The Federal debt did not decline during the 1990s, nor since. The debt’s *rate* of growth began to slow in 1992, reaching zero in 2000. Ditto, for the Federal deficit (balanced at the height of the bubble). Both probably largely due to the tech boom (strong GDP growth, high tax receipts) plus the “peace dividend” following collapse of the USSR.
Not from any great public indignation about the deficit.
Yes . Early stage globalization boosted tax revenue ; baby boomers educated to a higher standard / natural IQ entered peak earning years. China was still learning how to capture our supply chains / achieve autarky and private equity could only outsource so fast.
Boomers began entering the workforce in 1966. Their peak year, roughly 1955, graduated college in ~1978. The tax revenue gradually increased. Nothing special happened with them in 1992 - 2000, but the deficit drastically changed. Tech-boom gdp plus the peace dividend both were specific to those years.
I think worker participation rate of all able bodied ppl may have peaked in 1990's and fewer graduates applied to graduate schools as they had good jobs 2) HR departments were not fully feminized and middle aged white men with more than 9 months unemployment could get job or HR saw employment paths that could work for all parties. (Feminized HR tend to look for continuous employment and and other simplistic markers ......they dont seem to think holistically .. along with repealing 19rh amendment, women should not work in HR ...) My citations are my experience. When a previously valued engineer / skilled artisan gets laid off or sees his job move to Asia as millions did especially under W Bush , the laid off engineer usually does not get another equivalent high paying position even if he is willing to relocate . I have seen equivalent of ~ 130 IQ naval academy graduates ~ 25 tech years experience get bought out and their next job requires ~ 115 IQ and 6 months experience ...they remain employed but the job level/pay level is lower than what they could still manage at age 60 y o.
there were more companies before mergers eg Texas Instruments bought out many companies and closed semi factories eg Unitrode NH (PJB visited 1992), Burr Brown AZ.
Merged companies had fewer positions. candidates had fewer employers to play against to bid their pay higher
How has Amzn, home depot , Walmart , Lowes affected employment in small book stores , small town hardware stores?
I am sure that Grok could describe consolidation / reduction of # factories , companies since 1990 for any sector.
Grok does not calculate anything. It scrapes its data for algorithmically similar material. Since it knows nothing and understands nothing, the answer is pleasing but perhaps wrong. The gross wrong answers are called “hallucinations” by AI engineers.
It’s not a wise smart supercomputer, like in films.
mergers that reduce the number of positions /companies etc When buyouts occur long time employees can earn payouts from unrealized equity holdings bought at a premium ...these premium buyouts are then taxed and federal government gets windfall.
Texas Instruments (TI) has acquired several companies since 1990, with the acquisition of Burr-Brown in 2000 being a notable example. Based on available information, here is a summary of TI's acquisitions after 1990, focusing on confirmed deals:
Burr-Brown Corporation (2000) - Acquired for $7.6 billion, this was TI's largest disclosed acquisition, strengthening its position in the data converter and amplifier segments of the analog semiconductor market.en.wikipedia.orgmergr.com
Unitrode Corporation (1999) - Acquired to enhance TI's position in power-management components.eetimes.com
Alantro Communications (2000) - Acquired for $300 million, focused on wireless local-area-networking technology.stereophile.com
National Semiconductor (2011) - Acquired for $6.5 billion, significantly expanding TI's analog semiconductor portfolio.
Amati Communications (1997) - Acquired for $395 million, specializing in DSL technology.
Spectra-Physics Scanning Systems (1998) - Acquired to bolster TI’s barcode scanning technology.
Telogy Networks (1998) - Acquired for $400 million, focusing on voice-over-IP technology.
GoDSP (1999) - A smaller acquisition to enhance TI’s digital signal processing capabilities.
Integrated Sensor Solutions (1999) - Focused on sensor technology for industrial applications.
