you live in new york. be the change you want to see in the world. https://t.co/UFzS8Zyfeg
— Jort-Michel Connard 🐘 (@torriangray) August 18, 2022
I grew up in a very parochial Bronx neighborhood, an urban village which just happened to be located in one of the world’s greatest cities. And I could not wait to get out of there, because living in a community where everybody knows (or thinks they know) everything about your past, exactly what you’re doing in the present, and their mutual forecast of your future was *not* to my taste. I have never gone back, and I’ve never regretted leaving.
So I can only empathize with people who chose to leave their own small towns, most of them not even within a subway token’s reach of great museums, endless cultural diversity, and Central Park…
“instantly” holding up the weight of 1,000 earths here https://t.co/39KIynrLhp
— GONELIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) August 17, 2022
Truly easier than eliminating the Electoral College or abolishing the Senate https://t.co/i5hxeEWxy3
— Mike Sacks (@MikeSacksEsq) August 17, 2022
2. despite what people who don't actually work for a living believe, not all jobs are transferrable to all locations. some are, some are not, and it's all highly contingent on what you do, what industry you're in, and what your employer thinks.
— GONELIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) August 17, 2022
3. this is a problem, because if you’re planning to go become the new progressive vanguard in jackson, wyoming, you’re unlikely to find a lot of jobs that will be roughly comparable to what you’re doing today if you’re coming from, say, new york.
4. lots of new yorkers and californians came from red states for their own good reasons, and any time this stupid discourse comes up, the cis white guy proposing it pretends not to have ever heard anything about what life in small-town america is like.
5. small-town america is, for many people, even if they’re cis, straight, white people, often not very fun! some people get into it, particularly if they’ve got kids, but it’s a really slow and often lonely life.
6. everyone who makes this argument is vastly underestimating the cost and the logistics, but they’re also vastly underestimating what the effects on these small-towns will be, and how exactly that might play out for these new residents.
if you think NIMBYs in san francisco are bad about wanting to keep people out of where they live, wait until you see what happens when you decide to move to red country and try to do literally anything to improve the place.
— GONELIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) August 17, 2022
Yup. Example: Nashville is rapidly growing w/ lots transplants from bluer parts of the US.
So the TN state legislature took the opportunity of this redistricting cycle to carve up the one D-leaning congressional district in Middle TN, based on Nashville, into 3 red districts.
— Patrick Allen Foster 🇺🇦↙️↙️↙️ (@Pub_Editor) August 17, 2022
Moving to Wyoming and dealing with a town 75% full of white supremacists and 20% who tacitly acknowledge and accept them isn't remotely appealing.
— jdtechie (@jdtechie) August 17, 2022
'millions of democrats should move to places with no public infrastructure en masse and without coercion forcing them to do so' is a fun joke and a terrible plan
— Catboy Ernst Kantorowicz (@OldDreyfusard) August 17, 2022
a lot of red states actually really suck to live in, like existentially so. in order for this to make any kind of difference and not just immiserate the few thousand schmucks who see people post it and decide to do it, this has to be done at a large scale or not at all
— Catboy Ernst Kantorowicz (@OldDreyfusard) August 17, 2022
New land grant universities and federal campuses, IMO, are indeed the best current hope of ‘relocating’ (or creating) more Democratic voters in deep-red states. But barring an FDR-level lock on all three branches of government, the chances of doing so are approximately equal to my chances of winning the Powerball drawing… and I haven’t bought a Powerball ticket.
New land grant universities and moving federal campuses away from DC is the best theoretically plausible plan I’ve seen for making this happen
— An Interested Party (@_nntrstdpty_) August 17, 2022
Math Guy
First!!
different-church-lady
OK, just hear me out for a minute…. New York City is like HUGE, really big! What if we took about half of it and just built a scale model New York in, say, Casper, and just had everything NYC has, I mean, just kinda clone it, so nobody feels like they’ve moved at all and nobody in the real NYC will notice anything’s missing because it’s already so big and… hey, where are you going?
Chetan Murthy
I have a young female friend who’s thinking about college. She has Case Western Reserve and Rice on her list of prospects. Needless to say, I and a few others are …. troubled and worried by this. For the obvious (Dobbs) reason.
Math Guy
Okay, now that I got that out of my system, let me address the idea of moving to Wyoming. I lived in Laramie for three years as a graduate student. I loved the town and I would guess that many BJ followers would too. But Laramie is a little blue dot in a sea of red. You have to have a special mindset to really embrace that stark landscape. If you enjoy hiking or fly fishing, there will be plenty to do. If you like good restaurants and brewpubs, you have a pretty limited set of options, and you’d better have a job where you can work remotely – very remotely.
Jeffro
These dumb takes are always just so cool and simple in the armchair pundit’s mind, aren’t they?
Maybe we add states, expand the House dramatically, flip Texas (state and Senate elections)…all much more do-able than convincing millions of Americans to go live where they don’t wanna live.
Chetan Murthy
I’m all-in for this move, but first, where do I go to get my MAGAt hunting permits and arsenal of AR–15s? B/c I’m not gonna go there unarmed, and I’m sure not gonna go there if I gotta actually kowtow to the fascists who run those places.
Oh …. he expects me to go there unarmed and defenseless? Like a lamb to the slaughter? The fuck he’s on?
The Moar You Know
If you get fucked up in a car wreck or by a heart attack in Wyoming, the closest hospital that can really make sure you don’t die is in Colorado. No thanks.
lahke
Sorry, but that’s way too far for Thai takeout. /s
Seriously, I’m in the Greater Boston area. Not expecting to see fires, floods, earthquakes, or tornadoes anytime soon, and surrounded by approximately 50 hospitals. Admittedly hard to get decent Mexican food, but still not willing to move west for it. And we may finally get a Democratic governor again. Goodbye, Charlie Baker!
Jeffro
btw the tweet about Nashville is very true – that city is about as urban and progressive as most anything I’ve seen in VA (even in NoVA)
I’m not sure of the right time or place (or messenger) to take it on, but red states doing everything they can to sock it to their blue cities is a growing issue. These state legislatures are pulling out all the stops to keep the cities from joining the modern world, and it’s a problem.
