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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Structural accountability failure

Structural accountability failure

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Politico sketched out how the House Republicans could narrowly hang onto their majority;

But here’s the surprising thing. As dire as the situation seems for Republicans, the elements of a skin-of-their-teeth escape are coming into focus….

if the party can keep the generic ballot deficit under about 9 percentage points and the president’s approval ratings can remain in the mid-40s, the GOP is in the range of where it needs to be to have a fighting chance of holding its House majority.

That translate to the Repbulican party can hold onto power being historically unpopular instead of abysmally unpopular and the President just being very unpopular instead of ungodly unpopular.

Any democratic theory of accountability that relies on public opinion as a constraint and a dampener on bad ideas fails miserably if this is the empirical case in November.  Our political OODA loop would be completely corrupted.

Open thread

Reader Interactions

142Comments

  1. 1.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Politico remains a cesspool of Rethuglican scum and villainy.

    Wipe them out. All of them.

  4. 4.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?

    Then they will have to be removed by force. It’s as simple as that. Either we’re a true representative democracy that’s responsive to the People or we’re not. I refuse to be ruled by these illegimate traitors.

  7. 7.

    PPCLI

    If ever the Democrats regain control of Congress and Senate, the first thing they must do, and I mean the absolute first thing after everyone is sworn in, is to increase by a couple of hundred the number of seats in Congress. The 435 limit that has been there since 1929 is one of the biggest ways that rural states get disproportionate clout and rural voters get disproportionate voice. The Senate and Electoral College are worse, but changing them means amending the Constitution.

  10. 10.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?

    @NotMax:

    The sentence that had been here has been deleted at the commenter’s request.

    The GOP is my mortal enemy. Their policies make my life harder than it has to be. I despise them and wish to see them destroyed as I consider them an existential threat to the United States, either working with or being manipulated by hostile authoritarian foreign powers.

  16. 16.

    Humdog

    @NotMax: Nothing the Dems do is sustainable unless we reverse the advantage Rs have. If Rs can hold the House with a 9% disadvantage in polls, there is no guarantee that Dems can regain or keep it. Of course, we have to have the presidency first, but I think new numbers in the House has to be foundational for whatever priorities we attain to be long lasting accomplishments.

  18. 18.

    Mary G

    I must admit I check the averages on RCP every day and was getting a bit worried, but all the latest developments have Twitler’s approval rating going back down and the Democratic advantage on the generic ballot going back up.

    Also, too, I am too lazy to google and link, but both Ronald Brownstein and Ed Killgore have posts up talking about Generation Z, the Parkland School kids cohort, are diverse and liberal and hate Republicans, so it gives me hope for the future.

    If we can survive this administration, that is.

  19. 19.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?

    @Major Major Major Major:
    He’s been dead for more than 10 years. The point is moot. It’s not like his death would have made much of a difference.

    Perhaps I shouldn’t have said it.

  21. 21.

    efgoldman

    @NotMax:

    There are more immediate pressing needs

    Anyway, even if we assume honest apportionment (highly unlikely), if CA and NY get more congresscritters, so do TX and the traitor states

  22. 22.

    Spanky

    Release the Deep State!

    Officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter.

    More at WaPo linky.

  23. 23.

    BC in Illinois

    @? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?:

    A real shame Hinckley wasn’t successful.

    @JaneSays:

    Dude, you’re literally wishing murder on people. Not cool.

    I agree with JaneSays and more. The comment is contemptible. The whole idea of our nation is that we do not turn to “Second Amendment solutions” to influence our government. That’s what the First Amendment — speech, press, assembly, petition, conscience — is all about. The other route is the end of our (already imperfect) union.

  24. 24.

    Fair Economist

    The phrasing of the Politico article makes it clear where their sympathies lie. The Republicans “escape losing their majority”, as opposed to “maintain power in the face of a record loss”. Politico views the will of the American populace as a danger to be avoided.

  25. 25.