According to data from Mergr, TI has acquired companies in 10 different US states and 7 countries, with Burr-Brown being its largest disclosed transaction. The exact number of acquisitions after 1990 is not exhaustively detailed in the provided sources, but at least 10 distinct acquisitions are confirmed based on the referenced information and broader web data
The birth rate plummeted in the Depression and WW2, so far fewer people began drawing SS/Medicare in the mid 90s. The first Boomers began drawing SS at the end of '07 and Medicare in 2010. It wasn't just the Great Recession that blew out the Budget.
An even less politically popular solution would be EU-style party lists and proportional representation. Eliminate the concept of a district entirely, just go by popular votes.
My mental analysis is that this would end up helping Republicans in the future, if Hispanic men (who tend to live in Democratic cities) continue to trend Republican. But that's not guaranteed.
I wouldn't want this at all. I like having a particular Congressman represent me. There are currently 9 Democrats in the house from New Jersey but if I have an issue with a federal agency I am only going to call one of them and they are going to be responsive. If I can call any one of the 9, that same sense of ownership isn't there
Are they responsive? Do they ever change their vote on an issue because of their constituents? I feel like these things are myths. Real local politics probably operated like 1789-1799.
That's a pretty effective way to gerrymander a state like Illinois with isolated pockets of Republicans and a single large repository of Democrats. It is somewhat humorous to see Democrats (in general, not referring to you) pushing for this plan because such 'at-large' elections were originally used to keep minorities from winning representation and lead to the authorization of 'majority minority' divisions.
I've listened to a lot of whining from AM radio conservatives about how highly gerrymandered states such as Massachusetts and Connecticut have 100% Democratic House members even though Republicans get 30%-40% of the popular vote. "It's a scandal," they say. They don't seem to notice that that vote were uniformly distributed in the electorate, it would take no gerrymandering at all to achieve the result observed.
One can say that the default distribution of House seats is actually 100% for the majority party in that state, and that only the uneven geographic distribution of the vote creates an opportunity for something more representative. But it would be unrealistic to expect the minority party to achieve full representational parity with its overall vote. So what gerrymandering accomplishes is to fudge actual House representation toward its default value.
That said, I think that most voters, who by and large are not rabid partisans, would prefer a districting process that was consistent and algorithmic, tending to produce compact districts that implicitly respected communities of interest. For example, the algorithm might minimize the instances of same-district precincts in different counties, different cities, different school districts, etc. It seems apparent that such a system would result in many more contested districts, else there would be no point to gerrymandering.
The decadal spectacle of partisan politicians scheming to decide, a priori, who wins and who loses is odious to most voters. Now that the Republicans are getting better at this game, maybe there is hope for a more neutral process such as I describe. One can always hope.
“If that vote were uniformly distributed in the electorate, it would take no gerrymandering at all to achieve the result observed.“
That’s not true at all, because Congressional districts are essentially self-selecting geographic areas—like-minded “minority” Republicans in Connecticut, NewYork, & Massachusetts live in clusters (for a variety of reasons).
What I wrote is correct. You're pointing out that in reality the vote is NOT uniformly distributed. That's correct too, and why, absent gerrymandering, the default result of all House seats going to the majority party typically doesn't happen. Gerrymandering nudges the result toward what I call this default result.
This isn't right, by my lights and I expect by yours. I offered one approach to replace gerrymandering with a more neutral districting process, and expressed hope that, because now the Republicans are getting hep to the jive, maybe more neutral procedures may be adopted.
Suppose every precinct in Massachusetts were 60-40 Democratic. That's what I mean by "uniformly distributed". Then 100% of the House seats would go to Democrats regardless of the district boundaries. Call this the default result.
The other extreme would be precincts that were all either 100% D or 100% R, with the D's and R's packed into respective compact contiguous regions. Then districting that respected these communities of interest (or at least of voter preference) would tend to produce near-perfect representation. Call this the ideal result.
My point is that, contra conservative whining, gerrymandering is not the root cause of non-ideal results. Rather it simply nudges the results toward default away from ideal. That doesn't mean that ordinary (i.e. not highly partisan) voters like gerrymandering. These voters would prefer a system that respected communities of interest as the natural consequence of consistently applying a neutral algorithm.