Layer8Problem
@different-church-lady: “Where am I?”
“In the City.”
“What do you want?”
“Your vote.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“That would be telling.”
different-church-lady
@lahke:
Have you not noticed all the grass around here is pale tan right now?
Sister Golden Bear
Not to mention that if you’re not a white cis-het dude, moving to a state where your rights can’t be taken for granted, if they haven’t already haven’t been taken away, just might be a serious disincentive.
Or if you’re a parent, do you really want your kids learning about how White Jeebus rode dinosaurs?
Anyway
Combine the Dakotas! Why do we need two? Pundits and those with big Twitter followers please push #CombinetheDakotas
Cameron
It bothered me that I just didn’t have the resources when I retired to move to Montana and raise dental floss.
Josie
It’s entirely possible that at some point climate change will force some to move in a northerly direction whether they want to or not. Probably not someone older like me, but maybe my children and for sure my grandchildren.
different-church-lady
Wait, I’ve got it, I’ve got it… each island in Hawaii becomes a separate state!
Kevin
This is about as realistic as the show Yellowstone. Oh wait that was Montana I think. I mean parts of WY are amazing but we drove through a few years ago and the sections along the interstate were mostly depressing. I love the outdoors and hiking but I’m not sure I could move there.
counterfactual
Stating the obvious: there are not red states and blue states, there are blue cities with more or less rural areas sharing the state. Moving from NYC or LA to the People’s Republic of Louisville is not going to change things.
Anyway
@Kevin:
Plutocrats aka rich bastards are buying/ have bought up the West (and South America and New Zealand…)
Suzanne
@Sister Golden Bear: 100% right. I have a gay trans kid. I’m not living outside of a blue city. Also, there is no work that I want to do. To do what I want, I need to work for a fairly large corporate firm, and those are located where the wealthy clients are.
Also…. I don’t understand why people don’t look up where Level 1 trauma centers are when picking a place to live. That’s, like, critical infrastructure. Not a nice-to-have amenity. Basic for survival.
Kent
The Dakota territory was deliberately split into two states, North and South during statehood to provide an additional two Republican Senate seats. True fact. Of course the Republicans were less vile back then than the Democrats.
piratedan
tbf, it takes all kinds of infrastructure that the GOP has been bleeding out of rural America for decades…
in today’s society, you still need the essentials, water, food, and nowadays, electricity.
in the coming climate change challenges, a move to smaller communities may actually be in order, you drag your infrastructure with you…. you establish ISP’s, say via the post office. Lots of open spaces out there, so turn some of that into solar farms. You can plan waste management and water conservation and plan to do it better.
The second shoe that drops is to restore the infrastructure that places like WalMart decimated. Again, none of this happens easily, nor do I mean to imply that just because it’s typed here that it will be so, but as we know, not everyone thrives in an urban environment; so some may be tempted to relocate. People that like to create, those that want to build, others who may wish broader vistas and be closer to the land. Not just that but to also give them access to what was left behind, information, culture, access.
and even then, if these events transpire, as mentioned before, they will change the game, because while they have the numbers, the rules work, when they do not, they change the rules.
Ramona Rosario
@Math Guy: I am truly inspired! I am going to steal this from you and do it the next time I encounter a new post and find myself groping for thoughts to put down as a comment while I wait for the comment roll to fill up.
lahke
@different-church-lady:
Hoping the forecast for rain tonight and tomorrow turns true.
Timurid
7. When the natives realize what’s going on, they will kill you.
Kent
Regarding Wyoming. My daughter lived in Jackson last winter (working at the ski resort). It is one of only two blue cities in Wyoming along with Laramie. The only other blue zones are the reservations.
In any event, housing was ridiculously expensive in Jackson. About like San Francisco. She rented an apartment with 4 others to make it work.
The whole notion of masses of people moving to Wyoming or the Dakotas or West Virginia to flip those states is absurd and ridiculous.
The more productive approach would be to flip or cement Democratic majorities in purple states like Georgia, North Carolina, and Arizona that already have growing metro areas. This isn’t really a red state vs blue state thing. It is an urban vs rural thing. So concentrate on the growing urban areas in purple states that are trending blue. The only difference between say Idaho and Oregon is that Portland is 4x larger than Boise. Were that not the case, Oregon would be a red state. Most of the state is as red as Idaho.
Roger Moore
@Chetan Murthy:
Very importantly he expects you to go there. When people said various forms of “you first” or “thanks for volunteering”, he was unwilling to be the first to implement his plan.
Ohio Mom
Apparently you can’t copy, cut and paste from Twitter, which is too bad, I was going to include Mike Sack’s bio in this comment — he’s the fellow who thinks blue staters ought to move to Wyoming for the good of the country.
He describes himself as a journalist, analyst, lapsed lawyer, retired competitive air guitar player, and a visiting scholar at Duke Dewitt.
He sounds resourceful and multi-talented, if he’s making it in New York he can certainly make it in Wyoming. Why doesn’t he lead the way and move first?
I have a cousin in Great Falls, Montana. She married a fellow who couldn’t bear to live anywhere but his hometown. She’s made a life for herself but I notice her young adult daughters are settling themselves in LA and NY.
different-church-lady
@lahke: Yeah, I was going to post exactly the same thing. The forecast teased my location all yesterday, and I was obsessively reloading the radar only to see all the green over Framingham somehow evaporate before it came any further east. Depressing as hell.
prostratedragon
“There is a goodly place for the city of the horizon in another place.” (Accompanying dance)
HinTN
@piratedan:
What that means here is somehow recreating the hardware store that the two sons of the man who ran a blacksmith shop and carriage building/repair operation built and handed on to their son/nephew who got run over by Walmart. Na ga happen
ETA: Not that we don’t have pretty good hardware stores springing back up right next to Walmart and the nearby place of the orange apron.
Gin & Tonic
@Cameron: I love that somebody always comes up with this.
