Caucuses were briefed. Polls are being shared. And the push to swing California bluer is taking shape.
California’s Texas-thwarting gerrymander has swiftly transformed from fantasy to reality.
Democrats in the House and the state Legislature are coalescing around a plan to draw a half-dozen Republican incumbents into oblivion — and persuade California voters to approve the new congressional maps before next year’s midterms. Party leaders are closely tracking the dual-track developments in which lawmakers in Texas and California are moving, in partisan parallel, to shore up their respective party’s House majorities. California Republicans are casting about for a way to avoid extinction.
It all points to a high-stakes, big-dollar brawl thrusting California to the center of the political universe.
Then what the fuck do you suggest?
Let the midterms go how they will. This is all premised on the idea that texas’ map change will secure the house in 2026, when all the signs point to a democratic blowout in 2026.
You are asking everyone to trust in the system and behave as if everything is normal when the system is on fire and about to collapse.
That’s the line democrats always give whenever they want to force through an unpopular item. They said that would happen if trump got elected the first time, and when he got re elected but here we are saying that the second half of his second term is when hes actually going to destroy democracy. Don’t get me wrong it’s a shit situation, especially for the poor and minorities, but the system has not collapsed. This is because established powerful corporate interests don’t want the country to collapse, and they’re the ones who call the shots. It’s why trump chickened out on the tarriffs, they won’t let him run the country off a cliff.
Even if trump is an existential threat to democracy, 5 extra seats from California isn’t going to stop him. We’d need a supermajority in the senate to impeach him, and that’s not happening. If he is going to try to subvert the election then this sort of move only helps his case as it discredits California and allows him to call all the representatives from there invalid. In what case are these 5 reps going to save democracy?
There is more than one branch of government.
Tit-for-tat is actually a good game theory strategy which encourages cooperation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat
That game theory assumes only two agents though, the republicans and the democrats, when there is a third agent that is losing if this escalates, the democratic will of the people. If Texas gerrymanders to win 5 seats and California gerrymanders to win 5 seats then it’s not just a wash as the people of California have lost there right to determine there districts democratically.
If anything both sides have a perverse incentive to gerrymander to further entrench there power in the areas they already have and make it harder for challengers, again at the cost of the people’s democratic will. Tit for tat assumes there’s some cost to the agents to incentivize stopping, but the democratic party of California may not necessarily care about Republicans getting elected in Texas, especially if there gonna get a majority in the house anyway, which all signs point to that outcome. They do care about getting democrats elected, and this tit for tat will help them with that, so they have an incentive to escalate.