Thanks for the clarification, Kenneth. Agree that more neutral procedures would help--I suggested in a post that using AI to this end could be useful. I still disagree with your starting point that the "default" distribution of seats reflects the majority party in the state; that's the case for Senate elections (statewide) but it's why there are smaller congressional districts, where, for example, even in very blue California there are majority Republican districts.
I have directly participated in the decennial redrawing of a state’s congressional districts, although it was more than one cycle ago. You could go down to the block level to see partisan performance and although we tried to not split census tracts it still had to happen to balance the population as evenly as possible, so we ended up with a sort of ‘flap’ that carved out part of a cohesive neighborhood into a different district than the rest (and not of the same party) and for years confused neighbors would go to the wrong precinct’s polling station.
I have the displeasure of living in a blue district in a red state that largely exists to ensure a minority holds it. If SCOTUS decides to strike down that part of the VRA, hopefully the state legislature will make some changes, although I will still have to suffer Democratic rule of the city and my councilor whose indifference to maintaining public infrastructure and safety affects my life a lot more on a daily basis.
Yes, one thing that hamstrings the mapmakers is that for Congressional districts, the deviation of population in any two districts can literally be no more than one. In New Jersey for our legislature we have a bit more flexibility as only Newark and Jersey City can be split between districts; every other town must be entirely within one district. Therefore a city like Paterson is in a district with only five surrounding small towns with Paterson making up 67 percent of the district
Redistricting is perhaps the one area in which AI could serve us well. Of course algorithms can be manipulated, but the courts agreeing on certain algorithms would be simpler (and fairer) than adjudicating hundreds of redistricted areas.
> In reward, the incumbents of both parties allowed the Berman brothers to gerrymander Howard’s district to prevent the election of a Mexican representative, even though the liberal Democratic Berman was ostensibly in favor of diversity.
Finally, the 2010 Census led to the Mexicans getting their own Congressperson, and Berman and Sherman had to battle for the remaining white seat, with Berman losing a very expensive election in 2012. <
While not as sweet as watching the establishment's emotional meltdown upon the election of Trump, few things in American politics are as delicious as seeing some Jew primaried out because of relentless march of the sacred immigration that they love so gosh darn much. (Yeah, Berman chickened out of trying to take on the Latino but close enough.)
If you are stuck in a safe Democrat district, the Republican primary useless, please use the opportunity to vote against any incumbents--first and foremost Jews, but then any good-whites, any men. These people deserve what their minoritarian ideology demands--diversity! Vote for the person who is the *least* like George Washington. The ideal is some more or less the black or brown skinned, disabled, lesbian, immigrant Muslima.
> So, like Polsby, I’ve more or less lost the fire in the belly to try to reform gerrymandering. <
The reasonable reform is proportional representation. Let people actually vote for whom they want to vote for.
Note the difference between Germany where a substantial number of Germans--sadly not enough--have actually been able to vote to save Germany and given the AfD about a quarter of the seats in the Bundestag--forcing the establishment into their sleazy black-red coalition. Versus Britain where--the much soggier--Reform managed to win 14% of the vote, but got a measly 5 seats < 1%. While the annoying good-white Liberals got 72 seats with 12% of the vote, and Labor a whopping 400+ seats and a strong majority with 1/3 of the vote. Now maybe in 2029--if Labor lasts that long--first-past-the-post will work for Reform and they'll be able to get a governing majority and actually do something about the immigration deluge that is rapidly sinking Britain. But generally first-past-the-post just denies a lot of citizens their ability to protest.
However, if we're talking voting reforms the core problem is not our system, but who is allowed to vote.
Restrict the franchise to responsible, productive men with skin in the game--let's say, married with children, productively employed, net taxpayers--and our politics would get a whole, whole lot better in a hurry.
You left out "served in the military". Also, these days, doesn't "married" with children skew left? Possibly not malignant left. We might get better public spaces out of it and the ctrl-left could still try to influence and guilt them.