HinTN
@Gin & Tonic: Frank was sharp!
prostratedragon
@Jeffro: [sotto voce] Incorporated cities.
Chetan Murthy
I’m not even going to post a link to the tweet, but there’s pretty disturbing video of a police beatdown in Crawford County, AR, that …. well, let’s just say, as a brown man, I wouldn’t touch that place with a ten-thousand-mile pole.
And of course, all women from Blue states (except those who are *certain* they’ll never need reproductive health care) have to steer clear.
What this jamoke Sacks’ idea boils down to, is all the single cishet white men from Blue states could move to Red States. B/c all the rest of us have good reasons for not doing so.
Benw
@different-church-lady:
And each bourough in NYC! And then we sink Staten Island into the ocean!
different-church-lady
@Benw: Artificial reef! It’s a no-brainer!!!
Chetan Murthy
@Benw: How many states does LA get ? Gotta be a good number!
Citizen Alan
Oh for fuck’s sake! Just amend the Congressional Apportionment Act and be done with it! One congressperson for every 100,000 citizens. Wyoming gets an additional 4 MOCs. NYS gets an additional 170! Boom! Problem solved.
Chetan Murthy
@Citizen Alan: Or at least, Wyoming rule!
Another Scott
Meh. Sachs should go first and tell us how it goes.
I’m reminded of the Libertarian paradise of Grafton, NH that was taken over by bears.
I’ve lived in giant cities and in tiny towns in the heartland. Both can be lonely places, both can be great. But nobody is going to turn one into the other by simply moving there and maybe running for city council or something. The culture, way things work, politics, economics, and everything else took years/decades/centuries to end up the way it is now. People don’t like change.
And the point from P.A. Foster’s tweet that the state can stomp on what ever local success newcomers bring is a very good one. Sometimes just one guy can do it (e.g. the Virginia governor can strip funding/program amendments out of the state budget simply by saying that the amendment is not “germane” to the bill. No recourse.).
Yet again, there is no One Weird Trick. People have to do the work for the future they want to see.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Sister Golden Bear
@Kent:
As was the case during the North Dakota oil boom, where some cities doubled in size, overwhelming the housing supply, roads, water supplies, sewage systems, and government services in the area.
lollipopguild
Allow blue cities like Louisville Ky to become a new state. Two blue senators and one blue congress person. Rinse , repeat. (I know this is not gonna happen but I can dream……..)
Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
@Kent: Unfortunately the Dakotas would have to agree to the merger and I doubt they would.
US Constitution
H.E.Wolf
@Math Guy: “I lived in Laramie for three years as a graduate student. I loved the town and I would guess that many BJ followers would too. “
Perhaps. However: Laramie is where U. of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard, god rest his soul, was killed. Those who know why and how he died may have reservations about Laramie WY as a potential hometown.
Albatrossity
@counterfactual:
Exactly. Even California, the great blue mecca, is bright red if you look at a precinct-by-precinct map.
As cities grow and rural populations shrink, purple will turn to blue in lots of states considered to be hopelessly red, including my state of Kansas. But folks who move have to have jobs, and schools for their kids, and lots of things beyond just take-out Thai food. So it will be gradual. Hopefully we will make it through that interim period!
Starfish
@Chetan Murthy: If she can afford college, she can probably afford to GTFO for an abortion, but she would have to disclose her pregnancy early. She can also stock up on Plan B before she goes.
oldgold
Currently:
1. The 50 D Senators represent 42 million more Americans than the 50 R Senators do.
2. 18 Senators represent 50% of the population. 82 Senators represent the other 50%
3. The filibuster, requiring 41 Senators to stop legislation, potentially allows Senators representing just 10% of the population to stop legislation backed by Senators representing 90% of the population.
Kent
@Albatrossity: Exactly. States like Nebraska and Iowa could potentially turn blue in a generation if the rural areas continue to empty out and cities like Omaha and Des Moines continue to grow.
I know, a generation is a long time. But The Clinton Presidency was nearly 30 years ago. Change happens.
jefft452
@Citizen Alan: +1
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
White male privilege?
Ken
“We’ve got a Chili’s and an Applebee’s!”
Kent
My solution would be to amend the constitution to provide one Senator for every four Congressmen so that Senators would be assigned according to population just like Congressmen. Except they would still be elected state-wide so no gerrymandering.
Of course that will never happen. But the filibuster could be abolished tomorrow if they wanted.
jefft452
Admit each Reservation into the union as a new state
Kent
@jefft452: Yeah no. There are lots of tiny corrupt reservations that are postage stamp size. Maybe the big ones like the Navajo and Pine Ridge. But that is about it.
Chetan Murthy
@Starfish: “stock up on Plan B”. That has its own risks: imagine that you’re a kid in college, and one of your close friends needs an abortion. Do you give her the pills you’ve got cached for a bad day? Or do you let her suffer ? And when you give her the pills, now you’ve opened yourself up to criminal liability ….. etc.
It’s all a mess, a dangerous mess.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Jeffro:
Amen. I’m in St. Louis, and the state is doing its best to hamstring the city and drive people like me across the river.
RaflW
@Jeffro: As someone who was for decades a policy wonk, like it was very much part of my job the last 10 years I worked to think about workforce, training, supply, uptake, retention etc., I look at what red states are doing to higher ed as well as the business-social climate and I think, damn how is this going to play out in 5, 10, 20 years?
Alas voting happens in mostly 2 and 4 year cycles so the catastrophic damage that the Abbots and DeSantis’s of this country can do to the essential subs-strates of growing, well functioning economies and societies will ripple for decades or longer, while they’ll be out of office, sitting with their piles of lucre, and enjoying whatever hellscape their political progeny can think up.
Long way of saying: Fuck up the U.T. system, see how great the tech boom lasts in TX, you jackass Greg.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@H.E.Wolf: OT except for the Laramie reference:
In my family we have an ancient book of daily prayer in which my great-great-grandmother used to note events (such as her father dying or her children’s birthdays) on the particular date with the year. For one entry in June 1878 she noted that a relative had departed to Laramie to make his fortune and then, added below in pencil, “came back six months later penniless.”
