As we head in to redistricting, looks like most of the South is going to have a romp. Yay. And we get to fight this in hostile courts. The 2010 midterms are on ongoing disaster. 2030 will be another midterm, too, so we might not see changes until 2040 if we can’t do something significant with Congress before then.
Ok I lied. I’m back on Twitter and just in time for this VERY interesting thread:
Thread Reader App (@threadreaderapp) Tweeted: @moonbeaver Halo! you can read it here: @mattsheffield: As a former conservative activist and journalist, it has been so frustrating to see my former… https://t.co/Db5JfwJb0V See you soon. 🤖 https://twitter.com/threadreaderapp/status/1325101121338306560?s=20
Gonna thow down my marker here: Republicans did so well in the 2020 election because of all the institutional changes (e.g., gerrymandering, voter suppression) they put in place since Dems snoozed through the 2010 midterms.
Not because of a monster polling miss or lack of energy on the part of Dems or “the Latino” vote or any of that.
Yes, that many people voting Republican in this day and age is a sad moral failing, but it’s not the character of the majority of our nation. Yes, there were polling misses (I guess), but I’m not sure there’s something fundamentally flawed with polling. We’ve known for a long time there is no such thing as “the Latino” vote, and so have the campaigns.
There have been lots of articles about the fact that a 5–8 point polling lead is required for Dems to win, due to structural changes put in place (or otherwise enjoyed) by Republicans. The system worked.
This is giving Trump too much credit. He didn’t tribalize America; it’s been this way for a VERY long time.
«And that is one of Trump’s great accomplishments: turning huge swaths of the country against nuanced fact and toward the comforting simplicity of tribe.»
https://fivethirtyeight.com/live-blog/2020-election-results-coverage/
Paging Ronald Brownstein.
All of us who benefit from the current status quo have a moral obligation to change the status quo and make it fair to those of who do NOT benefit from it. Demographic change is not going to do it; we have to work. Calls for social justice go back to at least the ancient prophets. And, no, that does not mean unfairly advantaging Black folks; it means deconstructing the unfair systems set up in the past which continue to operate by inertia.
«Take away the noise of your songs;
I won’t listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.»— Amos 5:24
«AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUXNOV. 4, 7:03 AM
Another thing I’m mulling as I’m still digesting the results from last night: Democrats really can’t count on the country’s increasingly diverse electorate to automatically benefit them politically, particularly among Latino voters. Of course, we’ll do more digging into the demographic breakdowns of the race once we actually know who has won! Trump’s performance with Latinos wasn’t shocking. As Nathaniel and I wrote recently, Latinos’ ideology isn’t uniform and many voters whose families have been in the country for longer or have higher levels of education or income (or both) tend to be more conservative. This was not a group that was obviously turned off by Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric leading into the campaign — and there were plenty of signs that his message was resonating among Cuban Americans in Florida in particular. I expect this is a theme we’ll be exploring further in the aftermath of the election, whenever that is!
GEOFFREY SKELLEYNOV. 4, 7:08 AM
Amelia, you couldn’t be more right to ponder this. This could present a counterargument to the “emerging Democratic majority” thesis, which argued that the direction of the country’s demographic growth would disproportionately help Democrats. One of the more fascinating examples of this is Starr County, Texas, along the U.S.-Mexico border, where 96 percent of the population is of Hispanic or Latino origin. In 2016, Clinton won Starr by about 60 points. But Biden only carried it by 5 points, a massive shift.»
Well, THIS is ugly. (Update: ok, this wasn’t a prediction, just an assessment of how things stand right now.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/11/03/election-ballot-delays-usps/
“Disregards court order.” I wonder how much more of this we’ll see in years to come.
Bug-eyed “wow”, like so many other times:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1323297129830469638.html
In which we learn about the frequency of combine fires and insurance fraud.
«A careful reader might wonder “Wait, does this mean the local press & the farmers rolling out to help know this is a scam?”
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I would say a fair number are credulous enough to fall for it. And a fair number would also smell exactly what this guy’s cooking.»
In the voice of Samuel L. Jackson: Vote, dammit, vote!
Ben Rosen (@ben_rosen) Tweeted: FOUNDING FATHER: we must always have an electoral college and 2 senators per state ME: ok but what if 40 million people live in california FOUNDING FATHER (spits out tea prepared by a slave): there’s HOW many people in WHAT https://twitter.com/ben_rosen/status/1054178990733193216?s=20
Here, Read This 