General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Questions for those Dems who think Nader and Third Party Voters are [View all]truedelphi
(32,324 posts)On this board about the evils of the Nader candidacy.
And the evils of those voting for him.
Visit any thread that has come up recently on this very board that is discussing someone other than Pro-Corproate Policy Hillary Clinton, and you will read how awful it is that Sanders might run against her, or that some here are considering supporting Elizabeth Warren.
NMeanwhjile in the real world, the actual problem to Democratic success has been the very successful, almost unopposed gerrymandering efforts that have gone unchallenged by Democratic leaders.
Which Dem Leaders? Any of those that have positions inside the Democratic Party at the state or federal level in the six states where the vote count was much higher for Democratic candidates, but offices were lost on account of the gerry rigging gerrymandered voting districts.
As explained in the RS article I mentioned in the OP, here is a bit of what you might find of interest:
In Pennsylvania, Democratic candidates took 51 percent of the vote across the state's 18 districts, but only five of the seats. In Wang's model, the odds against Democrats emerging at an eight-seat disadvantage are 1,000-to-1. And Pennsylvania was not alone. According to the Election Consortium analysis, gerrymandering helped Republicans secure 13 seats in just six states including Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Virginia and North Carolina that, under normal rules of engagement, Democrats would have won.
This tilting of the electoral playing field was the result of a sophisticated campaign coordinated at the highest levels of Republican politics through a group called the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) a Super-PAC-like entity chaired by Bush-era RNC chairman Ed Gillespie and backed by Karl Rove. Shortly after President Obama's first election, the RSLC launched the Redistricting Majority Project (REDMAP) with an explicit strategy to "keep or win Republican control of state legislatures with the largest impact on congressional redistricting." The logic was simple. Every decade following the census, the task of redrawing federal congressional-district boundaries falls (with some exceptions) to the state legislatures. If Republicans could seize control of statehouses and, where necessary, have GOP governors in place to rubber-stamp their redistricting maps the party could lock in new districts that would favor Republican candidates for a decade.