I think now if remote work stays a thing it might become easier for people with established careers to work in these empty red places. Still it’s just going to be a lot of blue dots in a sea of red.
schrodingers_cat
Good morning from the east coast of India.
oldgold
After the Civil War and the end of Reconstruction, the Dems had all of Dixie’s electoral votes In the bag. To off set this, the GOP admitted these phony-assed states in the NW. (NDAK, SDAK, WYO, MT and IDA)
The problem today is Dixie and these phony-assed states are on the same side of the political ledger.
Martin
Christ people, you don’t need to move there. Dr Oz bought a tax shelter property in PA so he could run for senate there, surely some of us can buy an acre in ND, park a single wide on it, and get your mail forwarded to your blue state address with your mail-in ballot. The feds have made this pretty fucking cheap to do if you are so motivated. Y’all are too enamored with actually following the *intent* of the law rather than the letter of the law. I mean, it’d cost me over $50K in closing costs to sell my home, and I could probably buy a place in ND for $10K?
That said, I’m pretty sure Dems will hold both the House and Senate despite the GOPs best gerrymandering effort. I think we got this without shenanigans.
RaflW
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I have a lot of family in the K.C. metro area. Most moved to Johnson county KS decades ago frmo KCMO (a few actually came from KC, KS).
I’ve been wondering lately how all the fuckery in Jefferson City might impact that again. Are Missourians again considering a move a few miles south & west? I know Kansas is its own ball of confusion, but Brownback’s terrible experiment noted, Kansans seem to be at least somewhat more practical (witness the recent abortion vote!).
raven
@Suzanne: Well, I live two blocks from a level 2 and I won’t be moving to Atlanta or Augusta any time soon.
Albatrossity
@Chacal Charles Calthrop:
Established careers AND lots of money for housing. Take a look at housing prices for places like Bozeman MT, or Jackson Hole WY, or even Moscow ID. The work-from-home folks who moved there from Silicon Valley have pretty much made it impossible for normal folks with normal jobs to find a place to live.
Chetan Murthy
@Albatrossity: And normal jobs there are gonna pay *shit*. I remember during grad school in Ithaca, NY, basically all the people who worked at Cornell other than the profs ….. had to live outside of town. B/c too damn expensive to live in town.
LeftCoastYankee
This reminds me of the dumbass libertarians who wanted to make New Hampshire a government-free paradise. Unfortunately the garbage-rummaging bears had not read Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman.
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat: 👍
Beautiful. Thanks for sharing.
Enjoy your time there.
Cheers,
Scott.
RaflW
@Martin: a friend bought an entirely liveable, existing home in Artas, South Dakota for like $7,000 from the estate of someone. The kids/grandkids had NO interest in even popping out there occasionally, so it got sold at open-market price (this was a while ago, but I doubt the little town has changed much, except probably closer to drying up and blowing away now).
I visited. It was a plain, sturdy house. Livable, and my SF former-architect friend proved by staying for a year. Then fleeing back west.
He tried valiantly to get several of us to buy up other not-too-far-gone houses so we could start a little gay village on the prairie. We all thought he was nuts. I did visit once, just to see. I lasted two nights.
All that said, would owning one of those and ‘living’ there be any different from GHW Bush renting a hotel room year round at a Houston Hilton (or whatever the frunk similar it was)? The IRS at least let him keep the fiction that he wasn’t subject to state income tax anywhere else. Dunno if he had his voter reg tied there too?
sdhays
The easiest thing to do, first, is admit DC as a state. It’s the right thing to do regardless and doesn’t require anything special, if not for the filibuster. Why not start there?
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@RaflW: I remember Kansas used to be what Missouri is becoming. People got a taste of it, and did not like it. We’ll see how this goes. KC metro and STL metro basically pay the state’s bills. They are playing with fire.
sdhays
@Martin: Heck, Mark Meadows just listed some random trailer as his “residence” in North Carolina. Although he may eventually experience some legal issues over that.
El Muneco
@Roger Moore: As I believe we litigated on a different blog, this tactic is purely negative for every single liberal until the one who tips the electoral balance. It’s a variant of Tragedy of the Commons. It is in no one’s best interest to be the first, or the thousandth, to make the move – so no one will make the move.
Lyrebird
@Chetan Murthy: Thanks for all your replies. (ETA sorry if my wording is off, I am just glad to have read what you said.)
I can’t see the images in this browser – my problem, old machine. But gee. Why am I so sure this opinion haver is male?
and white white white? without a non-white spouse, or non-white children.
I’m not saying the Northeast is perfect. Heck there are neighborhoods in NYC (Howard Beach) and Boston (Southie iirc) that have been lethal for visiting young men not of the white persuasion. But seriously, whatever this guy is selling, no.
LeftCoastYankee
I’d like to see an apportionment modification every 10 years for the Senate, where every city with a greater population than the least populated state (Wyoming), would get 1 Senator.
There was 32 such cities last year.
Gin & Tonic
@LeftCoastYankee: On the contrary, I think the bears were ideal Objectivists.
Cameron
@LeftCoastYankee: Funny you mention that. I gave A Libertarian Walks Into A Bear to a friend as a birthday present last week. She must not have met any libertarians IRL, because she seems a bit confused by them.
Westyny
Speaking as a once and future New Yorker who has a second home in the Hudson Valley, I say begin with the suburbs and expand into the scenic exurbs. No loss of great food, or even culture in Columbia County. But the districts are swingy and could use a push.
Chetan Murthy
@El Muneco: Your analysis is spot-on, and even *generous*, in that you have to go far enough past tipping the electoral balance, that you can wash out any gerrymandering. So pretty damn hard to do.
I have come to the opposite conclusion for myself: I doubt I’ll ever again live in a place that isn’t majority-minority — at least regionally. It’s just the safe thing to do.
Felanius Kootea
I actually think his idea is a great one for liberal white men who are willing to move en masse (think 20,000 at a time) to blue cities in red states. They don’t have to all move to rural areas. I think he can lead by example and other people will follow.
