The Republican party has pursued an insidious, multi-decade strategy to obtain and retain control over state and local governments well beyond what the legitimate democratic process would afford them. The Democrats are indeed late to the game, which leads to ideas that sound extreme (like the retirement age gambit), because they're trying to catch up all at once to decades of subtle moves. But in a consequentialist analysis, "suddenly" vs. "gradually" is not really a factor. The Republicans packed the courts first, and turnabout is fair play.
The court bopped them on the nose for rushing procedure and skipping the time frame. Some of the judges in various forms complained about various parts, but did not cite them in the judgement.
For note, in January the most conservative juror of the Virginia Supreme Court is leaving. They will likely rerun it then.
And for note, the supreme court run currently in the works, btw, is attempting to take advantage of the *Ohio 2022* decision where a map that was deemed unconstitutional was allowed for a single election because it was too late to do otherwise. Which is also basically what the logic was for the Virginia court rejecting the first vote by the state houses on the redistricting, saying that it was happening during not before the election because of early voting, therefore it couldn't count.
Realistically, this is costing the Democrats 1 to 3 seats in this election. I think 1 to 2 personally, but that's my read as a outsider looking into the rar-rar-rar of the major parties.
But the signs are that despite the panic and hysteria, the Democrats will have this in place by 2028 or 2030, the latter of which is the election which they would really need it in line for.
Privately, that's kinda WHY I think they are panicking. If the Democrats frame this as a 'We must use it to counter the Republican Gerrymanders' and tear down the independent commissions they built up, it puts them about even for the redistricting years.
If they assume that they can use Trump as the Republican Jimmy Carter, which seem likely at this point, that would lock them into a slow burn plan like similar to the Republicans recovering in the 80s and 90s from the Nixon years.
A good 2030 map for the democrats means that they get a huge bump in the census redistricting, which despite the talk here is expecting to be mostly a draw for the Democrats and republican states (mostly being the key word).
It'll be down to who controls which state houses in 2030 to determine who 'wins' the census.
It frustrates me to see comments like this. The problem is that you undermine your (valid) point that the left has anti-Semitism and anti-Wealth problems by prefacing them with a completely and obviously insane statement ("Democrats ... will commence ... a full Stalinist restoration"). Again, don't get me wrong, I agree with you that Democrats have issues with discouraging wealth creation, and also with silencing those who disagree with their worldview. And of course, Stalin's regime had these issues too. But that doesn't mean they are comparable: they were orders of magnitude worse in Stalin's regime. It is like comparing a leaking faucet to a full-on flood: both are bad, both are caused by the same elements, but they are not comparable.
I honestly feel foolish even having to explain this, it is so obvious, but I am just so tired of comments like this that push centrists away from sensible policies on the right by tying them to absurd claims about the left.
It always astonishes me that Democrats are alleged by some people to be against wealth creation, and yet the wealthiest states in the country are Democratic.
It is almost as though people who make that claim have absolutely no math or reasoning skills.
I would argue you are confusing correlation with causation.
Edit: I guess I would also add that I don't think all Democrat policies are anti-Wealth creation, nor that all Democrats are anti-Wealth creation, or even that Democrats as a whole have always been the more anti-Wealth creation party. However, what I would say is that a sizable portion of Democrats do today pursue policies that limit wealth creation, and that these Democrats have (at least recently) influenced policy negatively in this regard.
I would argue that you are claiming Democratic policies discourage wealth creation with no actual evidence.
The fact is that the weakest wealth creation economies in the country are in Republican controlled states.
[Edit based on your edit : evaluating a single policy item, or a subset, and claiming that it reflects the full impact of all the policy goals and implemented policies is severely flawed. Raising people out of poverty can in fact create wealth.]
This is a difficult road to go down: I could list many Democratic policies that discourage wealth creation (with actual evidence); you could then counter with many Republican policies that discourage wealth creation (because these certainly exist as well). I could also point to international comparisons that show the US to be much wealthier than the large majority of countries in the rest of the developed world, and note that the US has traditionally had governments that are much further to the right on than most of those in these other countries. You could counter by pointing to several specific examples of developed countries that are richer than the US and are traditionally more to the left, like Norway. The fact of the matter is, there are many reasons why some places are richer than others; politics plays an important role, but it is certainly not the only one, or even the most important one. (Again, this feels like an absurdly obvious statement to have to make, but you seem to be needing to hear it.) This makes comparisons like the one you are making not very convincing. I guess the bottom line is: I concede that I likely don't have the evidence to convince you. However, I also think it is rather silly of you to claim that I must have no reasoning skills if I disagree with you.