    NotMax

    On the same topic, some valuable tidbits about reapportionment inside this article about proposals to finagle the census:

    Rural Deep South at most risk of being overlooked in 2020 Census

    If citizen-only population counts are used to determine congressional districts, California would lose three seats in 2020, Florida and Texas would lose two apiece and Arizona would lose another, according to new population projections by demographer Dudley Poston of Texas A&M University and Amanda Baumle, a sociologist at the University of Houston.

    The eight seats would instead go, one each, to Alabama, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, Poston and Baumle estimate.

  26. 26.

    Fair Economist

    @PPCLI:

    The 435 limit that has been there since 1929 is one of the biggest ways that rural states get disproportionate clout and rural voters get disproportionate voice.

    Where does this incorrect belief come from? The 435 limit creates rounding errors for smaller states which can, and do, go either way, with a relatively small net in any apportionment.

    Our country’s problem is a *Senate* that’s inherently gerrymandered for rural influence, and a House that’s been gerrymandered by state legislatures.

  27. 27.

    kindness

    It’s Politico. Don’t worry. No, we won’t win every district. But we will win more of them than they do. Get out the vote.

  28. 28.

    Roger Moore

    @PPCLI:
    Note also that increasing the size of the House will also help to dilute the small states’ advantage in the electoral college.

  30. 30.

    eric

    The real issue will be the likely voter model and the dispute as to whether the youngs should be counted. I expect no changes to the model so that the Media can talk about better GOP chances with the likely commensurate depressed turnout. I dont know if they will be wrong this time.

  31. 31.

    Mary G

    Bom, bom, bom, another one bites the dust: Special election result in for New Hampshire

    #BREAKING Dem. candidate in NH special election FLIPS SEAT with a 8% margin.

    Trump won this seat by 13% in 2016. Swing in this district is 21%, slightly more than the 13% average swing in specials since 2016.

    More evidence of a coming Democratic wave.https://t.co/fzc62IKqLE— G. Elliott Morris??‍♂️ (@gelliottmorris) February 28, 2018

  32. 32.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Fair Economist: It is not an incorrect belief. In the 1920s as demographic projections were projecting that the US would tip from a majority of its population living in rural areas to the majority of its population living in urban areas, the majority of members of the House from rural areas wrote and pushed a law ahead of the 1930 census and 1931 reapportionment that capped the number of seats in the House at 435. Prior to that whenever the House was redistricted and reapportioned, the total number of House seats grew because the overall US population grew. What they did was they left the once a decade redistricting in place, but by capping the number of seats in the House, the warped the reapportionment process. No longer would each census lead to a redistricting and reapportionment process that increased the total number of seats in the House. The purpose to capping the number of House seats at 435 votes was that it would continue to privilege, or at the very least protect despite demographic changes, rural interests and rural power in the House. The last time I saw someone run numbers after the 2000 census, they were estimating that if we redistricted and reapportioned the way we did before 1929, then there would be over 750 members of the House of Representatives. And the vast majority, as in over 2/3, would be from urban and suburban areas instead of having 435 members with the majority representing rural and suburban districts.

  36. 36.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?

    @Gravenstone:
    I guess I do. That’s something I need to work on. I tend to get like this when I’m frustrated with seemingly overwhelming odds. Politico is probably full of shit, anyway.

    FYI: I have a special hatred for Reagan as I see the beginning of our current mess starting with him.

  40. 40.

    TenguPhule

    @Adam L Silverman: Hey Adam, what’s your take on China’s movements to lifelong dictatorship and their apparent plan to force a confrontation with us while our country is at its most vulnerable?

  44. 44.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mike J: I had no idea anyone said anything about the NH legislature.

    I actually work under the assumption that New Hampshire is a bad figment of my imagination and if I don’t dwell on it, then it and their stupid first in the country crap will just go away. Same thing for Iowa.//

  46. 46.

    Adam L Silverman

    @TenguPhule:
    1) It is interesting. From what I’ve read some senior folks in the PRC are not happy, we’ll see if it takes and if it takes if it sticks.
    2) They’d be stupid not to.

