What’s possible when Democrats finally stop wimping out

I wrote yesterday about the Supreme Court gutting the part of the Voting Rights Act that banned racial gerrymandering. Many Republican legislatures announced they were ready to rework district maps that would eliminate perhaps a dozen black Democrats from Congress. Emily Singer of Daily Kos wrote that the Democratic governors of New York and Illinois that they would work to eliminate more Republican seats. The redistricting race will continue. Back in 2010, when Republicans began to put serious, computerized effort into gerrymandering Democrats were more concerned about maintaining fairness. This time they’re willing to fight in the manner of Republicans.

Ultimately, this is a race to the bottom. But if Democrats don’t follow Republicans to the gates of Hell, then it gives Republicans carte blanche to draw their way to a permanent majority—something Republicans are already crowing about doing.

Illinois had been preparing a statewide Voting Rights Amendment. That effort is is being scrapped because it would have prevented this type of redistricting. In a second post Singer discussed the possibilities of Democratic gerrymandering efforts. She included a tweet by Stephen Wolf that showed by 2028 Democrats could flip 19 seats in 9 states (based on a Republican winning the seat in 2024, recognizing some may flip to Democrat this year). In addition to those mention this redistricting could be done in New Jersey, Maryland, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington. In contrast Republicans might be able to squeeze out another 12 seats in eight Southern states. Of course, the Democratic response can only be done in states where there is a Democratic governor and Democrats control both chambers of the legislature. So vote for Democrats this fall. And we hope that in 2028 with Democrats in control of both chambers of Congress and with a Democrat as president they will pass a nationwide gerrymandering ban to stop this race. I’m hopeful, but they had a chance in 2022 and didn’t take it. Lisa Needham of Kos writes a weekly column on what the courts are doing. Alas, many of the stories are about how they support the nasty guy. This column is from last week. In what should have been an obvious decision Judge Kyle Duncan of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals said that Texas can require schools to display the King James version of the Ten Commandments because it “looks nothing like historical religious establishment.”

Per Duncan, the separation of church and state is only implicated if the state tells churches how they could worship or punishes someone for rejecting the Ten Commandments or takes your tax dollars to support clergy. It also “does not co-op churches to perform civic functions.” Come on, man. This is impossibly, deliberately slippery. No, the law didn’t say “we hereby outsource evangelical churches to perform the civic function of education,” but it did say, essentially, “the civic function of education now must include a specific religious text with the specific religious language used by specific, conservative, evangelical churches.”

Red states keep passing laws that they know lower courts will block. This is an example. They keep doing it so they can get the cases before the “theocrats” on the Supreme Court so they can explain our understanding of the separation of church and state has been wrong these past 250 years and our founders really did want to mandate the display of the Ten Commandments. There is news about the Senate race in Maine. Susan Collins has been one of their senators and is known for her “concern” about what her fellow Republicans were doing, yet would vote with them anyway. It’s a seat that seems within Democrat’s grasp. Thom Hartmann of the Kos community and an independent pundit described the Democrats campaigning for the seat. There is Governor Janet Mills, 78, who has done a fine job, is appreciated by the citizens, and is the darling of the party insiders who want the “safest, most ‘electable’” candidate to beat Collins. The other candidate is Graham Platner, oyster farmer, whom Hartmann describes this way:

Maine’s Democrats saw a guy who’d actually served three tours in Iraq, who runs a small business on the working waterfront, who talks the way they talk, and who isn’t afraid to say out loud that the people robbing them are the billionaire class and the Republican shills they own.

Platner has been across the state, speaking wherever a group will listen and raising lots of money. Yes, there have been problems, such as a tattoo of a Nazi emblem that has since been removed. Platner has become so popular and raised so much money that yesterday Mills suspended her campaign, even though the primary is still a couple months away. That leaves Platner as the presumptive challenger to Collins. Hartmann says Mills’ withdrawal is sending a message to the rest of the party and they had better listen. That message is adjacent to the reason I touched on yesterday.

People are sick and tired of mealy-mouthed corporate Democrats who run on focus-grouped slogans and govern like they’re scared of their own shadow. They want fighters.

Note the “corporate” label. That refers to Democrats who don’t want to upset the billionaire money spigot. As Mills withdrew the Congressional Progressive Caucus rolled out its New Affordability Agenda, a ten point plan. Here’s a bit of it: + Make drugs cheaper (and they provide detail on how). + Make utilities cheaper. + Make gas cheaper by taxing extra profits. + Make childcare cheaper, max of 7% of income. + Make housing cheaper. + Make groceries cheaper + Abolish Super PACs so billionaires can’t buy politicians so easily.

New polling from Data for Progress found that every single one of those proposals is supported by close to 60% of Republican voters. Among Democrats it pushes into the 80% range. That’s not a “leftist” agenda. That’s a genuine populist agenda that works for the actual American electorate.

Hartmann says Democrats began to go astray with Bill Clinton’s “triangulation” that included “End welfare as we know it” and sucking up to banks, Big Pharma, Big Insurance, Big Defense, and defending Netanyahu no matter the count of war crimes. Hartmann then reminded us what the Republicans have been doing with the power voters keep giving them. Here are the nine points Hartmann listed: + Cut taxes to billionaires (the national debt just crossed 100% of GDP). + Rigged elections. + Cheered wars. + Allowed the nasty guy’s grift. + Kept the minimum wage at $7.25. + Taken money from the fossil fuel industry in spite of global warming. + Taken money from the gun industry. + Hijacked Christianity, pushing a twisted version. + ICE. Sounding mealy-mouthed against that isn’t going to please voters. So if that New Affordability Agenda is popular with 80% of Democrats it is good politics.

Maine just showed the rest of the country what’s possible when Democrats finally stop wimping out and trying to appease Republicans. Voters want candidates like Graham Platner who’ll take names and kick ass.

Ruben Bolling of Kos, in his Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon poses an interesting idea. The nasty guy has been saying he needs a new ballroom as part of the White House for security. The shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner confirmed the need (at least in his head). So a great way to keep children safe at school is to turn each school building into a ballroom. Though there is the problem of getting shrimp cocktail sauce on the math worksheet. Back in October I wondered if my blog had become famous because in September there were 163,988 views, beating by three times the previous record. Since then the peak in views was last month, at 67,191. April finished at 177,760 views, most of that in the second half of the month, setting a new record. Back then I had just cleared a million views (since 2010). New the all time tally is 1.47 million views. A bit more than a quarter of those views came from Brazil and the US. However, what caught my attention was this: Blogger tells me the top 19 countries that view this blog. It then groups all other countries under “Other.” And this group is close to a third of all views. Since Blogger orders countries by number of views those grouped under “Other” will have no more than the bottom country in the list. That means there are at least another 20 countries that have viewed this blog in the last month and the number is likely far higher than that. So compared to the record set last September this record appears to come from a much broader base.