SuprstitionAintthWay
SuprstitionAintthWay's JournalBut The Structural Disadvantage Against Democrats In The Senate Is Pronounced
...and worsening, because the nation's political divide has grown increasingly geographic, and that geography has been urban vs. rural. Predominantly rural states tend to have lower populations than more urban ones. So most of America's numerous predominantly rural states are Red, and are trending moreso.
In 2018, for example, the Democratic candidates for Senate received more total votes in the 35 elections than did the Republican candidates. But we lost 1 senator, net, all the same. Similarly to how in 2016 Clinton won by 2.9 million votes but the highly undemocratic structure of the electoral college negated that expressed will of the American people.
Another good illustration is the numbers of state governments in which the governorships and both legislative houses are controlled by a single party. The current count is 16 Democratic to 22 Republican - up from 15 to 23 last year and markedly improved from the collapse to 5 to 25 just 3 years ago. That said, in 1977 and 1978 Republicans fully controlled only 1 state government in the nation, to Democrats' 27; and as recently as 1993 Republicans fully controlled only 3 state governments.
Most Americans live in Blue States. But today most governors live in Red States, most single-party controlled governments are of Red States, and most U.S. Senators are from Red States. All of those current patterns have manifested from the same underlying, very difficult-to-reverse, and growing urban v. rural political trends.
The competitions for control of the Senate, the White House, and by extension the Supreme Court, are all now structurally weighted against Democrats. The trends for these imbalances are getting worse, not better. Presidents getting electoralcolleged while being rejected by voters hadn't happen in 111 years... before 2000. Now it's happened 2 times in 5 elections and very seriously threatens again this year. The entire terrain has shifted towards this happening often.
I'm not posting all this as some sort defeatism. Of COURSE we fight like hell every single election, overcome the structural obstacles, and do our very best to win in spite of everything aligned against us.
But when the playing field is slanted one is bettter off knowing it... and knowing where it's slanted, and how much.
A RedState WYite/Dakotan/Alaskan Has 40 TIMES the Polit.Power In The Senate As A BlueState Cali/NYer
A Red State Wyomingite/Dakotan/Alaskan Has 40 TIMES the Political Power In The Senate As A Blue State Californian/New Yorker.
In those 4 smallest (in population) Red States the average resident has 40.2 TIMES THE POLITICAL POWER in the Senate as the average resident in those 2 largest (in population) Blue States. "Political power" = per capita political representation for these purposes.
The converse of course being, per person, Californians and New Yorkers have 1/40th the political power in the U.S. Senate as Wyomingites Dakotans & Alaskans.
Those just 3 MILLION Red State Americans combined have TWICE the political power in the United States Senate as do all 59 MILLION of those Blue State Americans combined. Due, of course to the Senate's wildly undemocratic structure and where those Americans live. The 3 million Americans have 8 senators, all Republican, and the 59 million have 4 senators, all Democratic.
Here's the math:
2019 population in millions
California 39.5122
New York 19.4536
Total 58.9658
Senators: 4, all Democratic.
Equals 1 Senate vote per 14.7414 million people.
2019 population in millions
Wyoming 0.5777
Alaska 0.7374
N. Dakota 0.7601
S. Dakota 0.8822
Total 2.9574
Senators: 8, all Republican.
Equals 1 Senate vote per 0.3697 million people.
14.7414 mill people/D senator
÷ 0.3697 mill people/R senator
= 40.17
If I recall Ukraine and Georgia got away fairly cleanly at first
...and it's been since the rise of the new Stalin in Moscow that their situations have deteriorated. He wants all the russophones back.
Chechnya, like the Balkans, has been mostly about historical religious hatreds and the violence flowing out of that.
To those saying partitioning the U.S. is impossible, what's your better solution? Talk sense into the other side until they agree with us? Because, that's going so well. Eventually simply outvote them and force our policies on them? All the government-despising "cold dead hands" guys?
Both sides would be in less danger if those folks had their own place to completely fuck up however they wanted to. And the rest of America could rapidly advance, like Lincoln's United States did during its brief 1861-1865 respite from southern congressmen.
An amicable partitioning, without war, is the only rational solution I can foresee.
Mutually agreed upon by both sides, both of which want out of the bad marriage we're in.
Borders undeniably will be the most difficult issue. It will help if we can allow different parts of some states to go different ways. Southside and Southwestern Virginia, for example, no longer co-exist compatibly with Urban-Crescent Virgina.
Followed closely in difficulty by sorting out who gets what parts of our military.