  47. 47.

    mai naem mobile

    Doesn’t a severely decreased majority force the GOP to work on some less wingnutry legislation?
    The Dems need to have legislation ready to go if they’re ever in the majority again with the presidency. Election laws ,voting rights stuff and gerrymandering stuff. Also protecting the vote. Also fixing Obamacare. Also campaign funding reform. Also judges. I hope CAP is working on this shit.

  49. 49.

    Fair Economist

    @Adam L Silverman:

    And the vast majority, as in over 2/3, would be from urban and suburban areas instead of having 435 members with the majority representing rural and suburban districts.

    Check that sentence again; it’s technically true but irrelevant because you’re comparing different things. The large majority of the population is in urban and suburban districts. So is the majority of representatives. Insofar as they aren’t, the problem is gerrymandering.

    Assuming fair districting, the numbers of rural/suburban/urban seats will be proportional to the rural/suburban/urban population, regardless of the number of seats. Without fair districting, you can get almost anything and, again, total number of seats makes no difference, although the gerrymanders get more obvious with smaller districts.

  51. 51.

    Another Scott

    @? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?:

    Then they will have to be removed by force.

    You quite frequently post things like this. And things like your musing a few threads ago about thinking about buying a gun.

    I think you need to get help if you believe these things.

    Seriously.

    Otherwise, if you’re ‘just’ trolling here, then I will continue to pie you and start urging others to do the same.

    Advocating violence is not acceptable.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  52. 52.

    Fair Economist

    @mai naem mobile:

    Doesn’t a severely decreased majority force the GOP to work on some less wingnutry legislation?

    With a severely decreased majority, the Republicans will pass essentially no legislation. They can’t keep their caucus together and since they’re unwilling to do genuinely bipartisan legislation, they won’t be able to pass anything.

  56. 56.

    TenguPhule

    @Adam L Silverman:

    2) They’d be stupid not to.

    What worries me is that they look like they’re planning to force a confrontation over Taiwan and cement control over the South China Sea at the same time while the Pacific fleet is being distracted by Trump trying to fuck up North Korea.

    It says something that I’m not confident our country would honor our defense treaty obligations at this time.

    And while China’s Navy is still no match for ours, it doesn’t matter if we can’t even deploy our Navy effectively. We’ve been relying on soft power in the pacific for a very long time and its rather terrifying seeing it drain away so quickly.

  58. 58.

    Mike J

    @Adam L Silverman: Every time some sheep fucker from Derry introduces a bill that’s never going anywhere somebody will insist it’s because NH carries this whole representation thing a little too far.

    I didn’t mean to imply that you believed that. I think a larger US congress would be a good idea.

  59. 59.

    BruceFromOhio

    That translate to the Repbulican party can hold onto power being historically unpopular instead of abysmally unpopular and the President just being very unpopular instead of ungodly unpopular.

    How this is even remotely acceptable makes me want to fucking puke my guts out. These two-bit ratfuck soulless criminals deserve being stranded in a political desert until the sun goes out forever.

  65. 65.

    Yarrow

    Beto O’Rourke’s campaign sent out an email today with this update:

    “CNN Senate Key Race alert: Texas is no longer Solid Republican

    Beto O’Rourke is giving Ted Cruz a run for his money in the Texas Senate contest.

    The Democratic underdog from El Paso outraised the first-term Republican senator and former presidential candidate by $1.5 million — $2.3 million to $800,000 — from the beginning of 2018 through mid-February. That impressive fundraising haul comes after O’Rourke also outpaced Cruz in the closing quarter of 2017, $2.4 million to $1.8 million.”

    CNN changing our race’s ranking is major news. All eyes are on Texas. Everyone wants to know if Beto can keep up this pace. You bet he can.

    Even if Beto loses, he’s going to force Cruz and Republicans to spend money in Texas to defend Cruz’s seat. That’s money that won’t go elsewhere. And just the fact they’ll have to spend it will get plenty of attention.

