A Republican Challenge
Note: this is the 350th Post on Trump World. I was going to write maybe once a week when I started in February of 2017, but like any other good exercise, writing and thinking becomes an addiction. And the subject, our politics and history, is compelling and constantly changing. This is the first time I’ve actually asked for a response — though there have been plenty responses before. Enjoy!!
So this is a challenge. I am looking at our politics, and what I am seeing is a dramatic attack on our American ideal of democracy. These attacks are not the ones made by the Trump Administration: anyone who has read “Trump World” knows I’ve already written volumes about that. These are more subtle, done state by state by the Republican Party.
I have made it clear from the beginning that I am NOT an impartial observer. I have constantly shared my opinions about our political world. But I try to keep a balance, and am struggling in this particular essay, because I am unable to think of the counter-argument, a tit-for-tat that the Democratic Party has done.
It started in 2008, with Karl Rove’s (former Bush campaign manager and later nicknamed “Bush’s Brain) Redmap plan. The Redmap plan was a Republican effort to take over the state governorships, statehouses, and other state elective offices that controlled the re-districting systems in each state by the 2010 election cycle. By getting control of the levers of power, or more appropriately, the pencils that drew the maps after the 2010 Census, the Republicans were able to gerrymander Districts to their elective benefit.
Gerrymandering is nothing new, it was named for Governor Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts back in 1812. Politicians have always known the basics: concentrate the opposition into a few districts, or dilute them among many districts, so that your party wins the majority in most Districts. But the Redmap plan took gerrymandering into the age of computers, using targeting data down to the block and house, in order to maximize the power of the Republicans over the Democrats.
An outstanding example of the power of Redmap is in the Wisconsin state legislature. In the 2018 November election, Democrats won 55% of the votes for the State Assembly, while Republicans cast 44%. However Republicans won 63 seats to Democrats 35 (64% to 36%.) As anti-democratic (the ideal, and in Wisconsin at least, the Party) as it seems, Gerrymandering works.
In addition to Redmap, the Republican Party has made a national effort to keep the voting population Republican by making it more difficult for minorities and the poor to vote. This has been done through a variety of ways, including: stricter voter identification requirements, reducing voting opportunities, complicated voter registration procedures, scrubbing the voting rolls, and voter intimidation at the polls.
While voter suppression has been done in many states, it is best exampled by the Georgia Governor’s race in 2018. The Republican candidate, Brian Kemp, was the serving Secretary of State in control of the state’s election apparatus. His work to suppress the Democratic vote was obvious, and successful enough to get him to the Governorship. Other states, from Kansas to Michigan to Ohio have legally suppressed the vote at some level, though the Georgia election was the most drastic.
A third emerging Republican action is the “sore loser” plan. This is occurring right now in Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina. Many of the statewide elective offices in those states have turned over from Republican to Democratic, and in response, the “lame duck” Republican legislatures and Governors are working to reduce the powers of the incoming Democrats.
In Wisconsin, the Republican controlled legislature and Governor Scott Walker are working to reduce the power of both the Governor and the Attorney General. They are attempting to remove the power of the Attorney General to determine what lawsuits the state will support or not (specifically, the previous Republican Attorney General joined the Federal lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act, a key issue in the Attorney General’s race that the Democratic winner pledged to change.) The Republican legislature will demand that the state continue to support the lawsuit, wresting control of this power from the Attorney General and ignoring the expressed will of the voters.
This only works in states where both houses of the state legislature and the governor are in Republican control, and Democrats will take over the executive offices while Republicans maintain control of the legislature, so they can protect the restrictive laws they created.
Redmap gerrymandering, voter suppression, the “sore loser” plan: none of these actions are illegal. But all of these seem to fly in the face of American traditions of “fair play” in politics; our tradition of encouraging voter participation and respecting the voters’ decisions. Republicans would say they are only playing “hardball” and “for keeps” (please note: I have NOT included the North Carolina absentee ballot scandal – I think Republicans there are just as appalled as Democrats.) But it seems to me that they are playing a more dangerous game – one that attacks the basics of democracy.
But maybe my “blue tinted” glasses are so dark, that I can’t see the other side. So the challenge I make is this: what has the Democratic Party done that rises to the same level in the past decade? Besides voter registration drives, ones that I would argue increases democracy by increasing voter participation, I’m not coming up with any. Please educate me (and us all): comment to make your views known.
The answer to your riddle was spoken by Will Rogers. When asked for his party affiliation, he replied, “I am not a member of any organized political party. You see, I am a Democrat”.
Here’s a simple, truthful answer Dahlman. The Democratic Party is not spotless but has done nothing that approaches the Republican encroachments onto democracy. There’s a calculated reason why republicans tend to win when voter turnout is low.