> Also, these days, doesn't "married" with children skew left? <
Not at all.
I don't believe Steve has done the exit-poll data breakdowns with Trump elections that he did back in 2012. But those results still apply: The most Republican skewing are married with children white Christian (inc. Mormon) men, the most Democrat supporting are childless non-Christian single non-white women. (The single black lesbian Muslima--maybe trans-Muslima--would be canonical.) And the marriage gap is bigger than the much discussed gender gap. (Discussing the marriage gap would be bad for the Parasite Party's narrative. "Women are wonderful", but trying to pitch marriage and children as bad and would be a bit "problematic".)
I agree Trump has probably eroded this a tiny bit vs. Bush or Romney--losing some college-educated married-with-children lemmings and picking up some disaffected working class singles. But the overall movements here are very small--maybe 5% of voters (and that's a stretch). But basically, Trump's voters are by and large standard Republican voters--married, white, private sector employed, traditional in values. And vice versa. That's how a completely vapid joke like Kamala Harris can win 47.5% of the vote.
The problem that precedes gerrymandering is the assumption that a great mass of voters will vote more or less blindly based on party allegiance. This, or mass democracy at all, doesn’t seem to have been considered much by the founders. When that happens the locus of policy-making and lobbying will of course shift from individual legislators to internal party leaderships.
The simple solution is more congressmen. If we had 4,350 instead of 435 each one would have less power and gerrymandering wouldn't be nearly as effective.
In Canada, the problem of gerrymandering was substantially mitigated by the 1964 Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act (which didn't really go into effect until 1996, due to political opposition), which largely shifted responsibility to nominally non-partisan Electoral Boundary Representation Commissions. While one think that this would merely make the gerrymandering process less transparent, as this post suggests, it seems to have worked fairly well. My district was just redrawn to create two tossup seats out of two safe seats. I am quite involved in local politics, and I have not heard anyone on either side complain about unfairness. You can find all the electoral maps here, and just eyeballing it, the districts all look pretty reasonable. https://www.elections.ca/map_01.aspx?w=0§ion=res&lang=e
Voters in a State when registering to vote should be allowed to declare which Congressional District they belong, regardless of address. That would shake things up.
Or, we can allow anyone to vote without ID, that appears to be Constitutional.
An easier metric: number of partial counties and cities. A redistricting plan which follows more stable boundaries like county lines would have fewer partials. Such a reform would be adequate to block such nonsense as the I-85 district in North Carolina which made an ultra Black district that was in several television markets. (Creating this minority district favored Republicans, as is concentrated a huge number of Democrats into one district.)
This reform would not be adequate in states which have gigantic urban areas under one jurisdiction. Gerrymandering within is still an option. The solution there should be to break up some cities. For example, the boroughs of New York City should be separate cities.
Yes, it was the GHWB DoJ that pushed for the majority minority districts under the Voting Rights Act. NC districts have been fought over and changed every few years ever since. I believe I've been in 4 different districts in the last 4 elections--it's been difficult to keep track. It would be nice if the disruption disfavored incumbency, but I doubt it has.
“public indignation about the practice could become great. This sort of thing happened with the deficit and with term limits.”
That statement was in the past tense, describing what already happened. He was wrong.
He's referring to 1992-1994.
The Federal debt did not decline during the 1990s, nor since. The debt’s *rate* of growth began to slow in 1992, reaching zero in 2000. Ditto, for the Federal deficit (balanced at the height of the bubble). Both probably largely due to the tech boom (strong GDP growth, high tax receipts) plus the “peace dividend” following collapse of the USSR.
Not from any great public indignation about the deficit.
Yes . Early stage globalization boosted tax revenue ; baby boomers educated to a higher standard / natural IQ entered peak earning years. China was still learning how to capture our supply chains / achieve autarky and private equity could only outsource so fast.
I doubt that either of those factors was significant. Do you have any citations for either?
1/ Globalization boosted US tax revenue in the 1990s?