  67. 67.

    Adam L Silverman

    @TenguPhule: Here’s a not so little not so secret little secret: if the PRC decided to invade Taiwan, we do not have the forces stationed in a way to actually stop them. The reality of our defense treaty with Taiwan is that it really obligates us to liberate them if the PRC invades them. This has been the reality since the 1990s.

  68. 68.

    TenguPhule

    @Davebo:

    Luckily Trump is at 39.6% approval right now, not the mid forties. (According to 538)

    Trump hasn’t been in the mid forties since the 80s.

  70. 70.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?

    @Another Scott:
    Trust me, I’m a coward. I wouldn’t do anything. I just wouldn’t be very proud or happy to live here. I’d prefer voting them out over violence any day. I say things like this when I’m afraid and worried, I suppose. Something I need to stop from doing in future.

    As for the gun thing, I’d only do target practice at a range or something. I’d never use a gun on another person unless I absolutely had to (as in my life or theirs), which I hope I’d never have to find out if I had to.

  71. 71.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mike J: Now I’m tracking. I just largely don’t pay attention to the state and local politics in places I don’t live or haven’t lived. I have too much other stuff going on.

  74. 74.

    chris

    @Adam L Silverman: All you need to know about the NH legislature.

    A Republican state representative showed up to a committee meeting on Tuesday, and, while there, accidentally dropped his gun. But fret not, he had a second one strapped in a shoulder holster. In fact, he regularly wears two guns to legislative meetings.

    He’s done it at least twice and he’s not the only one. Armour up.

    ETA: Ye gods! http://www.unionleader.com/state-government/State-reps-gun-falls-to-floor-during-legislative-hearing-01122017
    See last sentence for more on the honorable Tasker.

  77. 77.

    TenguPhule

    @Adam L Silverman: I was under the impression the plan was that Taiwan could hold out for a limited amount of time long enough to scramble at least one carrier group to intercede and make continued landings by China impossible under threat of air strikes.

    In this case, I think China could complete the conquest and nothing would be done beyond meaningless protests at the UN by the moron Trump appointed there.

  81. 81.

    Another Scott

    Hey Adam, any idea why the “On the road” post this morning isn’t available any more? I read it this morning, but this evening it seems to be lost in the dB somewhere.

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  82. 82.

    NotMax

    @Adam L. Silverman.

    Hong Kong would erupt. China knows they have to wait for another generation to die out to temper that from occurring. Taking the long view is something they’re historically quite experienced at.

  86. 86.

    BruceFromOhio

    @Adam L Silverman: That’s an interesting scenario. I’ll posit the atrophy of our forces being deployed in such a manner for that reason is due to the lower risk of its occurrence since that treaty was fashioned. China is pretty plugged into the world economy now, and it would cost them dearly; while they are surely capable of it, it would kind of suck for them if they did it, and there’s little strategic reason to do so. “Yeah, we could crush you like a bug if we wanted to. Let’s ship some steel instead.” Or I could be naively uninformed, and the PRC rolls through tomorrow and all we can do is tweet.

    @NotMax: This.

  91. 91.

    TenguPhule

    @BruceFromOhio:

    China is pretty plugged into the world economy now, and it would cost them dearly

    With what sanctions? China can get away with a lot of shit against smaller nations as it is just because their economy has entwined with so many of the major players.

  92. 92.

    Adam L Silverman

    @TenguPhule: I’ve never seen any of the actual plans – I don’t need to know.

    I have done a couple of table top wargames on this scenario. In everyone the US has to decide to live up to its obligation and liberate Taiwan or cede it to the PRC. Unless/until it actually happens, we won’t know what actually happens.

  95. 95.

    schrodingers_cat

    @efgoldman: I used a know a couple (both doctors) in Maine, originally from India but had lived all over the world, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Mumbai, Canada and finally the United States. They would do all their furniture shopping in NH because no sales tax. Some people will go to great lengths to get a good deal.

  96. 96.