Martin
@LeftCoastYankee: So, NYC gets one senator even though the city is comprised of 5 counties 4 of which are larger than Wyoming? That seems backward.
How about every state that is a net donor of taxpayer dollars gains one additional senator and each welfare state loses a senator. That’d have the additional benefit of creating positive incentives to pay for our shit.
mvr
@Math Guy: Yes, Laramie is swell. I actually like the whole state, but the politics is pretty toxic outside of a few places. Fly fishing is wonderful, the mountains and wildlife are wonderful, and Yellowstone is the best place in the world. But, to back up your main point, the economy is boom/bust, most politicians seem to think that most Wyomans believe coal is a cultural birthright, and jobs would not keep up with a significant increase in population.
Another Scott
@LeftCoastYankee: I haven’t done the math to see if some other system would somehow be “better”, but I honestly don’t think that the Senate numbers would need to be messed around with. There are really only 2 major problems that are holding up progress:
I like the simple changed to #1 that someone proposed: Each State shall have at least as many members in the House as they have Senators. That sets the minimum district size. In 2020 the smallest state was Wyoming at 577,000, so each House district would be 288,500 people. For 330M people in the USA, that would be 1,144 Representatives in the House.
Instead of 538/2 there would be roughly (1144+100+3) / 2 = 634 Electoral College votes required to win the Presidency. And the Senate wouldn’t matter much at all in choosing the President.
They can keep the anachronism that all the States are equal in the Senate, and maybe that makes sense for judges and ambassadors and such. But when it comes to deciding the direction of the country then the people must ultimately decide and that means the House needs to take the lead.
Cheers,
Scott.
Steeplejack
@Ramona Rosario:
👍
Felanius Kootea
@Felanius Kootea: Just checked and Cheyenne, Wyoming has twice the population of Laramie (~64,000 vs ~32,000) but doesn’t seem to have a large university. Maybe it needs one.
If Wyoming’s 600,000 people are going to have the same number of senators as California’s 40 million, we can at least make sure there’s a spreading blue influence through higher education.
I don’t volunteer.
Benw
@Chetan Murthy: LA gets a state for each beach. Long Beach, Manhattan Beach, Malibu….
SFAW
@different-church-lady:
You live in the People’s Republic of Taxachusetts, too? If I ever knew that, I sure as heck didn’t remember.
different-church-lady
OK, I’ve lost track here: are we trying to come up with ideas dumber than the first one, or real ideas?
RSA
@counterfactual:
More obviousness: Mike Sacks apparently wants Democrats not only to move to lightly settled red states but to distribute themselves over the landscape rather than be gerrymandered into relatively higher-population cities with city amenities. No thanks.
Chetan Murthy
@RSA: Even more obviousness: sure, there are blue cities in red states. But those states are *red*, and that means your safety and health are in the hands of MAGAts. CA also has deep-red areas. But we have enough Blue voters that as long as I stay out of those pits, I can live a relatively safe and healthy life.
That wouldn’t be true in Dallas, TX, nor Houston, nor …. (list goes on and on).
different-church-lady
OK, I think I’ve got it here: one senator for every person of voting age in the country.
Villago Delenda Est
Easier to abolish the Electoral College. I don’t think abolishing the Senate is possible without a Constitutional Convention, and that’s playing with fire as long as the red states exist.
Felanius Kootea
@different-church-lady: We’re trying not to cry about the structural disadvantages for larger states baked into the constitution that will require consent of small red state legislatures to change.
I live in a county that has 17 times the population of the entire state of Wyoming, where I’m reading that the 50,000 doofuses who believe the 2020 election was rigged are about to send a new politician to the house. I have to get my fun somewhere.
I will throw money away on the Dem candidate since she would be the first Native American congresswoman ever elected from Wyoming. I notice she got about 4,500 votes versus the Trumper’s 113,000 in the primaries.
206inKY
Eventually the Denver suburbs will start bleeding into Wyoming. Fort Collins, which would be 1/3 the pop of WY, is solidly blue and only 45 minutes from Cheyenne, which is a shithole but has 100,000 people and basic services. A large new federal campus or tech employer in the Fort Collins-Cheyenne borderlands is the closest we get to this guy’s vision. That, or a large new employer in Bozeman or Missoula, which are already amazing places to live.
Miss Bianca
Does anyone remember that once upon a time – within living memory even! – Wyoming had a Democratic governor? I sure didn’t, till a friend of mine told me she used to work for him. May have been back in the 70s. Seems almost impossible to imagine, nowadays.
Albatrossity
@RaflW: Re being a gay person in the Dakotas. you might enjoy reading my friend Taylor Brorby’s memoir (NYT Editor’s Pick!), Boys and Oil. He grew up there. He ain’t going back…
H.E.Wolf
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: OT except for the family-history reference:
“In my family we have an ancient book of daily prayer in which my great-great-grandmother used to note events (such as her father dying or her children’s birthdays) on the particular date with the year. For one entry in June 1878 she noted that a relative had departed to Laramie to make his fortune and then, added below in pencil, “came back six months later penniless.”
That is so cool. A primary historical document! (I feel sad for the relative who lost his shirt in Laramie.) I’m hoping one of the younger generation in our family will be interested in that sort of thing, so that the old letters/diaries etc can be passed along into their keeping….
206inKY
I don’t know WY politics at all, but it’s striking that the only 45% of the population voted in 2020. Hard not to wonder how many Dems didn’t bother voting since it seems pointless when so outnumbered.
Here in KY, it was astonishingly easy to turn out voters for Beshear in 2019. All they needed was an inkling that it wasn’t pointless. One dude said I was the first Democratic canvasser to knock on his door in 20 years.
Villago Delenda Est
@Another Scott: The House is ridiculously small. 435 has been the cap for over a century now. This needs to change.
206inKY
@Albatrossity: Woah, this book looks amazing. Ordering a copy right now. Thanks for sharing.
RaflW
My one hoping to be helpful thought is: Liberals do move to Red states. Or red House districts of blue states. Happens more than we might realize.