2/ Baby boomers’ education and higher “natural IQ” boosted tax revenue?
Boomers began entering the workforce in 1966. Their peak year, roughly 1955, graduated college in ~1978. The tax revenue gradually increased. Nothing special happened with them in 1992 - 2000, but the deficit drastically changed. Tech-boom gdp plus the peace dividend both were specific to those years.
I think worker participation rate of all able bodied ppl may have peaked in 1990's and fewer graduates applied to graduate schools as they had good jobs 2) HR departments were not fully feminized and middle aged white men with more than 9 months unemployment could get job or HR saw employment paths that could work for all parties. (Feminized HR tend to look for continuous employment and and other simplistic markers ......they dont seem to think holistically .. along with repealing 19rh amendment, women should not work in HR ...) My citations are my experience. When a previously valued engineer / skilled artisan gets laid off or sees his job move to Asia as millions did especially under W Bush , the laid off engineer usually does not get another equivalent high paying position even if he is willing to relocate . I have seen equivalent of ~ 130 IQ naval academy graduates ~ 25 tech years experience get bought out and their next job requires ~ 115 IQ and 6 months experience ...they remain employed but the job level/pay level is lower than what they could still manage at age 60 y o.
there were more companies before mergers eg Texas Instruments bought out many companies and closed semi factories eg Unitrode NH (PJB visited 1992), Burr Brown AZ.
Merged companies had fewer positions. candidates had fewer employers to play against to bid their pay higher
How has Amzn, home depot , Walmart , Lowes affected employment in small book stores , small town hardware stores?
I am sure that Grok could describe consolidation / reduction of # factories , companies since 1990 for any sector.
Grok does not calculate anything. It scrapes its data for algorithmically similar material. Since it knows nothing and understands nothing, the answer is pleasing but perhaps wrong. The gross wrong answers are called “hallucinations” by AI engineers.
It’s not a wise smart supercomputer, like in films.
mergers that reduce the number of positions /companies etc When buyouts occur long time employees can earn payouts from unrealized equity holdings bought at a premium ...these premium buyouts are then taxed and federal government gets windfall.
Texas Instruments (TI) has acquired several companies since 1990, with the acquisition of Burr-Brown in 2000 being a notable example. Based on available information, here is a summary of TI's acquisitions after 1990, focusing on confirmed deals:
Burr-Brown Corporation (2000) - Acquired for $7.6 billion, this was TI's largest disclosed acquisition, strengthening its position in the data converter and amplifier segments of the analog semiconductor market.en.wikipedia.orgmergr.com
Unitrode Corporation (1999) - Acquired to enhance TI's position in power-management components.eetimes.com
Power Trends (1999) - A supplier of power devices used with DSPs and microprocessors.eetimes.com
Alantro Communications (2000) - Acquired for $300 million, focused on wireless local-area-networking technology.stereophile.com
National Semiconductor (2011) - Acquired for $6.5 billion, significantly expanding TI's analog semiconductor portfolio.
Amati Communications (1997) - Acquired for $395 million, specializing in DSL technology.
Spectra-Physics Scanning Systems (1998) - Acquired to bolster TI’s barcode scanning technology.
Telogy Networks (1998) - Acquired for $400 million, focusing on voice-over-IP technology.
GoDSP (1999) - A smaller acquisition to enhance TI’s digital signal processing capabilities.
Integrated Sensor Solutions (1999) - Focused on sensor technology for industrial applications.
According to data from Mergr, TI has acquired companies in 10 different US states and 7 countries, with Burr-Brown being its largest disclosed transaction. The exact number of acquisitions after 1990 is not exhaustively detailed in the provided sources, but at least 10 distinct acquisitions are confirmed based on the referenced information and broader web data
The birth rate plummeted in the Depression and WW2, so far fewer people began drawing SS/Medicare in the mid 90s. The first Boomers began drawing SS at the end of '07 and Medicare in 2010. It wasn't just the Great Recession that blew out the Budget.