    Roger Moore

    @mai naem mobile:

    Doesn’t a severely decreased majority force the GOP to work on some less wingnutry legislation?

    No. It means they’ll work on legislation that’s just as crazy while being even less likely to pass anything.

  97. 97.

    TenguPhule

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Unless/until it actually happens, we won’t know what actually happens.

    I’m afraid that the box has been flattened by an orange trucker with a fat ass driving a Sherman tank down Pennesilvania Avenue. I don’t think the cat survived.

  101. 101.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: I’m not suggesting they’re going to do anything any time soon. Just that given the increases in the PRC’s military capabilities over the past decade or so, our ability to deter isn’t necessarily based on the ability to interdict an invasion, but our ability to liberate Taiwan.

  102. 102.

    Steeplejack

    @PPCLI:

    I sort of half-assedly ran the numbers on this a few months ago, and the number I came up with was about 550 seats in the House. I got that by taking the population of the smallest state as the base size of a House district—I think it was Wyoming with about 600,000 people—and then dividing the total U.S. population (330 million?) by that. Throw in one for the District of Columbia to get to an odd, stalemate-proof number.

  107. 107.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Betty Cracker: People were using the Dragon of Budapest, and while Seb does have a huge honkin noggin, that comparison is insulting to dragons. I initially went with the Dragonfly of Budapest, but they’re beautiful creatures, so that was also an insulting comparison for the dragonfly. So I looked up animals that started with a B and the only one I found that was appropriate was the Blue Footed Booby. Though this too is probably an insulting comparison to the blue footed boobies.

  108. 108.

    Betty Cracker

    @Adam L Silverman: I have been there. The cows were generally friendlier than the people. Make of that what you will. Though, as Floridians, we have precious little standing to criticize other states, fictional or real…

  109. 109.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Steeplejack: Last time I saw numbers done by an actual American politics specialist, which was back in the early 00s, it was about 750. With almost 500 of those seats coming from metro areas: NY, LA, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, SF, Seattle, Denver, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Raleigh-Durhan, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, etc, etc, etc.

  114. 114.

    efgoldman

    @Adam L Silverman:

    have no direct empirical observational proof of its existence.

    You’ve never driven to Maine? Because having to wait in endless traffic to pay the NH on the way to or from is all the proof you need. Typical NH – pay the bills by charging other people.

  115. 115.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Mike J: The big problem with the NH lege is not so much that there are a lot of them, as that they’re essentially unpaid, so the members are the people from an already small pool who can afford to be legislators as amateurs. Retirees, usually, or people who are sufficiently obsessive to do this as a hobby outside of their real job.

  118. 118.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Fair Economist: I want to apologize. My comment was overly harsh and you did not deserve to be on the receiving end of it.. I’m going to delete it.

    The history on why the 1929 law was passed and what it was intended to do is very well documented and we teach it in American politics during the sections on Congress, redistricting, and reapportionment. As I indicated in comment 110, the last time I saw numbers to model what would happen if the 1929 law had never been passed done by an actual American politics specialist, which was back in the early 00s, it was about 750 seats total. With almost 500 of those seats coming from metro areas: NY, LA, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, SF, Seattle, Denver, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Raleigh-Durhan, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, etc, etc, etc.

    You are quite correct that where the representatives come from is the result of how the districts are drawn and where they’re located.

  121. 121.

    Another Scott

    @Fair Economist:

    Insofar as they aren’t, the problem is gerrymandering.

    Ding, Ding, Ding.

    And the 2018 and 2020 elections are going to have a huge impact on the extent and horribleness of gerrymandering, which will have a huge effect on politics in the next decade.

    We can’t let up in doing everything we can to win in the upcoming elections.

    252 days to go…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  122. 122.

    BruceFromOhio

    @TenguPhule: Consider the scenario. PRC forces show up on the streets. They’re not going to blow shit up unless it’s shooting at them. (If the objective was to turn the place into a parking lot, they could do that now. Or next week. Or a month from now. Or ten years ago. That’s a different scenario)
    So PRC is rolling through the streets, and I’ll presume the objective is not to glass the place. It’s an island, it has ports and infrastructure and people. The classic people-process-technology pyramid. PRC clears the adversaries, takes over everything, and works to preserve the presumed value of the place.

