind.

I always wondered if she feared they would car-bomb her if she strayed from their control.

Thanks for your comments on this servant to the "She-Wolf" (La Loba), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

[center]



Ileana, left, Debbie, right





Mario Diaz-Balart, whose aunt was Fidel Castro's wife before a divorce. [center]

[Judi Lynn]

8. It looks like her mugshot! n/t

[MinM]

4. Gerry

Mandering

[4dsc]

10. Thank the DNC for this crap

their lack of leadership and wanting to play nice with the GOP isn't working well for the party.