Ah, but you didn't actually disagree with me, and you clearly have thought about these issues, unlike the first comment.
And in case you missed my edit above, my point was that wealth transfer does not necessarily discourage wealth creation.
So my counter to points about Democratic policies that seem to discourage wealth creation would be to point out other policies that Democrats advance that encourage wealth creation.
The state level comparison is just about the proof in the pudding.
The wealthiest Republican states are either extractive or retirement communities. That is hardly a return on investment based on governmental economic policy.
On the contrary, it was a tie. The Dems get to keep maps in the New England states that are so gerrymandered there are no Rep house members in those 40% Rep states.
VA gets to keep fair maps made by a non-partizan commission, and continue their noble cause of ending gerrymandering (good luck with that, sincerely).
Red states get to be as gerrymandered as NE and that might be worse after the next census, but policies have consequences, even for progressives.
He's talking about this round of redistricting, your "it's a tie" is referring to maps that were in place before this.
It's also disingenuous to say NE is the same as what's going on in the South. Look at the county voting maps in those states, you'd have to gerrymander them the opposite direction to get Republicans more than a seat or two. Rural/exurban white voters there are weird, they aren't as conservative as they are in the rest of the country.
Excellent. But why is my stomach in knots? Because your rational analysis in no way eases my fear that we’re not just the away team, but the home team is playing an entirely different game, and our captains (Schumer!) are inept. On a related subject. I reiterate my request. We in California need a strategy for the gubernatorial election now underway. Quick! Propose a plan to insure that two Republicans do not advance to the runoff. Thx.
California Prop 187 on 1994, and the resulting Republican rhetoric is instructive.
A large increase on Hispanic voter turnout combined with a dramatic shift in the direction of the Democratic party has obliterated the Republican party in California.
Trump's approval rating in the Hispanic community has crashed, and a lot of the polls don't include Spanish language support.
"the Supreme Court’s Callais decision weakened the Voting Rights Act" is a nakedly partisan framing. You could equally well say that Callais strengthened the Constitution. But if you were interested in accuracy rather than partisan scoring, you'd say it narrowed section 2's application to redistricting, or altered the standard for race-conscious districting.
More subtly, it's a partisan framing to say the Court favors Republicans in redistricting. Shelby County, Rucho, Brnovich and Callais uphold a consistent legal framework: skepticism of race as a redistricting input, skepticism of federal judicial supervision of state political processes and textualism about what the VRA actually requires as opposed to what it has come to stand for. None of those are partisan principles, each of them could favor Democrats in some cases. And none were invented recently for redistricting fights, all are long-standing Federalist Society views about all issues.
Rather than appointing more partisan state judges, I think Democrats should look back to when they had the advantage of a coherent judicial philosophy that could establish strong bodies of law--the legal process school that transformed the US justice system from the 1950s to the 1970s and underpinned the civil rights movement. This was a philosophy that appealed to lawyers, and won hearts and minds in law school. It could be applied to actual cases as well as overarching issues. It was a constraint--it didn't alway give the progressive or Democratic answer in all cases--but it was far more influential than modern progressive legal theories like democracy-and-voting-rights or purposivism. Those are goals rather than toolkits.
If you tell me a judge is a Federalist Society member, I can predict many of her decisions accurately, without knowing anything about the parties involved, only the legal issues. Calling it "Calvinball" is a slander. Sure, many judges lean one way or the other depending on the parties, but Federalist judges are far more predictable from legal principles than political ones. If you tell me a judge clerked for Brennan and is active in the American Constitution Society, I'll predict his decisions based on politics, not law.
Common-sensical
The Republican party has pursued an insidious, multi-decade strategy to obtain and retain control over state and local governments well beyond what the legitimate democratic process would afford them. The Democrats are indeed late to the game, which leads to ideas that sound extreme (like the retirement age gambit), because they're trying to catch up all at once to decades of subtle moves. But in a consequentialist analysis, "suddenly" vs. "gradually" is not really a factor. The Republicans packed the courts first, and turnabout is fair play.