    Simultaneously, it gets tweeted, instagrammed, snapchatted, emailed, video’d, facebooked, hell, MySpace lights the hell up. Sure you can cut comms all around, unless PRC EMP’s the joint (wiping out some of their own shit and other shit they need in the process) information will get out about what’s happening. It no longer takes a cable dispatch to hit the front page: it will be on BBC and Reuters World News in full rotation the moment word gets out. What happens in this computer-controlled 24-hr 7-day world economy? A whole shitload of Chinese wealth and value gets dumped. Not all of it, that’s impossible. Smart investors will get out first, or wait for the dust to settle to scavenge among the bones. How much? Who knows. But it will hit China in a way to which it is vulnerable and unaccustomed. Maybe they say fuck it, we want it, it’s ours anyway, we’ll take the loss. That day yet may come. My money is on it not being tomorrow, or next week. Or ten years from now.

    I’ll go OT and say, Taiwan is not the worry. Those islands they built in the South China Sea? That’s what worries me. If the US and and China face off, it won’t be the Korean Peninsula or Taiwan. It’s going to be out there, on the water. And we fucking suck there, too.

  123. 123.

    Steeplejack

    @Fair Economist:

    Just did some quick checking. Each House member from California is representing about 735,000 people (on average). New York, 730,000 people. Wyoming’s lone congressperson is representing about 590,000 people. That’s a good-sized difference.

    ETA: Just checked Texas. Population 27.86 million, 36 reps = about 774,000 people per district.

    North Dakota does have one rep for 758,000 people. The other one-rep states (besides Wyoming) are Alaska, Delaware, Montana, South Dakota and Vermont. The most populous of those would be the one with the “rounding error” going the other way. Can’t check which one that is right now because I have to go watch my stories. Will check back in a bit.

  125. 125.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    @TenguPhule:

    We’ve been relying on soft power in the pacific for a very long time

    The Chinese have been buying up Australian politicians every time one comes onto the market. You need to soft-power better.

  127. 127.

    Kay

    We’re seeing quite a few first time candidates here. I don’t want people to get too excited because they are first time candidates and they’re not going to be immediately competitive but I think it is indicative of a lot of energy on the D side.

    Tonight’s meeting was interesting. Middle aged woman, running for the lower chamber in the statehouse, leads with that she supports the 2nd amendment. Immediately alienates two of our most active members, both female, both feel strongly about gun regs. The thing about first time candidates and people who may have voted for Democrats but weren’t too involved is they don’t really understand how this works, that it’s sort of a cobbled together coalition and you have to focus on areas of agreement- which could be good or bad, I suppose :)

  128. 128.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Another Scott: I’ve been wondering what we do if the administration just bails on the 2020 census, or sabotages it in some egregious way. Say all the blue states suddenly lose 20 or 30 million people, and they say “well, we refused to count illegal immigrants this time” or some crap like that. Is there any possible recourse at all or do we just lose elections forever?

  129. 129.

    Another Scott

    @Steeplejack: Not the answer you’re looking for, but here’s a paper that discusses various numbers (from 2009):

    […]

    But if the U.S. House were to add seats, how many should it have? Arend Lijphart, an emeritus professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, and a comparative scholar of democratic institutions, has argued for 650 seats.

    That figure is based on the so-called “cube root law” of Rein Taagepera, who figured out that taking the cube root of a nation’s population provided a remarkably good predictor of the size of that nation’s lower house. By that logic, the U.S. was an outlier on the low side, with a House of 435 instead of the 669 that would now be expected given the U.S. population of 300 million. (Lijphart made his 650-seat recommendation in 1998, when the U.S. population was at 275 million.)

