Posts Tagged ‘Republicans’

The Gerrymandering War and Other Political Follies

August 19, 2025

Congressional redistricting — gerrymandering. For readers from Mars, that means Republicans (for example) setting boundaries to concentrate Democratic voters into a few districts they win overwhelmingly, while all the rest go Republican. And Republicans do predominate in this game, with Democratic states (like California) more commonly having non-partisan districting systems.

Gerrymandering, we’re told, “disenfranchises” voters. Well, you’re not “disenfranchised” just because your chosen candidate loses. But what gerrymandering does do is tilt the overall playing field unfairly, to win more seats. It’s cheating.

Texas Republicans — at Trump’s behest — are now doubly cheating. Conventional gerrymandering has actually been within the rules of the game that we all understood. But another rule was that you could do it only every ten years, after a decennial census. A rule Texas Republicans are now breaking.

Note, their last redistricting was only in 2021. Didn’t they do a thorough gerrymander then? Why need a redo so soon? But there have been some population shifts. Notably more Hispanics voting Republican.

Democratic legislators are trying to block the new gerrymander by leaving the state, preventing a quorum. Provoking Republicans like Governor Abbott and Slimeball Attorney-General* Paxton into blood-curdling threats. But anyhow, Republicans can just wait out the Democrats and reconvene the legislature.

Democrats nationally are widely seen as weak. Bringing a knife (or flyswatter?) to a gunfight. Playing by the rules while Republicans play dirty. (What I’ve called the power imbalance between good and evil.) But now Democrats propose to counter Texas’s mid-decade gerrymander with ones of their own in states they control.

New York’s constitution bars any redistricting possibility before 2028. But California’s Gov. Newsom wants a November referendum, to adopt a gerrymander for 2026. That might be a hard sell, undoing the non-partisan scheme voters previously approved.

Gerrymandering is indeed cheating, and has big bad effects — contributing to political polarization, because legislative districts that are non-competitive between parties make candidates beholden to extremist primary voters. That’s why GOP legislators are so intimidated by Trump.

However — sometimes ends can justify means. Continued Republican control of Congress would be so dire for our democracy’s future that to prevent it, Democrats should gerrymander where they can.

* * *

New York State enacted a public campaign finance scheme. Political donations up to $250 would trigger state matching funds, up to 12 times the amount. To counter the clout of big donors by empowering small ones, and making “shoestring” campaigns more competitive.

The match multiple might seem excessive. The last local elections buried us in slick printed mailings by candidates to spend the flood of state money. Well, at least it went on campaigning. However, with so much cash on offer, the system appears ripe for abuse. The local paper recently spotlighted one Republican candidate who bribed homeless people to fill out paperwork falsely attesting to $250 donations. Netting him thousands in state matching funds. Is this story the tip of an iceberg?

Meantime, while the original donation cap was $250, the state legislature soon raised it — shredding the logic of neutering the impact of big donors. A public outcry forced Gov. Hochul’s veto. But then, unrepentant, they snuck a similar revision into the state budget, and this time she signed it.

But the whole concept here seems misconceived for achieving the supposed aims. Trust our state politicians to devise a cackhanded scheme actually serving their own crass interests (money) and inviting abuse. I’ve previously advocated instead a simple 100% tax credit for political donations up to a certain amount. Thus people could make donations on the state’s dime — a big incentive — without the potential for gaming the system.

* Not his official title.

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The Congressional Penis Crisis

November 25, 2024

South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace is crusading on one of the Great Issues of Our Time: bathroom admittance.

Pushing legislation that would bar Delaware’s newly elected Rep. Sarah McBride from Capitol women’s facilities. McBride is transgender. Mace has posted videos of herself fuming and, within a short span, over 300 related tweets. Mace was unabashedly graphic: “No penises in women’s rooms!”

So much for collegial spirit and welcoming new members.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, overseer of the institution’s toilets, bowed to Mace and decreed a rule that gender designations on birth certificates would govern. How this can be enforced might be a question. Nevertheless, Mace postured taping, with a flourish of pride, a card reading “BIOLOGICAL” above the “Women” sign on a restroom door.

No penises in women’s rooms!

The idea of one Congress member sexually assaulting another in a House restroom seems pretty far-fetched (Lauren Boebert aside). And as for penises, gay men in men’s rooms might seem a more realistic concern. Though in seven decades using men’s rooms I’ve never seen a penis in one.

McBride’s response was admirably restrained. Saying she hadn’t come to Congress to argue about bathrooms, but Delawareans’ real concerns. And if there’s a birth certificate rule, she’ll simply obey it. Whatever.

Meantime, if this is all about penises, I wondered: does McBride actually even have one? Researching this, I found nothing on Wikipedia, but typing the direct question into Google revealed the answer: no. McBride had the surgery. Making Nancy Mace’s penis histrionics all the more ridiculous.