Maybe its a move home to help family. Maybe it’s a job move. Maybe after age 50 the urge to fly fish and have the windows open without constant city noise overwhelms the appeal of art museums and being 15 minutes from almost anything you want.
The question is: How do liberals who haven’t made the move help these people feel supported, connected, and have the courage to be politically engaged.
My partner and I are having these sort of tensions all the time now. We bought a lake house an hour from his parents as they age and his dad is becoming sort of affably decrepit.
The lake is great. But the county is freakin’ red. Is it safe for us to be out homos? Can we host a fundraiser for a new local friend who’s pretty liberal and running for office? If we invite the realtor, will we find out he’s a flaming MAGA, even though he seems like a good guy. It’s exhausting, and we’re just there 30-40% of our time. I can see why liberals who move go to ground and just let the conservative machine rumble along. How do you even meet other libs??
(We stumbled upon another gay couple. They’re really nice. But they seem apolitical and have job profiles that could map to being conservative. Again, whadda we do? If we alienate this one gay couple, we go back to being the only gays we know on the lake).
My point, rambly as it is: Figuring out what to risk, when, and for what takes having friend networks and emotional resources. And people are in this boat all around. Can smart libs at places like BJ help so that they (we!) can stick our necks out at least a bit and say “we’re here and we matter too, thank you.”
Oh, and all this agita is just an hour from Madison, WI. Imagine if the cabin was in Coer d’Alene! Yikes.
Lyrebird
Note: I am mayonnaise plus a little A1 sauce white. I still remember the shocked looks I got on a search committee, all white except a grad student maybe, when everyone went around saying how good it would be for this rural institution to boost diversity and hire Candidate X, a phenomenally qualified Afr. American who listed her Afr. American church affiliation in her CV.
I was the one who asked, what can we say to her to convince her it would be good FOR HER to come here, other than that the job market is bad? They ignored me and went on. I am glad I no longer live or work there, even though it was pretty.
Albatrossity
@206inKY: It is amazing. An excellent read.
And if you ever get a chance to hear Taylor read from his work, do it.
Chetan Murthy
@RaflW: I don’t know how you do it. I know I couldn’t. I reminded my mom when she moved back to TX (after 2yr in SF during the pandemic) that she should know that I would never visit TX, just as I’d told her that back around 2000 when I’d first realized just how horrific the place had been.
That you’re even *contemplating* living there even part-time is ….. wow, I couldn’t do it.
Felanius Kootea
@Lyrebird: I will confess that I get emails and cold calls from academic headhunters all the time, for wonderful leadership positions at universities in flaming red states. I usually politely decline and I can tell they are baffled because many are much higher ranked than my university. Maybe one day I should just be blunt and say, look, I know their DEI officers are looking to broaden the applicant pool, but they would have to pay me at least $10 million* a year to live in that state, so it’s a waste of my time and theirs.
I figure $10 million gives me enough to buy a private plane that I use to commute to said university from California 😂😂😂.
Chetan Murthy
@Felanius Kootea:
For one year, after which you go back to your old uni (which you told to keep your seat warm) a full $4m richer (after taxes and commuting costs ha!)
Another Scott
Interesting…
Cheers,
Scott.
RaflW
@206inKY: The thing about those border regions, though, I think shows up in Fargo-Morehead. The county Fargo is in voted 49.5%-46.8% Tfg/Biden. The county Moorhead is in voted 50.7% Biden / 46.7 Tfg. Not huge swings but I’d guess there’s definitely some political sorting going on just in that metro. I mean, if for some bizarre-ass reason I had to work in Fargo, I’d live in Moorhead. I want to live in a state with a functioning government, thank you.
Citizen Alan
@Kent: At this point, I just don’t consider anyone who says “We should Amend the Constitution to do blah” to be serious. We couldn’t get an Amendment passed to guarantee that women are treated equally to men. It is absurd to think that we can get any Amendment passed that diminishes the power of the GOP so long as the GOP effectively controls a majority of the state governments (or even, as a practical matter, a third of the state governments given how many are needed for ratification).
Lyrebird
:-D
Hey thanks, and I salute you Prof. Kootea!
Fair Economist
@Citizen Alan: That doesn’t fix the problem. Republicans could still block things in the Senate. It doesn’t even fix the electoral college – Trump would still win in 2016.
206inKY
@RaflW: Yes x 1000 to all of this!
Your dilemma reminds me of an arresting chapter from a terrific book about a single floor of a dorm at Indiana University, Paying for the Party: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674088023
The authors spent a year interviewing nearly every student multiple times. Only around 30% actually rushed, but they took up so much oxygen that another 60% were “isolates” who ended up with no new friends in the dorm and were certain that well over 90% of their floormates involved in Greek life. This 60% of the dorm was compromised of students who each thought they were an outlier weirdo and had absolutely no idea they were a majority.
These Trumpers suck up oxygen in the same way, but there’s a whole army of quiet blue or moderate voters in places like my own town who keep their heads down.
Jackie
OMG: MTG is being considered VP material for 2024. Hopefully this is snark!
https://www.rawstory.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-2024-vp/
Citizen Alan
@oldgold: To be fair, the only reason Reconstruction ended was because the Republicans cravenly sold out freedmen in the South to the KKK just to win a single contested Presidential election.
Ixnay
@Another Scott: A libertarian walks into a bear. Funny read, in a dark way, loaned it out enough that it’s now in the anarchist’s free library.
Felanius Kootea
@Chetan Murthy: That is genius!
Chetan Murthy
@Fair Economist: I think the argument that it improves the EC is this: the big states get more electoral votes than the small states do. So on average, the “# voters for one electoral vote” for big states decreases. And since most of the big states are Bllue …..
Percysowner
Moving to deep red states is a big lift. Moving to strategic areas in gerrymandered purpleish states might have potential. I’m from Ohio. Southwest Ohio is Red, Red, Red. I lived in very Red Butler County for a while. A 20-30 minute drive got me to Dayton or Cincinnati both of which had museums, theaters, great restaurants. You don’t want a school aged kid, but for childless adults who can WFH it’s not that bad and real estate is cheap compared to a lot of places. I currently live in Columbus in a fairly liberal, Democratic neigborhood, and am gerrymandered with Delaware, a rich Republican area, and rural counties. The Democrats have come close to pulling off a victory to Federal and State representatives, but the gerrymander is hard to overcome. Moving to the Delaware or the rural areas still puts you within driving distance of Columbus, which has great amenities.