    “When one looks at democracies around the world,” Lijphart said, “there is a tendency for larger countries to have larger legislatures and smaller countries to have smaller legislatures. But we have a lower house with 435 members, which is less than both the British House of Commons and the German Bundestag, and Germany has 80 million people and Britain has 60 million people.” (The Bundestag has 613 members; the House of Commons has 646 members and is slated to grow to 650 by the next election.)

    […]

    For 330M we would be at 691 Representatives following that rule.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  130. 130.

    Another Scott

    @Matt McIrvin: In looking around for some other stuff, I found this, about the Apportionment Act of 1911:

    Subsequent apportionment

    For the first and only time, Congress failed to pass an apportionment act after the 1920 census. This left the allocations of the Act of 1911 in place until the 1930 census. The Reapportionment Act of 1929 established a method for reallocating seats among the states, given population shifts and the maximum of 435 representatives.[14] The Apportionment Act of 1941 made the apportionment process self-executing after each decennial census.[15] This lifted Congress’s responsibility to pass an apportionment act for each census, and ensured that the events surrounding the 1920 census would not happen again. The number of U.S. Representatives increased temporarily to 437 when Alaska and Hawaii were admitted as states during the 86th Congress (seating one member from each of those states without changing the apportionment of the other seats). After the 1960 census and the 1962 election, that number went back to 435.[16][17]

    So things can go on autopilot, or at least could in the past. And I vaguely recall lawsuits about the way the Census was conducted in the past.

    Yes, they will make noises about twisting the process to try to benefit themselves. They always do. (Remember some of W’s minions making noises about the possibility of postponing the 2004 election.)

    We need to work for the future we want rather than waiting for it to happen. Flipping the House and Senate and state legislatures and governors will make the question moot for 2020. Let’s make it happen.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  131. 131.

    Libraryguy

    Politico says “if the party can keep the generic ballot deficit under about 9 percentage points and the president’s approval ratings can remain in the mid-40s” – but neither of these is true right now, or would have been even if this analysis was a month old. Trump is at 37% approval right now, how do you remain in the mid-40s when you’re nowhere near that?

  132. 132.

    glory b

    @Mary G: I heard on the local news today that Conor Lamb (D) is now neck and neck with Rick Saccone in the special election to replace Tim Murphy (the pro life congressman who tried to convince his mistress to get an abortion during a pregnancy scare).

    This is an R+11 district. Repubs are quietly admitting that he’s a stronger candidate than they thought and that tying him to Pelosi hasn’t had the effect they thought it would.

  133. 133.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Libraryguy: 37% is the Gallup (actually I think the most recent blipped up to 39%). Some other polls have him considerably higher, which brings aggregates up–most of them include Rasmussen, which is really suspiciously high right now, and currently has him at 49% approval. Huffington Post’s aggregate had him at 44% until the last couple of days.

    By my eyeballs, his rating in many polls seems to have taken a dive over the past week or so, but that was not obvious until very recently.

  134. 134.

    PIGL

    @BC in Illinois: but what if your Union can not rescue itself from the clutches of a clique of dangerous thugs who actively pursue evil ends, and have subverted your institutions to the extent that they can hold on to power in the teeth of a substantial opposing majority? Does this get to go on forever? Because it can. Once things reach a certain point, it will impossible to remove them from power by the legal instruments, because they will have become meaningless.

  135. 135.

    PIGL

    @Another Scott: The US as a nation uses violence in pursuit of political objectives ALL THE TIME. The moves the GOP has made to cement their illegitimate grasp on power are violence in an abstract sense. Their policies are violence, destruction and death in a very concrete sense. I think we need to be a little more fucking realistic about the forces arrayed against us, and a little less naive and sentimental about the awesome power of our sacred institutions to overcome these powerful enemies. Those institutions were subverted decades ago.

  136. 136.

    Matt McIrvin

    My other favorite nightmare scenario is the rotten-borough-spam one. A Republican Congress gets together with some compliant, sparsely populated, heavily Republican state (Wyoming would be ideal), and divides an empty portion of it into a grid of 200 new states, each of them with a handful of carefully chosen inhabitants. They all get admitted to the Union at once.

