A federal judge says some of Georgia’s congressional, state Senate and state House districts are racially discriminatory, ordering the state to draw an additional Black-majority congressional district.
This business of partisan redistricting and the judiciary telling states how many majority-minority district states need to have is unsustainable. We need a total overhaul. I think a single statewide multimember district with ranked choice voting would be ideal, and solve all of these issues in one swoop. A handful of multimember districts per state, like the Fair Representation Act proposes, would be acceptable too.
Absolutely not. At least not now. The Right has been pushing for a constitutional convention for quite a while. Why? Because they can use the same techniques, disinformation and virtually unlimited dark money, on that that they use on elections. The Right wants to rewrite the constitution to suit themselves, and a constitutional convention would let them do it.
It’s way too early. We need to make sure Republicans can’t hijack the process and make everything worse. Within the next decade or two, there should be enough of a shift to the left with Zoomers that Democrats have enough states and enough popularity to fix the Constitution without Republicans fucking it up.
Within the next decade or two, there should be enough of a shift to the left with Zoomers that Democrats have enough states and enough popularity to fix the Constitution without Republicans fucking it up.
Only if two things have not happened by this point:
Republicans have not fucked the system up so bad and broken all the safeguards to effectively render our democracy permanently dysfunctional without their approval.
The trend of educated young people congregating in the same large population states stops.
We are already the majority. We should not be struggling this much to get very basic things done. The problem isn’t getting enough people to get this shit done, it’s getting enough people in enough districts in enough states to get it done.
This system is so utterly broken that fixing it may not be possible given the current trends. The structure of Congress was not designed for 50 states and all the educated people fleeing the majority of them to congregate in a few of them. You want to talk about tyranny of the majority, how about we start talking about tyranny of the fucking zip code. What we frankly need is a democracy that forgets about borders and starts caring about what people want, not land.
Let’s also keep in mind Zoomers will need help from the generation that comes after them, and at this point, it’s safe to say a fair number of those kids will have been indoctrinated into Republican ideology by the gutted school systems, conservative censorship, and rampant, uncheck right wing propaganda being funneled into their brains. Make no mistake: Republicans are playing a long game in many of these states, and the next generation is in very big trouble.
Pundits have been talking for the last thirty years about the coming decline of the GOP thanks to shifting demographics, and yet they’re still here and going strong. Demographics do not matter to a party that views true representational democracy as an obstacle to their acquisition and maintenance of power.
I’d argue we’re already seeing that decline. They lost Georgia. The best they could do in the midterms, where they had the perfect environment, was effectively tie.
The only outcome from that, which by the way is being pushed for by billionaires, is proverbially putting a bullet in democracy’s head and leaving it to rot in the desert.
What prevents all the corrupt, bad actors currently doing their best to fuck the system and all of us peons from doing the same but an order of magnitude worse once they get to rip up the constitution and start over?
What we really need is decent people to get together and agree on a general vision and goals of what needs unfucking.
We need a long game plan to fix things. Stuff like fixing broken congressional representation (Expand the House and bin the Senate), undo citizens united, break up oligopolies and monopolies, reform campaign finance and eliminate lobbying, do some form of ranked choice voting, no more electoral college, establish congressional term limits, and things along those lines.
The whole Senate thing needs to just fuck off. We need to re-architect checks and balances. Impeachment doesn’t work. Voters should be able to recall any elected official.
Ideally but an easy fix would be to repeal the house apportionment act of 1929 and up the number of reps. Harder to gerrymander it all if there are far more reps to begin with. That and it doesn’t need to touch voting methods, etc.
Your idea is far better. This one is just far more attainable in the short term.
I absolutely agree that we need a better system of running this country and am fully on board with all the listed policies.
However, It’s only unsustainable if the American people have the balls to challenge it. I’m not exactly convinced of that when we as a country can barely say no to a blatant villain(Trump). Good change only happens when the people stubbornly demand it. I honestly can’t remember a time in my lifetime where that has happened.
Instead, we get tiny morsels of change that are carefully doled out to keep us voting the 'right’TM way.
We are all just checked out escaping reality in our little bubbles expecting things to magically change. Oh, how I wish change worked like that. But sadly, It does not. If you want change, it takes the stubborn, unyielding willpower of forcing your position onto others continually.
And that is something we as a people have gradually forgotten. Unfortunately, the haters among us have not. They continually push their values onto others. They have worked to undermine abortion for 50+ years. And it worked and continues to work.