And hey, Nancy — if you’re in such a tizzy about biological males hypothetically sexually assaulting females in women’s facilities — how about your dear leader Trump, adjudicated to have done the actual deed?

Anyhow, if there were really any true concern here, the answer would seem pretty simple: unisex restrooms. And the real safety threat, if any, is violence against trans people, a threat Nancy Mace’s behavior only heightens. While, true to today’s totally dishonest Republican ethos, her shtick was just performative. Part of Republicans’ shameful effort to exploit a “eww” factor to dehumanize and demonize some of our fellow citizens. It’s sick and sickening.

These are the people we’ve elected to govern us. Ewwwwww.

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What’s the Future of the Republican Party?

October 16, 2024

The two-party system was long central to America’s civic structure. Developing outside (and unforeseen by) the Constitution, but becoming integral to our democracy. With each party having differing visions for how things should be, yet agreeing on the basic values defining America; just disagreeing on how to realize them. While recognizing this as an honorable competition of ideas, each side having legitimacy.

That’s all broken now.

Republicans, with the most apocalyptic rhetoric, screech about Democrats destroying America. “You won’t have a country any more,” rants Trump. In reality Democrats remain a standard old-fashioned political party, almost stodgy even, while it’s Republicans who’ve gone haywire, breaking radically from that centuries-old model. Republicans hate Democrats based on lies; Democrats hate the Republicans’ reality.

Hence there’s talk of needing to restore a proper two-party system, like we used to have. Because what we’ve got now is civically toxic and just not working. That talk envisions a revamp really on the Republican side, a reversion to “traditional” Republicanism, level-headed and responsible. As if that conventional party is in hibernation, waiting for winter’s end, to come back out into sunshine. Trumpism being just a passing aberration. A temporary madness.

Actually, the GOP long had a top layer of serious public-spirited people, with thoughtful classically conservative principles; and a bottom layer of benighted primitivist yahoos tolerated for their needed votes. That party was riding a tiger, and finally got eaten. Its Liz Cheneys have been excommunicated. Already viewed as traitors, she and many like her endorsing Harris seals their banishment. One can’t conceive of a repentant GOP welcoming them back.

It’s true that many high-ranking Republicans, despite knowing the truth, embrace the MAGA lunacy just for the sake of personal political survival. Cowering in terror lest Trump destroy them with a word (which he’s done). And, the theory goes, once he’s gone, they’ll be freed to return to normal. Though meantime one might ponder the price they’re paying, in their souls, for their cupidity. But then too, many seem to have actually drunk the Kool-Aid. So powerful is the Trumpist mind-warp. Spout lies long enough, you can come to believe them.

Then there’s that now ascendant bottom layer, the rank-and-file base of ordinary Republican voters. No cynical opportunism explains their pathology. Overwhelmingly they’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. With “drunk” being all too apt a word.

And it’s hard to see them getting sober in the morning. You don’t go overnight from “The world’s on fire!” to, well, maybe it’s okay.

Remember how some imagined President Biden might restore normalcy? Anodyne, colorless Joe — soon deemed by Republicans a monster from Hell. And previously, that a Black president could herald a post-racial nirvana? Our current malady has roots in Obama backlash. So how about a president not only non-white, but female? You thought Republicans were unhinged before?

Yet might four successive election losses (let’s hope!) cause some soul-searching and recalibration? That would be expected for a normal political party. (Like Britain’s Labourites, who ditched their far-left albatross and then won a huge majority.) But again the MAGA party is no normal one. Much more like a religious cult. Which, when its doomsday predictions prove wrong, just invents excuses and reschedules the date.

Indeed, most Republicans won’t believe they really lost. The lie that Democrats win by cheating has for years now been pounded into their brains. Another supposedly “stolen election” will make them even more disaffected and crazy.

And Trump himself of course won’t disappear. He will “not go gentle into that good night,” but “rage, rage.” You might think America would finally grow weary of that, and turn the page. Indeed a factor if he does lose. Yet crime still sells newspapers; he’ll remain much in our faces.

And even Trump gone from the scene wouldn’t change the big picture. What he set in motion is larger than just him and, even if defeated in 2024, will remain a powerful political force. That surely some other evil people — slicker and seemingly more plausible (Vance? DeSantis?) — will strive to exploit for themselves.

We’re far from writing “The End” to this story.

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Understanding Trump voters #386: the personal is political

December 5, 2020

Like half the country, I’ve spent four years struggling to understand how the other half could vote for Trump. It seems insane.