But difficult things are not necessarily impossible, and what else can we do? Fox or equivalents are never going away. RW media sets the politics for over a third of Americans': huge numbers of people have willingly just handed over their thinking to be done for them by extremists on tv, radio, and the internet. Few of those people are ever coming back to reason.
I don't see good prospects for either side convincing the other, or for being able to re-build a reasonably functioning government on top of chasms that have now opened up so deeply. I'd love to be wrong about those things, but fear I'm not.
Picture us actually settling on borders, however imperfect, for two countries in which we'll infuriate each other less. One will be vastly less stymied from making progress, pursuing science, treating its citizens fairly and well. The other more free to preserve forever in amber its obsolete but precious "heritage"... such as, everyone gets a gun!... and, taxes only on the poor!... and zero government beyond military, prisons, and police!
Picture a 10 or 15-year grace period of everyone having dual citizenship in both countries while individuals sort out where they want to be.
During the grace period we could have innovative approaches to The Big Sort. Online matchmaking for trading homes, helping rightwingers living in what will be the New United States find someone in what will be the Neo-Confederacy to swap homes with.
Look at world maps from recent centuries: the configurations of nations are not permanent. We may yet see Scotland separate from the UK, Quebec from Canada, Catalonia from Spain, Kurdistan from Iraq, Hong Kong from China, etc. No lines men have created are inviolable. With time, the world changes. America has changed, our democracy is eroding fast, and the idea that some "exceptionalism" exempts us from re-arrangement is fiction.
When the government of the USSR finally ground to its halt, there was, surprisingly, relatively little physical fighting while its components walked away from Russia. After which, yes there were tanks rolling on the streets of Moscow once. But still relatively little violence.
The USSR was a very different world from ours, yes. And utterly corrupt kleptocracies did result, esp in Russia. But that was their culture to begin with. Here I'd expect at worse only the Neo-Confederacy to degenerate (further) into kleptocracy. Whereas the newly unburdened New United States should be able to turn itself into a greatly improved nation. All of its problems will not be solved, of course. But it will be a lot like a Canada... except warmer.
I believe something's going to have to give. War would be the worst possible result. I hope we can partition at some point without it. A few yahoo gun nuts will still think whatever happens will be license to shoot minorities and "libs," of course, but they'll just need to be shown that it isn't.
It should be possible to partition the current U.S. peacefully
...when the time comes. Which, like many, I anticipate is coming.
But why shed blood if both factions are so fed up with each other they're both ready to call it quits? Let's do an amicable divorce. It'll be difficult to achieve, but it'll be the way to proceed when most of the country is finally ready.
A nation's lands don't have to be contiguous... Alaska isn't continguous with the rest of the U.S. The Northeast, Upper Midwest, and entire West Coast could comprise the remaining United States. The West Coast wouldn't have to be contiguous with the eastern and midwestern U.S.
Most of the rest could be the... Southern Christian States of America, or whatever fucked up thing they choose to be. Theocracy, autocracy, oligarchy, kleptocracy, hereditary monarchy, apartheid state (like Israel's becoming), whatever. It's becoming time to let 'em have their own place and be whatever it is they think they want to be.
Because about 40% of Americans would rather sabotage all of our institutions of democracy -- as they presently are -- rather than accept that their political opponents be allowed to win elections, or to govern when they do. What other rational response is there when one's fellow countrymen abandon every principle they've ever had in favor of simply holding onto power by any means necessary and at any cost?
I don't foresee them returning to reason. Not when they've tasted what suppressing opposition voters, gerrymandering, the big advantage the electoral college gives them in our now increasingly geopgraphically aligned politics, trafficking in disinformation, and foreign intervention smearing Democrats over social media can do for them. Now that they've figured out they have (or can take) unfair advantages for hanging onto power in all 3 branches of government even as the minority party, what motivation do they have to return to sanity and any semblance of fairness?
Nothing is forever... especially invisible lines on maps.
Just letting the South go, btw, remained a not-impossible option in 1861 right up until South Carolinians started firing on Fort Sumter.
Putting in the hard work required to do a peaceful partitioning this time is the way to do it.
But I wholly support Unrestrained Smash-&-Grab Oligarchy Envy (yes, great description!)
...as an explanation for Republicans' Russia Love, too.
That explains most of why the 1% adore and envy Russia, and want America to BE Russia. In a word, boundless greed.
What I described explains why the voters they need and have agitated and suckered into supporting them, also are drawn to Russia.