“It wasn’t just the Great Recession that blew out the budget.”
False. The debt’s level was stable at 55-65% from 1990 until Q2 of 2008. After which it quickly rose to over 100%, where it stayed until COVID.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S
An even less politically popular solution would be EU-style party lists and proportional representation. Eliminate the concept of a district entirely, just go by popular votes.
My mental analysis is that this would end up helping Republicans in the future, if Hispanic men (who tend to live in Democratic cities) continue to trend Republican. But that's not guaranteed.
I wouldn't want this at all. I like having a particular Congressman represent me. There are currently 9 Democrats in the house from New Jersey but if I have an issue with a federal agency I am only going to call one of them and they are going to be responsive. If I can call any one of the 9, that same sense of ownership isn't there
Are they responsive? Do they ever change their vote on an issue because of their constituents? I feel like these things are myths. Real local politics probably operated like 1789-1799.
Those are two separate questions; in my experience the answers are yes and no
That's a pretty effective way to gerrymander a state like Illinois with isolated pockets of Republicans and a single large repository of Democrats. It is somewhat humorous to see Democrats (in general, not referring to you) pushing for this plan because such 'at-large' elections were originally used to keep minorities from winning representation and lead to the authorization of 'majority minority' divisions.
I've listened to a lot of whining from AM radio conservatives about how highly gerrymandered states such as Massachusetts and Connecticut have 100% Democratic House members even though Republicans get 30%-40% of the popular vote. "It's a scandal," they say. They don't seem to notice that that vote were uniformly distributed in the electorate, it would take no gerrymandering at all to achieve the result observed.
One can say that the default distribution of House seats is actually 100% for the majority party in that state, and that only the uneven geographic distribution of the vote creates an opportunity for something more representative. But it would be unrealistic to expect the minority party to achieve full representational parity with its overall vote. So what gerrymandering accomplishes is to fudge actual House representation toward its default value.
That said, I think that most voters, who by and large are not rabid partisans, would prefer a districting process that was consistent and algorithmic, tending to produce compact districts that implicitly respected communities of interest. For example, the algorithm might minimize the instances of same-district precincts in different counties, different cities, different school districts, etc. It seems apparent that such a system would result in many more contested districts, else there would be no point to gerrymandering.
The decadal spectacle of partisan politicians scheming to decide, a priori, who wins and who loses is odious to most voters. Now that the Republicans are getting better at this game, maybe there is hope for a more neutral process such as I describe. One can always hope.
Ken
“If that vote were uniformly distributed in the electorate, it would take no gerrymandering at all to achieve the result observed.“
That’s not true at all, because Congressional districts are essentially self-selecting geographic areas—like-minded “minority” Republicans in Connecticut, NewYork, & Massachusetts live in clusters (for a variety of reasons).
Stefan,
Thank you for engaging.
What I wrote is correct. You're pointing out that in reality the vote is NOT uniformly distributed. That's correct too, and why, absent gerrymandering, the default result of all House seats going to the majority party typically doesn't happen. Gerrymandering nudges the result toward what I call this default result.
This isn't right, by my lights and I expect by yours. I offered one approach to replace gerrymandering with a more neutral districting process, and expressed hope that, because now the Republicans are getting hep to the jive, maybe more neutral procedures may be adopted.
Ken
I think this the highlights the problem. I don’t understand your logic here. This public discussion isn’t easy.
Suppose every precinct in Massachusetts were 60-40 Democratic. That's what I mean by "uniformly distributed". Then 100% of the House seats would go to Democrats regardless of the district boundaries. Call this the default result.
The other extreme would be precincts that were all either 100% D or 100% R, with the D's and R's packed into respective compact contiguous regions. Then districting that respected these communities of interest (or at least of voter preference) would tend to produce near-perfect representation. Call this the ideal result.
My point is that, contra conservative whining, gerrymandering is not the root cause of non-ideal results. Rather it simply nudges the results toward default away from ideal. That doesn't mean that ordinary (i.e. not highly partisan) voters like gerrymandering. These voters would prefer a system that respected communities of interest as the natural consequence of consistently applying a neutral algorithm.
