Beto O’Rourke’s Message to Blue-State Governors on Redistricting: “Quit F—ing Around and Waiting”
Beto O’Rourke’s Message to Blue-State Governors on Redistricting: “Quit F—ing Around and Waiting”
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We must do everything to tear down the republican traitor filth.
Yeah it really is fight fire with fire time
Gerrymandering has been an obvious problem for decades. The only people that didn't see a problem are those congress critters that got elected to one. ("Well, it worked to get me elected so it's obviously not broken.")
The shape of my very blue congressional district in a very blue state most closely resembles projectile vomit on a linoleum floor.
Democrats have had multiple opportunities to fix this shit over the decades, and instead they've just been using it to their advantage wherever possible. The Fair Representation Act has been our best opportunity to fix gerrymandering, and it died in committee in every congressional session since 2017.
I would argue most of the elected representatives at the state and federal levels have no interest in fixing gerrymandering, because gerrymandering is what got them elected.
Missouri voted to get rid of gerrymandering. Of course the state overthrew it, and are now trying to crack another district because having a chokehold isn't enough of an advantage.
I've been screaming this since 2009.
Others have been screaming longer.
I wonder how many Republicans would be unseated with rank choice voting....
/signed.
Make it hurt. Stick it to the hilt and twist it.
There's an internal cost to gerrymandering that the moderate Republicans are paying in spades. The Dick Cheney wing of the party drew all these cloistered bright-red districts, only to see neoconservatives forced out of the party by their distilled MAGA base 20 years later.
I think conservative Democrats (of which Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochul are increasingly aligned) see a gerrymandered blue state majority presenting a similar threat. Rather than a rump caucus of Pelosis and Durbins and Cuomos, they'd be threatened with upstart campaigns from more Mamdanis and Soto-Martinezes and Ilhan Omars.
Who wants that?
So liberals will make noise about fighting fire with fire. But then they'll sit on their hands, fully aware that a MAGA majority benefits conservative Dems who can present themselves as "the only other viable alternative" in purple districts. They don't want to run more AOCs or Sanderses. They want more Slotkins and Schiffs and John Delaneys.
The iron silo was erected in 1996 and we know they were working on it at least as far back as the '70s with Nixon, Ailes, Weyrich, et. al. The current conflict has not been contained within a culture war because the GOP does not want it to.
The redistricting war must happen next/now. Battle lines must be drawn out in open to reflect what the GOP has already implemented in secret in across the country. Bring it out in the open. Everything should be loud and obvious so nobody can hide from the reality of what happens next.
I'm pretty sure if the Democrats started playing the same game the Republicans are playing they'd dominate. They need to grow up, put on their big girl pants, and get back to governing instead of letting the republicans steal their lunch.
Democrats have already been playing this game. Illinois already only has 2 Republicans in the house, California uses a jungle primary that helps prevent Republicans from winning. New York has a lot of close districts already.