- cross-posted to:
- politics@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- politics@beehaw.org
Republicans routed as Democrats gain powerful new leverage over Trump for remainder of his presidency
Democrats have regained control of the US Senate, routing Republicans nationwide with historic victories that will give them powerful new leverage over Donald Trump for the remainder of his presidency.
Democrats will soon have the ability to hold up not just Trump’s legislative agenda, but also any appointments he makes to his cabinet or the federal judiciary – including the supreme court, where conservatives have a 6-3 majority.
Most hilarious is that all the redone maps actually went Democrat.
There was one stare where Republican government refused to redo maps, because they were afraid exactly this would happen. Guess they can say “told you so”.
That’s one of the down sides of gerrymandering. If the other side reaches a high enough level of turnout, it actually magnifies your loss.
The goal of gerrymandering is to create a greater number of “safe” districts. The tradeoff is sacrificing margin in each, which fundamentally doesn’t work if there’s a large enough turnout.
Also, fuck the Supreme Court of Virginia.
Some of them were built with the shift in Latino votes being assumed.
Gerrymandering creates a damn where you can lose a few points and keep all your seats, but if you lose a few more, the damn breaks and all the seats get washed away.
Exactly the opposite.
Instead of winning one district by a lot and losing 2, you redraw the map to win all three by a little.
The result isn’t more safe districts, it’s less.
Which means that if you miscalculate that “little”, you lose all 3. As the parent comment states.
I hyperfocused on “maximizing” and “safe”. The concept of “safe” in the context of electoral districts has a real definition in political science. Which is probably exactly why they put it in quotes.
It’s like calling a Chihuahua “big dog”.
That’s why I had that word in quotes.
OK yeah, it just really hits my eyes and ears strangely.
Like that spinning ballerina silhouette… I really gotta squint and fold my brain to make her spin the other way kinda thing.
you’re right though: those quotes do heavy lifing and in a specific direction.