A piece on medium.com by Jeff Valdivia has some insight.* He mainly discusses a podcast by Sam Harris (End of Faith author). They see Trump’s unspeakableness as perversely working in his favor. For all his self-praise, one thing he actually never claims is moral virtue. Welcomed by people sick of having their own virtue impugned. At last, someone who’s not a role model they must compare themselves (unfavorably) to. Harris thinks Trump offers a kind of “spiritual balm” of comfort for them.

A good example, says Valdivia, concerns fast food, the obesity epidemic, etc., with many Americans feeling shamed by a scolding commentariat. In this, and many other regards, Trump’s own shamelessness is appealing to his supporters, giving them a kind of personal validation.

But Valdivia, again citing Harris, says Trump’s appeal is best understood vis-a-vis the far left. With their moral censoriousness and virtue shaming on steroids: “a level of sanctimony that defies all reason.” Which normal people rebel against.

I recently reviewed Robert Boyers’s book, whose title fits perfectly here: The Tyranny of Virtue. It’s aimed at academia, where the slightest deviation from the left’s catechism incurs Savonarolan retribution. But such “cancel culture” has spread to the wider society.

Just one example: transgender issues. I fully support people wanting to live as their true selves. But this too has become an all-or-nothing, scorched earth orthodoxy. As with J.K. Rowling called a transphobic monster for making some actually obvious observations distinguishing between cis and trans women. It’s a real issue in sport, where genders have competed separately due to physical differences; a trans woman would have unfair biological advantages. Meantime, we see maladjusted teenagers suddenly deciding to change sex, with lifelong consequences, but no one allowed to caution them. A scientist, Lisa Littman, who dared to study the matter, was fired. If you’re not transfanatic, you’re transphobic!

Such deranged moralistic absolutism is very antagonizing. To the extent Trump is seen as pushing back against it, he mines a rich vein of political gold.

Recall how Hillary’s “deplorables” comment backfired, Trump supporters wearing it as a badge of honor. Refusing to be looked down upon by hoity-toity snot-noses. It’s one thing to disagree about an issue; quite another to call you deplorable. Or racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. Especially racist. People’s feelings about race are often complicated. Few see themselves as “racist.”

For this judgmentalism many Republicans hate Democrats. Also because of the hard left, even though most Democrats actually reject it too. But much Republican hatred for Democrats is based on falsehoods. It’s mainly sheer tribalism — my tribe good, other tribe bad. And your tribe is a package deal. If it includes deeming climate change a hoax, or Biden’s election fraudulent, you buy the whole deal. America’s right is now enraged believing the lie that Biden won by fraud. Threatening violence.

Thus Valdivia sees crazy on one side driving crazy on the other; each continually upping the ante of our polarization. How can we break out of this? He reports on an initiative called Braver Angels, getting political opposites together to converse in a “safe space.” To elide the shouting and demonization to arrive at what co-founder Bill Doherty calls accurate disagreement. While seeing more in common than they’d realized. People being “more complicated and less evil” than we think, says Valdivia.

It isn’t rocket science; in fact, earnest initiatives like this are legion. But it requires good will and open mindedness to begin with (certainly scarce on the hard left). And what tiny percentage of the U.S. electorate would participate in such get-togethers?

A recent David Brooks column is also on point. It’s all about epistemology: how we know things. There are basic methods for that. Rejected by today’s Republican Trump cultists. This is part of the obvious growing cultural divide between urban educated people and those who see them as distant, condescending, having it easy, with different values. Causing cynicism and alienation. The “evangelists of distrust, from Trump to Alex Jones to the followers of QAnon” play into that, providing a tribal bonding. Conspiracy theories are effective emotional tools, conferring a perverse kind of power. Believers imagine themselves privy to some hidden truth. In sum, Brooks says today’s Republican identity is defined not by policies but by a paranoid mindset.**

He does believe that honest discourse, like in the Braver Angels thing, can help, narrowing the social/cultural chasm. However, he says, “you can’t argue people out of paranoia;” can’t talk them out of an emotional state. Brooks thinks a lot of it stems from economic anxiety, and we really have to make life more secure for people losing out, mainly those without college degrees. Yet, on the Newshour, he spoke of a neurosurgeon inhabiting the Trump alternate reality.

Brooks, Harris, and Valdivia do help demystify Trumpdom, from a psychological standpoint. However, as voters we really have a responsibility to see past our personal stuff and give thought to the bigger picture. And even from the perspective of raw self-regard and self-interest, does it really make sense to install so vile and feckless a president? Look at the covid disaster. Does this “make America great again?” Is it the role model you want for your children?

Or else you can blind yourself to such realities, which again is indeed a large element of Trumpism. But whatever reasons may lie behind your voting choice, it can’t possibly be a good idea to base it on flouting reality. That can only bite you in the behind.

At what point do you finally say, “Enough; this is insane?”

