Last week I posted, commenting on Nate Silver’s prediction that the GOP could take the Senate in Fall 2014. I gave a few reasons why democrats could lose easily, but that isn’t really the whole story. The linked post below adds valuable information about how or why the GOP has such an advantage. The bottom line is that each and every election matters, and the predicament that we find ourselves in was not crafted overnight. Rather it was many elections in the making, and is especially the result of heavy wins at local and the State level over the past four or so election cycles. Districts are so gerrymandered and set up to maintain the status quo- they are the epitome of what’s wrong with our political system.
From an early age, we are taught about how special democracy is, and that each person has a vote.Each election is a content unto itself, and one candidate wins whole the other loses.But mousing in those civics lessons is the reality of the way the political system gets rigged. It isn’t a single party problem with both of the modern day parties having had their own fair share of doing the rigging.
Elections have become more like a tug of war, where letting up for the slightest second can mean victory for the other side. Then after the win, the winning side does what it can to fortify their power and make sure the other side can’t win in the next tug of war battle. Politicians to a certain degree do more to maintain the status quo than allow the system to really be shaken up. They want to keep their jobs- that makes some sense, but at what cost? The system has been failing for some time and either party has had the will or the means to get it sorted out. Well, the GOP doesn’t want to get it sorted out- they want to win at any cost including via voter suppression.
No one, and I mean no one, is telling progressive voters that we need to ding in hard and start fighting and don’t stop fighting until the 2016 election is over. We need to see progressive wins in 2014 and a again in 2016, or we may just count our democracy as dead. Strategists worry about fatiguing the American voter. We are all so fickle and lose interest if there isn’t scandal involved. But we better wake up and recognize the uphill battle that exists and get working to make it to the top successfully.
Even if Democrats recruit great candidates, raise gobs of money and run smart campaigns, they face an uphill fight to retake control of the House in this year’s congressional elections, regardless of the political climate in November.
The reason? Republican strategists spent years developing a plan to take advantage of the 2010 census, first by winning state legislatures and then redrawing House districts to tilt the playing field in their favor. Their success was unprecedented.
In states like Ohio, Michigan and North Carolina, Republicans were able to shape congressional maps to pack as many Democratic voters as possible into the fewest House districts. The practice is called gerrymandering, and it left fertile ground elsewhere in each state to spread Republican voters among more districts, increasing the GOP’s chances of winning more seats.
via http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/31/house-gop_n_5060846.html