We have to out organize them to have any hope of things actually changing for the better. And it’s a Hell of a lot easier to tear things apart than to improve them.
This business of partisan redistricting and the judiciary telling states how many majority-minority district states need to have is unsustainable. We need a total overhaul. I think a single statewide multimember district with ranked choice voting would be ideal, and solve all of these issues in one swoop. A handful of multimember districts per state, like the Fair Representation Act proposes, would be acceptable too.
We need a constitutional convention and to dissolve Congress and form a parliament. Only then can this country progress.
Absolutely not. At least not now. The Right has been pushing for a constitutional convention for quite a while. Why? Because they can use the same techniques, disinformation and virtually unlimited dark money, on that that they use on elections. The Right wants to rewrite the constitution to suit themselves, and a constitutional convention would let them do it.
It’s way too early. We need to make sure Republicans can’t hijack the process and make everything worse. Within the next decade or two, there should be enough of a shift to the left with Zoomers that Democrats have enough states and enough popularity to fix the Constitution without Republicans fucking it up.
Only if two things have not happened by this point:
Republicans have not fucked the system up so bad and broken all the safeguards to effectively render our democracy permanently dysfunctional without their approval.
The trend of educated young people congregating in the same large population states stops.
We are already the majority. We should not be struggling this much to get very basic things done. The problem isn’t getting enough people to get this shit done, it’s getting enough people in enough districts in enough states to get it done.
This system is so utterly broken that fixing it may not be possible given the current trends. The structure of Congress was not designed for 50 states and all the educated people fleeing the majority of them to congregate in a few of them. You want to talk about tyranny of the majority, how about we start talking about tyranny of the fucking zip code. What we frankly need is a democracy that forgets about borders and starts caring about what people want, not land.
Let’s also keep in mind Zoomers will need help from the generation that comes after them, and at this point, it’s safe to say a fair number of those kids will have been indoctrinated into Republican ideology by the gutted school systems, conservative censorship, and rampant, uncheck right wing propaganda being funneled into their brains. Make no mistake: Republicans are playing a long game in many of these states, and the next generation is in very big trouble.
Pundits have been talking for the last thirty years about the coming decline of the GOP thanks to shifting demographics, and yet they’re still here and going strong. Demographics do not matter to a party that views true representational democracy as an obstacle to their acquisition and maintenance of power.
I’d argue we’re already seeing that decline. They lost Georgia. The best they could do in the midterms, where they had the perfect environment, was effectively tie.
The only outcome from that, which by the way is being pushed for by billionaires, is proverbially putting a bullet in democracy’s head and leaving it to rot in the desert.
What prevents all the corrupt, bad actors currently doing their best to fuck the system and all of us peons from doing the same but an order of magnitude worse once they get to rip up the constitution and start over?
What we really need is decent people to get together and agree on a general vision and goals of what needs unfucking.
We need a long game plan to fix things. Stuff like fixing broken congressional representation (Expand the House and bin the Senate), undo citizens united, break up oligopolies and monopolies, reform campaign finance and eliminate lobbying, do some form of ranked choice voting, no more electoral college, establish congressional term limits, and things along those lines.
The whole Senate thing needs to just fuck off. We need to re-architect checks and balances. Impeachment doesn’t work. Voters should be able to recall any elected official.
Ideally but an easy fix would be to repeal the house apportionment act of 1929 and up the number of reps. Harder to gerrymander it all if there are far more reps to begin with. That and it doesn’t need to touch voting methods, etc.
Your idea is far better. This one is just far more attainable in the short term.
I absolutely agree that we need a better system of running this country and am fully on board with all the listed policies.
However, It’s only unsustainable if the American people have the balls to challenge it. I’m not exactly convinced of that when we as a country can barely say no to a blatant villain(Trump). Good change only happens when the people stubbornly demand it. I honestly can’t remember a time in my lifetime where that has happened.
Instead, we get tiny morsels of change that are carefully doled out to keep us voting the 'right’TM way.
We are all just checked out escaping reality in our little bubbles expecting things to magically change. Oh, how I wish change worked like that. But sadly, It does not. If you want change, it takes the stubborn, unyielding willpower of forcing your position onto others continually.
And that is something we as a people have gradually forgotten. Unfortunately, the haters among us have not. They continually push their values onto others. They have worked to undermine abortion for 50+ years. And it worked and continues to work.
We have to out organize them to have any hope of things actually changing for the better. And it’s a Hell of a lot easier to tear things apart than to improve them.