Democrats may be playing as the away team but they assuredly are playing outside the foul lines, esp in VA
Not really, when you look at the actual decision.
The court bopped them on the nose for rushing procedure and skipping the time frame. Some of the judges in various forms complained about various parts, but did not cite them in the judgement.
For note, in January the most conservative juror of the Virginia Supreme Court is leaving. They will likely rerun it then.
And for note, the supreme court run currently in the works, btw, is attempting to take advantage of the *Ohio 2022* decision where a map that was deemed unconstitutional was allowed for a single election because it was too late to do otherwise. Which is also basically what the logic was for the Virginia court rejecting the first vote by the state houses on the redistricting, saying that it was happening during not before the election because of early voting, therefore it couldn't count.
Realistically, this is costing the Democrats 1 to 3 seats in this election. I think 1 to 2 personally, but that's my read as a outsider looking into the rar-rar-rar of the major parties.
But the signs are that despite the panic and hysteria, the Democrats will have this in place by 2028 or 2030, the latter of which is the election which they would really need it in line for.
Privately, that's kinda WHY I think they are panicking. If the Democrats frame this as a 'We must use it to counter the Republican Gerrymanders' and tear down the independent commissions they built up, it puts them about even for the redistricting years.
If they assume that they can use Trump as the Republican Jimmy Carter, which seem likely at this point, that would lock them into a slow burn plan like similar to the Republicans recovering in the 80s and 90s from the Nixon years.
A good 2030 map for the democrats means that they get a huge bump in the census redistricting, which despite the talk here is expecting to be mostly a draw for the Democrats and republican states (mostly being the key word).
It'll be down to who controls which state houses in 2030 to determine who 'wins' the census.
Democrats if ever empowered again federally will commence with a full Stalinist restoration filled with anti-Semitism and massive wealth destruction.
So why is your piece tinged sadness?
It frustrates me to see comments like this. The problem is that you undermine your (valid) point that the left has anti-Semitism and anti-Wealth problems by prefacing them with a completely and obviously insane statement ("Democrats ... will commence ... a full Stalinist restoration"). Again, don't get me wrong, I agree with you that Democrats have issues with discouraging wealth creation, and also with silencing those who disagree with their worldview. And of course, Stalin's regime had these issues too. But that doesn't mean they are comparable: they were orders of magnitude worse in Stalin's regime. It is like comparing a leaking faucet to a full-on flood: both are bad, both are caused by the same elements, but they are not comparable.
I honestly feel foolish even having to explain this, it is so obvious, but I am just so tired of comments like this that push centrists away from sensible policies on the right by tying them to absurd claims about the left.
It always astonishes me that Democrats are alleged by some people to be against wealth creation, and yet the wealthiest states in the country are Democratic.
It is almost as though people who make that claim have absolutely no math or reasoning skills.
I would argue you are confusing correlation with causation.
Edit: I guess I would also add that I don't think all Democrat policies are anti-Wealth creation, nor that all Democrats are anti-Wealth creation, or even that Democrats as a whole have always been the more anti-Wealth creation party. However, what I would say is that a sizable portion of Democrats do today pursue policies that limit wealth creation, and that these Democrats have (at least recently) influenced policy negatively in this regard.
I would argue that you are claiming Democratic policies discourage wealth creation with no actual evidence.
The fact is that the weakest wealth creation economies in the country are in Republican controlled states.
[Edit based on your edit : evaluating a single policy item, or a subset, and claiming that it reflects the full impact of all the policy goals and implemented policies is severely flawed. Raising people out of poverty can in fact create wealth.]
This is a difficult road to go down: I could list many Democratic policies that discourage wealth creation (with actual evidence); you could then counter with many Republican policies that discourage wealth creation (because these certainly exist as well). I could also point to international comparisons that show the US to be much wealthier than the large majority of countries in the rest of the developed world, and note that the US has traditionally had governments that are much further to the right on than most of those in these other countries. You could counter by pointing to several specific examples of developed countries that are richer than the US and are traditionally more to the left, like Norway. The fact of the matter is, there are many reasons why some places are richer than others; politics plays an important role, but it is certainly not the only one, or even the most important one. (Again, this feels like an absurdly obvious statement to have to make, but you seem to be needing to hear it.) This makes comparisons like the one you are making not very convincing. I guess the bottom line is: I concede that I likely don't have the evidence to convince you. However, I also think it is rather silly of you to claim that I must have no reasoning skills if I disagree with you.