Putin, I should have mentioned, for political purposes walked away from Soviet era state atheism and has warmly embraced the Russian Orthodox Church as a partner in and beneficiary of his autocracy. Every bit as disingenuously and cynically as many in the Republican elite here have done with Evangelical Christianity.
I think that's the biggest single appeal of Russia to America's rightwingers:
They look at it and see a super-white country. With nukes, and a pugnacious, bullying attitude... so to our Republicans it's "STRONG" in all the ways they define "strong." Trump's 4th favorite word after I, Me, and Trump.
And if you think America is racist -- which of course it is, racism's pretty universal -- Russia is even worse. More people even disguise it less there -- tho of course they hypocritically condemn America for the same thing.
Putin also comes down HARD on Islamists. Repubs dream about being able to do that.
As for border security, it isn't an issue there because nobody's clamoring to immigrate INto Russia, but rest assured Russia is serious about protecting... and expanding... its borders. (Trump saw Crimea and E. Ukraine and desperately wanted to do that himself... see "Greenland." )
And yes there's no risk of women becoming powerful in Russia. Putin had Pussy Riot beaten -- publicly and humiliatingly WHIPPED -- by Cossack thugs, and the young mothers in Pussy Riot separated from their children and thrown into icy Siberian prisons 1000s of miles away. America's Party of White Male Power sees that kind of stomping on uppity, progressive women and LOVES it. Russia's autocrat is a posturing, macho, womanizing, short-man-syndrome misogynist who can and does simply quash anybody who dares question him. And like a number of American pols we could name, he takes special relish in crushing women.
As for the press, Putin simply kills reporters who piss him off... yet another fantasy of America's far right.
So OF COURSE 21st Century Republicans love Russia.
They passionately want America to BE a lot more like Russia.
Universal praise? Really? So.. uh, NOBODY here believed the young woman in 2003
...who reported to police (got dna tested, the whole bit,) that he raped her?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_Bryant_sexual_assault_case
I'm not saying it's not tragic a man died. I just feel like I'm seeing across-the-board respect, when not adoration, for him here.
I admit I'm not a sports fan, don't follow/worship/fetishize any sports figures regardless of how many championship rings they have.
So okay, I'll be the guy to bring that up.
I believed the girl with the bruises on her neck and Kobe's dna then. Still do now.
Fire away!
In 2019 John Roberts declared federal courts don't have...
...the constitutional authority to rule on cases about state legislatures gerrymandering for partisan political advantage.
It was a big green light to proceed with your gerrymandering, everybody.
It has to be fixed by the individual states, or by constitutional amendment. Or not be fixed. (I dunno if a new Voting Rights Act would work. According to Roberts, it sounds like "no." )
Paul Waldman's WaPo column Glimpse of How Far Right Will React If Trump Isn't Re-Electoralcolleged
... is sobering, a serious concern of mine as well, and worth a read.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/06/how-would-far-right-react-trump-loss-heres-glimpse/
The comment I submitted on it:
If Trump isn't re-electoralcolleged I do expect violence. Many in his base have long been itching to shoot urban blacks-hispanics-&-libruls and would jump if their Dear Leader calls for help. Trump has egged his base on in countless ways. He has fetishes for brute force and authoritarian violence. He warned there WILL likely be violence if he loses in some way he doesn't like, and if it comes the military, police, and even motorcycle gangs will "be on my side."
Just imagine if the scowling gun guys had legitmate grievances. If the many unfairnesses being used were reversed and WERE against Trumpists. Imagine it was Trump voters being suppressed. That voter roll purges were being targeted at THEM. That it was rural white areas that got targeted with messages of "vote Wednesday," "vote online," wrong polling station location information. Lied to that ICE would be there checking IDs and addresses and police would be checking people for outstanding warrants. Then even those who got to the right polling station, and hadn't been purged off the rolls, THEY faced hours-long lines to vote.
Imagine what would happen if it was THEM who won the Senate in total votes cast but still lost it. Imagine if it was THEM who were gerrymandered net out of a lot of House seats, Congress said it didn't care about the Voting Rights Act anymore, and SCOTUS ruled it wouldn't even accept gerrymandering cases anymore.
Imagine if it was THEIR president whose nominee for an open Supreme Court seat was refused even consideration, AND that stole from them majority control of SCOTUS.
Imagine if it was the h.s. educated and rural, heavily armed, Fox "News"-watching whites who won the presidenial election by 3 million votes but the EC installed the Democratic candidate in the office instead. Just imagine if that Democrat had also openly appealed for and received essential, criminal help from Russia for that electoral college "win."
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