You don’t have to go to a deep Red state to affect elections, just have people who can move into “safe” Republican districts near larger urban areas and tip the balance that way.
Kent
You can accomplish stuff without having to move to North Dakota.
For example, come here to the WA-3rd and help flip blue the very last district on the west coast touching the Pacific (south of Alaska).
The WA 3rd is Clark County (Vancouver WA) along with a lot of red rural areas spreading north. So basically Portland suburbs with a lot of nice areas to live in like Camas and parts of Vancouver proper. The district was Trump +5 in the last election so within reach
No compromises at all. Good schools, lots of good restaurants, good quality of life.
Ohio Mom
@Percysowner: Which reminds me, has anyone seen debbie lately, who also lives in Columbus? Maybe she needs to be checked on?
Villago Delenda Est
@Chetan Murthy: Yup, that’s it. If there are a lot more house seats, they’ll mostly be in blue states, which means the EC will be tilted in favor of the more populous states. Which the GQp will fight tooth and nail, because it encompasses their doom. They’d never hold the White House again.
Citizen Alan
@206inKY: I haven’t decided whether I’m going to bother reregistering to vote in November here in Mississippi. There is literally only one race on the ballot. 3-term Fascist Trump-sucking Congressman Trent Kelly against (and I am not making this up) an AA woman with no prior political experience but who has been running a beauty parlor for 40 years. So she’s got that going for her, I guess.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@H.E.Wolf: Thanks! It looks very much as if the custom got started as mostly a way to keep track of friends and relatives who died in the civil war, presumably so that their deaths could be remembered in prayers on the day they died. Every entry seems to be during the civil war or after it. My family is from Pennsylvania.
It’s only fair to note that the family profession was gunsmithing and while I had relatives who died for the Union, I had many who made a lot of money off of the Union as well….
Ohio Mom
@Citizen Alan: It makes me sad to hear you are back in Mississippi because I remember that you really wanted to move somewhere, anywhere else.
Citizen Alan
@Fair Economist: Why would it not stop Trump if we gave California, Illinois, and New York each an extra 50-100 Electoral Votes. And I assume that if the Dems in Congress find the intestinal fortitude to increase the House by a few thousand members, they would certainly be willing to dump the filibuster.
Citizen Alan
@Ohio Mom: My mom passed away in May, so I came home to help settle her affairs and I’m living rent free in the family home while teleworking for a judge. Alas, that job ends this Friday. I have resumes out to six states, all blue, so we’ll see what happens. The only job I’m considering in Mississippi is a tenure-track bankruptcy professorship at Ole Miss. Because if an LLM in bankruptcy can’t help me get a professorship at my own alma mater, then I probably just wasted over $50 grand in student loans.
Steve in the ATL
@Benw:
We should do this independent of the rest of the plan!
Llelldorin
@Albatrossity: To be fair, California wouldn’t be as blue as it is if the California Republican Party had the self-preservation instincts of a lemming wearing a suicide vest who’s hoping to sneak some of the Jonestown Kool-Aid.
206inKY
@Citizen Alan: Brutal district. I see they chopped out Mississippi State to keep it even safer. Still, only 43% of the pop voted in 2020 — 333k of 789k. Wonder if there’s a hidden dragon.
206inKY
@Citizen Alan: I’m so sorry about your mom. Hang in there.
Mai Naem mobile
None of this stuff is going to happen. We are just going to have to pray that demographics make GA/AZ/NC/NV and Texas turn blue before there are enough GOP legislature+governor states to pass constitutional amendments.
The problem is money in politics – Citizens United etc. Pass some strong campaign reform and everything else follows.
Regarding the Dakotas – SD and ND had Daschle, Dorgan and Conrad in the Senate not all that long ago so its obviously possible.. There’s a guy running against John Thune Brian Bengs. He’s got a snowballs chance in hell of winning but he’s looks like an interesting candidate.
ian
@H.E.Wolf:
Yes, this is true. Laramie has not had a hate crime murder since then. Laramie also has a thriving LGBTQ community. Some, myself included, would argue that Laramie is a safer place for LGTBQ people than NYC or LA. Here is a link to a report from the NY state senate discussing violent crime against LGBTQ people in NYC.
2liberal
How many states can we turn California into?
ian
@Felanius Kootea:
To be fair, we were all voting in the Republican primary against the Trumper. That number imbalance won’t reflect the general election, where it will probably be about 7-3 in favor of the batshit insane candidate.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: My city in the middle of MAGA land has 2 Level 1 trauma centers. I figure anywhere within 15 miles of the city would be fine. I wish 100,000 liberals would move here. We have at least 8 brew pubs, two fine universities, a top-notch symphony, and are 3 hours or less from KC and St. Louis. It’s not NY City, but it’s not Bumfuck, AR either. Plus, we have real Springfield-style cashew chicken, not that stuff with vegetables in it! I wouldn’t move here if I were Trans or gay, at least not now, that’s for sure. It’s not that much better.
columbusqueen
@Percysowner: (Waves hi) I’m in the Northland neighborhood near I-71, by the by.
LeftCoastYankee
@Martin:
The idea isn’t proportional representation (that’s what the house is for), but to make the Senate more proportional and also to give cities in red states a voice, and to balance policy in blue states for rural areas.
I also recognize the definition of “city” will be an ongoing gerrymandering squabble.
sab
@Chetan Murthy: I got graduate degree at Case. I hope for her sake she picks Rice, although I do like Cleveland.
sab
@The Moar You Know: I know so eone in Ohio whose Wyomimg daughter in law had to be helicoptered to the nearest hospital to have her baby.
LeftCoastYankee
@Another Scott:
I like that in the near term (i.e. my life time). Particularly dumping the filibuster nonsense.