Ah, but you didn't actually disagree with me, and you clearly have thought about these issues, unlike the first comment.
And in case you missed my edit above, my point was that wealth transfer does not necessarily discourage wealth creation.
So my counter to points about Democratic policies that seem to discourage wealth creation would be to point out other policies that Democrats advance that encourage wealth creation.
The state level comparison is just about the proof in the pudding.
The wealthiest Republican states are either extractive or retirement communities. That is hardly a return on investment based on governmental economic policy.
Citation needed.
On the contrary, it was a tie. The Dems get to keep maps in the New England states that are so gerrymandered there are no Rep house members in those 40% Rep states.
VA gets to keep fair maps made by a non-partizan commission, and continue their noble cause of ending gerrymandering (good luck with that, sincerely).
Red states get to be as gerrymandered as NE and that might be worse after the next census, but policies have consequences, even for progressives.
By "New England", do you mean like Massachusetts?
https://gerrymander.princeton.edu/redistricting-report-card?planId=recCUmeKhThrNstI9
Your intuition may not have a basis in mathematics.
He's talking about this round of redistricting, your "it's a tie" is referring to maps that were in place before this.
It's also disingenuous to say NE is the same as what's going on in the South. Look at the county voting maps in those states, you'd have to gerrymander them the opposite direction to get Republicans more than a seat or two. Rural/exurban white voters there are weird, they aren't as conservative as they are in the rest of the country.
It's weird to see Kentucky in any kind of "toss up" category, even one as esoteric maybe as "State Supreme Court Partisan Ideology".
Excellent. But why is my stomach in knots? Because your rational analysis in no way eases my fear that we’re not just the away team, but the home team is playing an entirely different game, and our captains (Schumer!) are inept. On a related subject. I reiterate my request. We in California need a strategy for the gubernatorial election now underway. Quick! Propose a plan to insure that two Republicans do not advance to the runoff. Thx.
A major wildcard is the Hispanic vote.
California Prop 187 on 1994, and the resulting Republican rhetoric is instructive.
A large increase on Hispanic voter turnout combined with a dramatic shift in the direction of the Democratic party has obliterated the Republican party in California.
Trump's approval rating in the Hispanic community has crashed, and a lot of the polls don't include Spanish language support.
"the Supreme Court’s Callais decision weakened the Voting Rights Act" is a nakedly partisan framing. You could equally well say that Callais strengthened the Constitution. But if you were interested in accuracy rather than partisan scoring, you'd say it narrowed section 2's application to redistricting, or altered the standard for race-conscious districting.
More subtly, it's a partisan framing to say the Court favors Republicans in redistricting. Shelby County, Rucho, Brnovich and Callais uphold a consistent legal framework: skepticism of race as a redistricting input, skepticism of federal judicial supervision of state political processes and textualism about what the VRA actually requires as opposed to what it has come to stand for. None of those are partisan principles, each of them could favor Democrats in some cases. And none were invented recently for redistricting fights, all are long-standing Federalist Society views about all issues.
Rather than appointing more partisan state judges, I think Democrats should look back to when they had the advantage of a coherent judicial philosophy that could establish strong bodies of law--the legal process school that transformed the US justice system from the 1950s to the 1970s and underpinned the civil rights movement. This was a philosophy that appealed to lawyers, and won hearts and minds in law school. It could be applied to actual cases as well as overarching issues. It was a constraint--it didn't alway give the progressive or Democratic answer in all cases--but it was far more influential than modern progressive legal theories like democracy-and-voting-rights or purposivism. Those are goals rather than toolkits.
If you tell me a judge is a Federalist Society member, I can predict many of her decisions accurately, without knowing anything about the parties involved, only the legal issues. Calling it "Calvinball" is a slander. Sure, many judges lean one way or the other depending on the parties, but Federalist judges are far more predictable from legal principles than political ones. If you tell me a judge clerked for Brennan and is active in the American Constitution Society, I'll predict his decisions based on politics, not law.
Excellent analysis. But it pains me that the political biases of the courts is now very much a factor in this and any other conversation.