    You’d need at least three people in each one, because you need two Senators and a Representative. They could also be the Electoral College members. And I guess they have to have a republican form of government, so one can also be the Governor and the other two can be a unicameral lege.

    They’d only have to exist for a short time, since once the states of Wyoming-1 through Wyoming-200 came into being they could just pass arbitrary constitutional amendments and make any desired outcome happen.

    I think making it happen would depend on eliminating the filibuster, though, or getting a Senate supermajority to begin with.

  137. 137.

    J R in WV

    @Betty Cracker:

    The last time we were in New Hampster, we flew to Manchester in route to Maine. Driving over the White Mtns, we stopped at the entrance to the National Forest for lunch, and I had fried clams, an old favorite. Wife had fried fish, and the rest of the meal was identical.

    I got food poisoning from a bad clam. Was ill for about 18 hours, spewing from both ends at a camp. Was (barely) able to go on the trip the next first day, but wasn’t active at all.

    The rest of the trip was productive and fun. We visited active and abandoned mines that produced things like tourmaline, beryl, topaz, apatite, and other semi-precious stones. Poland Mining Camp. Met wonderful friendly people, after out reserved time at the Mining Camp was up (we could not extend our stay, as the next day a group from the Smithsonian were coming in for research and teaching.

    So we went up the seacoast all the way to Campobello, the summer camp of the Franklin Roosevelt family in the long ago, when FDR was a child. The tour of the “camp” was interesting, there were many very small bedrooms with two beds for the servants. No A/C, which was why their summer camp was all the way to Canada.

    Then we went back down the coast all the way to Freeport, to visit LL Beans main store, which was enjoyable.

    But the thing that sticks in my memory was running over behind the cabin we were to stay in at Poland Mining Camp to barf the fist moment we were there, from a bad clam. And now I can’t face eating them, once a favorite food, now disgusting. A shame, New Hampster, a real shame!

  138. 138.

    Another Scott

    @PIGL: You’re being naive if you think that violence is the way to get a more progressive government and society.

    King, in 1957:

    […]

    So our most urgent request to the president of the United States and every member of Congress is to give us the right to vote. Give us the ballot and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights. Give us the ballot and we will no longer plead to the federal government for passage of an anti-lynching law; we will by the power of our vote write the law on the statute books of the southern states and bring an end to the dastardly acts of the hooded perpetrators of violence. Give us the ballot and we will transform the salient misdeeds of blood-thirsty mobs into calculated good deeds of orderly citizens. Give us the ballot and we will fill our legislative halls with men of good will, and send to the sacred halls of Congressmen who will not sign a Southern Manifesto, because of their devotion to the manifesto of justice. Give us the ballot and we will place judges on the benches of the South who will “do justly and love mercy,” and we will place at the head of the southern states governors who have felt not only the tang of the human, but the glow of the divine. Give us the ballot and we will quietly and nonviolently, without rancor or bitterness, implement the Supreme Court’s decision of May 17, 1954.

    I’m not ready to give up on the ballot. The ballot works.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  139. 139.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @PIGL: Call us when it is demonstrably at that point. Until then, I’d prefer our side not to indulge in eliminationist rhetoric. YMMV.

  140. 140.

    JAFD

    @Matt McIrvin: Not really a remedy for the crisis you foresee, but in the fall of ’08, saw notice in Post Office for ‘preliminary Census workers’. So sent in form, took quiz, went for week’s training, and spent much of spring and early summer of ’09 wandering the streets of the suburbs of hometown, checking for new buildings, buildings torn down or converted to nonresidential, how many ‘housing units’ in each – # of doorbells, mailboxes, elect meters, whether structure in back was storage shed or residence (‘over in Slobbovia you’d be proud to live in it’), garage upstair conversions….

    Heaven only knows if they’ll be doing similar stuf in near future, but if you want to walk around and see your neighborhoods and make some cash, look into it.

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