I’d prefer in the long run to not have an electoral college, but this is much better than the current situation if dumping the EC is too hard.
I do not envy the House leadership in your scenario though. Talk about industrial cat-herding!
But hey, if that’s their job, they’ll figure it out.
LeftCoastYankee
@Gin & Tonic:
This is what makes libertarians so ridiculous… they assume they are are on the top of all the “food/power chains” in the world if they are outside society.
And they they are astounded to find that alone, they are not only lower in the power hierarchy than bears, they are also lower in the intelligence hierarchy as well.
Matt McIrvin
To be blunt: These liberal settlers would have to be armed invaders willing to die or kill the locals if need be, and they themselves would probably have to be somehow forced at gunpoint to do it. Given all that, it’s not the kind of situation where they’d likely flip the local political scene just by voting blue.
Steeplejack
@RaflW:
Artas, SD. Yee-haw. Population at the 2020 census: 7. Three hundred miles to Sioux Falls, SD, but a mere 220 miles to Fargo, ND. And 20 miles to the nearest grocery.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
But it’s a dry desolation.
:)
Tony Jay
So the plan is basically ‘rush the shooter’, only on a societal level?
Don’t think that’s going to fly, and I say this as someone who’s happily retire to deserted island right now – with WiFi.
lowtechcyclist
@Cameron:
Too bad – you’d look great on a pygmy pony.
I lived and worked in Bristol VA/TN for five years in the 1990s. The blue/red division in America wasn’t so stark then, but even then it was just a whole different world. I’m not pioneering into red America again.
EarthWindFire
@Ohio Mom: I agree. He sounds very resourceful. He can move, then become the whopping 12th democrat in the 90 member state legislature.
As a former Wyomingite who still has family there (all dems), I have a lot of thoughts on Cheney’s loss and this dems move to a red state plan.
My thoughts start here. In 2011, a Democrat who endorsed Barack Obama for president finished his second term as Wyoming’s governor. 2011. Wyoming’s was majority republican as far back as I can remember growing up but there was always room for democrats to be represented. That room isn’t there anymore. 11 Democrats in the state legislature, not the State house, the entire legislature. From a governor to that, in a decade.
IMO, it’s all about our nationalized politics and the dominance of politics culturally now. Believe it or not, the first cross-dresser I ever met was a miner in Douglas, WY. I thought about that a lot when Matthew Shepherd was murdered. Now I think that’s also when the flip started happening to where Republican and Democrat became identities and the parameters for Republican identity became clearly laid out on right-wing media.
Every time I’ve gone back in the last 25 years, I’ve seen another Republican identity marker. Last time I was in Cheyenne, I saw three evangelical churches. There were none when I was growing up. That was always a southern thing in western eyes. We were the flinty, go it alone conservatives, not those god botherers. No longer.
It’s also obvious looking at the state legislature that Wyoming republicans gerrymandered the one place they could. Laramie County (where Cheyenne is) has more Democrats than the town of Laramie but you wouldn’t know it from the legislature.
To sum up, neither Cheney’s loss nor the size of it surprised me. Trump tapped into Republican as an identity and made it his identity. Wyoming republicans acted accordingly. And that’s why Wyoming is a case study for why Democrats moving is not the answer.
evodevo
@HinTN: It can be done in smaller towns away from Walmart/Home Depot population centers…hell, it can be done even if there is a local Walmart…here in KY, the WallyWorld doesn’t carry enough hardware specialty items to help the average do-it-yourselfer, plus getting competent plumbing/electrical/minor construction advice from a Walmart associate (if you can even find one on duty) is fruitless. My favorite hardware store in the small town 15 miles east of here does a land office business and has a sizeable inventory. They are also associated with True Value and you can order stuff online and pick it up there. So, there IS a successful business model, but it requires you and your family to work 12/6, and not many people are willing to do that any more…
evodevo
@Jackie:
Well, remember, this is the party that picked Caribou Barbie as McCain’s VP…
EarthWindFire
@206inKY: The Denver exurbs already have started bleeding into Cheyenne. A couple from Fort Collins bought my dad’s house outside Cheyenne. Whether they will bring blue politics with them or are escaping CO’s blue politics is an open question.
A tech campus between Fort Collins and Cheyenne ain’t happening unless WY actually puts Dark Brandon’s infrastructure money to use and kicks out a group of well-heeled cattle ranchers who have attempted to start a tourist trap there.
mvr
@Miss Bianca:
Actually Wyoming’s Democratic Governor left office in 2011. He was Dave Freudenthal. In the teens you could dream that Wyoming might elect a Democratic Senator or congressperson.
mvr
@RaflW:
We have a small cabin in the mountains in Wyoming. It is not in a place you could easily live year round – the road is closed by snow 6-7 months of the year. As you say there are politcally decent folks around amongst those who might be otherwise decent but who don’t act well politically. And of course there are also just assholes. It isn’t that hard to get some sense of people’s political leanings but you do get surprised (in both directions) sometimes. The state we live in most of the time is similar (Nebraska) though the city we live in is pretty solidly Democratic these days and this state seems to be shifting somewhat. It does wear one down when one is out and about to have to deliberate about when and how to let people know that you don’t go along with the prevailing political winds. For us it isn’t so much personal safety as just wanting to avoid unpleasantness but also wanting sometimes to say something when people are saying dumb stuff. But my main point was just to say that not everyone you meet in such places is a political jerk.
fancycwabs
@Jeffro: Every progressive in Nashville has a month to move to East Nashville or Inglewood so they can vote for Randal Cooper.
How to find a place to live in those neighborhoods is an exercise left to the reader.
EarthWindFire
@mvr: Yep. Wyoming was surprisingly democratic at the gubernatorial level until Dave’s term ended. No chance of that now. The remaining Republicans have gone down the national nutjob path and the Democratic party is a shadow of its former self. Next step is that coal dies out and the GOP hounds out the few remaining dems over it.
My home state was a good place to grow up overall, but there’s a reason Wyoming’s biggest export is its children.