Ken
Thanks for the clarification, Kenneth. Agree that more neutral procedures would help--I suggested in a post that using AI to this end could be useful. I still disagree with your starting point that the "default" distribution of seats reflects the majority party in the state; that's the case for Senate elections (statewide) but it's why there are smaller congressional districts, where, for example, even in very blue California there are majority Republican districts.
I have directly participated in the decennial redrawing of a state’s congressional districts, although it was more than one cycle ago. You could go down to the block level to see partisan performance and although we tried to not split census tracts it still had to happen to balance the population as evenly as possible, so we ended up with a sort of ‘flap’ that carved out part of a cohesive neighborhood into a different district than the rest (and not of the same party) and for years confused neighbors would go to the wrong precinct’s polling station.
I have the displeasure of living in a blue district in a red state that largely exists to ensure a minority holds it. If SCOTUS decides to strike down that part of the VRA, hopefully the state legislature will make some changes, although I will still have to suffer Democratic rule of the city and my councilor whose indifference to maintaining public infrastructure and safety affects my life a lot more on a daily basis.
Yes, one thing that hamstrings the mapmakers is that for Congressional districts, the deviation of population in any two districts can literally be no more than one. In New Jersey for our legislature we have a bit more flexibility as only Newark and Jersey City can be split between districts; every other town must be entirely within one district. Therefore a city like Paterson is in a district with only five surrounding small towns with Paterson making up 67 percent of the district
Redistricting is perhaps the one area in which AI could serve us well. Of course algorithms can be manipulated, but the courts agreeing on certain algorithms would be simpler (and fairer) than adjudicating hundreds of redistricted areas.
If Newsom completely gerrymanders CA he'll just accelerate the outflow and lose more seats. Bring it on.
I hate it when elections are supererogatory.
It's not that often I learn a new four-letter word, but I can't recall ever encountering 'pelf' before; it should be useful in scrabble.
That was a great interview; Polsby's clearly a smart guy who notices plenty.
> In reward, the incumbents of both parties allowed the Berman brothers to gerrymander Howard’s district to prevent the election of a Mexican representative, even though the liberal Democratic Berman was ostensibly in favor of diversity.
Finally, the 2010 Census led to the Mexicans getting their own Congressperson, and Berman and Sherman had to battle for the remaining white seat, with Berman losing a very expensive election in 2012. <
While not as sweet as watching the establishment's emotional meltdown upon the election of Trump, few things in American politics are as delicious as seeing some Jew primaried out because of relentless march of the sacred immigration that they love so gosh darn much. (Yeah, Berman chickened out of trying to take on the Latino but close enough.)
If you are stuck in a safe Democrat district, the Republican primary useless, please use the opportunity to vote against any incumbents--first and foremost Jews, but then any good-whites, any men. These people deserve what their minoritarian ideology demands--diversity! Vote for the person who is the *least* like George Washington. The ideal is some more or less the black or brown skinned, disabled, lesbian, immigrant Muslima.
> So, like Polsby, I’ve more or less lost the fire in the belly to try to reform gerrymandering. <
The reasonable reform is proportional representation. Let people actually vote for whom they want to vote for.
Note the difference between Germany where a substantial number of Germans--sadly not enough--have actually been able to vote to save Germany and given the AfD about a quarter of the seats in the Bundestag--forcing the establishment into their sleazy black-red coalition. Versus Britain where--the much soggier--Reform managed to win 14% of the vote, but got a measly 5 seats < 1%. While the annoying good-white Liberals got 72 seats with 12% of the vote, and Labor a whopping 400+ seats and a strong majority with 1/3 of the vote. Now maybe in 2029--if Labor lasts that long--first-past-the-post will work for Reform and they'll be able to get a governing majority and actually do something about the immigration deluge that is rapidly sinking Britain. But generally first-past-the-post just denies a lot of citizens their ability to protest.