* Read it here: https://jeff-valdivia.medium.com/finally-an-answer-to-why-so-many-people-voted-for-trump-34106d896bec

** This partly explains polls underestimating Republican votes. They didn’t lie to pollsters; instead many wouldn’t answer at all, seeing polling firms as part of the elitist establishment they despise.

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The Republican Party’s Future

November 4, 2012

Columnist George Will has said that, given the economy, if Republicans can’t beat this president, they should look for another line of business. (One might add, “given this black president.” This is not a basically racist country as lefties love saying; Obama was actually black before the last election; yet it does cost him some votes.)

If Romney loses, which I think likely, there will be a loud chorus of Republicans blaming their failure to nominate a “real conservative.” Like Rick Santorum? True, more Americans consider themselves “conservative” than liberal, but their conservatism doesn’t gibe with the fierce ideology of today’s Republican fire-eaters. Compassionate conservatism it ain’t. They are painting themselves into a narrow political corner. How often can they beat the drum for reducing government before voters get cynical because government only keeps growing, no matter how many tea-partiers are elected? And while Democrats demonize them as wanting to throw granny over the cliff, Republicans cannot deliver on their threats of cutbacks – not even Big Bird’s neck will meet the axe — so it’s a lose-lose position for them.

Of course we desperately need to curb spending; but it won’t happen without a bipartisan deal including taxes too. And Republicans won’t hear of it. Nevertheless, I believe Romney would actually make such a deal, achieving what Obama cannot. Yet, maddeningly, Romney seems to think he can’t say this. The lack of clarity  leaves Democrats free to posture as defenders of everyone’s government benefits, without being called on how to pay for it.

In 1992, after Democrats had lost five out of six presidential elections, some of them realized their leftwingery and interest group pandering wasn’t working, so spearheaded by Bill Clinton, they wrenched the party back toward the center. What Republicans need is not to ratchet up their ideological purity; but to wake up from that dream and wrench their party back toward the center. Otherwise they risk making Democrats the “natural party of government,” as they basically were for three decades up to the ‘60s.

Meantime, while the electorate is sharply divided, the voters in the middle – who actually decide elections – are not ideological nor swayed by policy arguments. They “vote for the man” they like better. They still like Obama better, skin color notwithstanding. Ronald Reagan was a big winner not because he was so conservative but because he was a “great communicator” whom people liked. But likeability counted for almost nothing in the Republican primaries. Romney would have been a far more appealing and credible candidate if he hadn’t had to go through the bizarrification machine of the Republican primaries. He’s tried to undo the damage, but probably too late.

Then there’s demographics. Republican voters aren’t reproducing as fast as Democratic voters; and, being older, on average, they’re exiting at a greater rate. Republicans’ core support base is white males, whose percentage in the population is inexorably shrinking. The demographic growing the fastest is Hispanics, not only by reproduction but via immigration, yet Republicans somehow thought it was a good idea to give Hispanics the finger. Of course they didn’t actually, but Hispanics can be forgiven for seeing it that way.

The irony is that President Obama gave Republicans a tremendous opportunity to gain Latino support because he failed to fulfill his promises for immigration reform and actually stepped up deportations, of over a million Hispanics. Welcoming immigrants – who come here to work and advance themselves economically – not to mention all those highly qualified foreigners whom American businesses desperately need but can’t get into the country – ought to be right in line with the Republican worldview. Instead they have succumbed to a brainless nativism. What a shame. (I was shocked recently to see The Economist listing Texas as only “leaning Republican.”)

And the Republicans have run a lousy, dumb campaign. With all the true things that can be said against Obama’s re-election (See for example my 7/12 post), why twist facts in ways that are bound to bite you in the ass? And after all the nonsense about “shipping jobs overseas,” what Republican campaign genius had the bright idea to spotlight the issue — with phony charges against Obama? All this erodes trustworthiness and the image of competence, and gets in the way of the main message. And while it’s healthy to change one’s mind sometimes, don’t make it seem constant and expedient – trustworthiness, again.

While both sides are equally guilty of running overwhelmingly negative ads, for Romney I think that’s been a fatal mistake. The conventional wisdom is that voters hate negative ads, but they work. However, voters already knew what they think of Obama and ads can’t much change that. But Romney is less known, and less liked, and hence needed to do much more to build up his own image as a palatable alternative, especially countering the negativity of Obama’s ads. It’s not enough just to show Obama’s weaknesses; you have to give people someone to vote for. 

If Romney wins, it will be in spite of his campaign, not because of it.

Note re Massachusetts: Senator Scott Brown is one of the few moderate bipartisan Republicans in Congress. How sad if he’s replaced with yet another regulation liberal partisan Democrat.

* * * * *

This should be my last pre-election post. No matter who you’re for, vote; it’s the one sacrament we can all perform. And whoever you vote for, please remember that voters on the other side may be (in your opinion) wrong – but they’re not wicked.

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