However, if we're talking voting reforms the core problem is not our system, but who is allowed to vote.
Restrict the franchise to responsible, productive men with skin in the game--let's say, married with children, productively employed, net taxpayers--and our politics would get a whole, whole lot better in a hurry.
You left out "served in the military". Also, these days, doesn't "married" with children skew left? Possibly not malignant left. We might get better public spaces out of it and the ctrl-left could still try to influence and guilt them.
> Also, these days, doesn't "married" with children skew left? <
Not at all.
I don't believe Steve has done the exit-poll data breakdowns with Trump elections that he did back in 2012. But those results still apply: The most Republican skewing are married with children white Christian (inc. Mormon) men, the most Democrat supporting are childless non-Christian single non-white women. (The single black lesbian Muslima--maybe trans-Muslima--would be canonical.) And the marriage gap is bigger than the much discussed gender gap. (Discussing the marriage gap would be bad for the Parasite Party's narrative. "Women are wonderful", but trying to pitch marriage and children as bad and would be a bit "problematic".)
I agree Trump has probably eroded this a tiny bit vs. Bush or Romney--losing some college-educated married-with-children lemmings and picking up some disaffected working class singles. But the overall movements here are very small--maybe 5% of voters (and that's a stretch). But basically, Trump's voters are by and large standard Republican voters--married, white, private sector employed, traditional in values. And vice versa. That's how a completely vapid joke like Kamala Harris can win 47.5% of the vote.
I'm not sure whether I completely misinterpreted and your "married" scare quotes were just making the point about homosexuals?
Anyway if anyone's interested, here's a Psychology Today piece on the 2024 election voting by broad sex/martial status categories:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/living-single/202412/marital-status-in-voting-a-vital-factor-mostly-ignored
Blast from the past: I had Polsby for Criminal Law.
The problem that precedes gerrymandering is the assumption that a great mass of voters will vote more or less blindly based on party allegiance. This, or mass democracy at all, doesn’t seem to have been considered much by the founders. When that happens the locus of policy-making and lobbying will of course shift from individual legislators to internal party leaderships.
The simple solution is more congressmen. If we had 4,350 instead of 435 each one would have less power and gerrymandering wouldn't be nearly as effective.
That would be logistically challenging to say the least. I agree that 435 is too small; perhaps we should adopt the Wyoming rule
In Canada, the problem of gerrymandering was substantially mitigated by the 1964 Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act (which didn't really go into effect until 1996, due to political opposition), which largely shifted responsibility to nominally non-partisan Electoral Boundary Representation Commissions. While one think that this would merely make the gerrymandering process less transparent, as this post suggests, it seems to have worked fairly well. My district was just redrawn to create two tossup seats out of two safe seats. I am quite involved in local politics, and I have not heard anyone on either side complain about unfairness. You can find all the electoral maps here, and just eyeballing it, the districts all look pretty reasonable. https://www.elections.ca/map_01.aspx?w=0§ion=res&lang=e
Voters in a State when registering to vote should be allowed to declare which Congressional District they belong, regardless of address. That would shake things up.
Or, we can allow anyone to vote without ID, that appears to be Constitutional.
You seem unclear on the meaning of the word "district"
An easier metric: number of partial counties and cities. A redistricting plan which follows more stable boundaries like county lines would have fewer partials. Such a reform would be adequate to block such nonsense as the I-85 district in North Carolina which made an ultra Black district that was in several television markets. (Creating this minority district favored Republicans, as is concentrated a huge number of Democrats into one district.)
This reform would not be adequate in states which have gigantic urban areas under one jurisdiction. Gerrymandering within is still an option. The solution there should be to break up some cities. For example, the boroughs of New York City should be separate cities.
Yes, it was the GHWB DoJ that pushed for the majority minority districts under the Voting Rights Act. NC districts have been fought over and changed every few years ever since. I believe I've been in 4 different districts in the last 4 elections--it's been difficult to keep track. It would be nice if the disruption disfavored incumbency, but I doubt it has.