We do not have proportional representation in the House, and the person with the most votes for President lost in 2000 and in 2016. The way Congressional districts are made and the weirdness of the Senate representation is such that we will soon be governed by a minoritist party. Who cares how things were in the 60s and 70s when the topic at hand is about the present day?
EDIT: The Republican Party has overtly attempted to subvert the political norms of the country and continues to do so. Arguing about this or that policy is meaningless unless the messed up way the Senate and House seats are allocated is fixed. That won’t be addressed anytime soon so the situation is essentially hopeless. Oh, and Manchin sabotaged voting rights legislation.
Gerrymandering does not even consistently hurt democrats in the number of House seats. Dems in 2020 won the same number of seats as their share of the Congressional popular vote.
> There are secondary effects you are ignoring with this incorrect belief. In recent years, since SCOTUS abandoned voting rights, the closure of polling stations also affects voting numbers.
This is the Democrat equivalent of believing the Big Lie.
> The way Congressional districts are made and the weirdness of the Senate representation is such that we will soon be governed by a minoritist party.
What’s Biden’s approval rating again?
> Who cares how things were in the 60s and 70s when the topic at hand is about the present day?
Because Democrats still claim to be the party of FDR, who stitched together a winning coalition. The electoral system benefited that coalition—when Biden became a Senator, Democrats had 10 percentage points more House seats than their share of the Congressional popular vote. That coalition is still viable. Obamacare was enacted on that coalition. Urban Dems have chosen deliberately to prioritize other things instead.
You are completely wrong on your assessment regarding Gerrymandering. You clearly don’t understand how total national vote total has nothing to do with whether or not Gerrymandering causes one party to have more seats than they otherwise ought to have. Here’s a hint: A Representative from California res presents far more people than the one from North Dakota. Here’s another hint: Heavily Democratic distinct overwhelmingly votes Democrat while three districts with slight majority Republican vote elect Republicans and the overall vote totals are mostly even. Both hints must be used to see why overall vote total means nothing when it comes to determining if Congressional representation is skewed.
You are wildly wrong in your views.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/09/report-more-tha...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/02/texas-pollin...
https://www.salon.com/2019/09/12/report-reveals-nearly-1700-...
It doesn't meaningfully affect turnout in the same way Voter ID doesn't affect turnout: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/21/18230009/v.... Both parties are lying about the impacts of voting rules on turnout.
> You clearly don’t understand how total national vote total has nothing to do with whether or not Gerrymandering causes one party to have more seats than they otherwise ought to have.
You're mixing up completely different things. The Congressional popular vote represents the total number of people that voted for each party in House elections. It's an absolute number of votes, irrespective of number of seats. Republicans have won this absolute count more often than not since 1990. For example, in 2016, Republicans won 63,182,073 votes (49.1%) and Democrats won 61,765,832 votes. Also, you can cross check it against the generic Congressional ballot, which is based on polling and isn’t affected by gerrymandering: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls. Republicans are ahead right now. That’s not a “minority party.”
> Here’s a hint: A Representative from California res presents far more people than the one from North Dakota.
It's actually the opposite, though it's a rounding error. California has 53 representatives and 39 million people, or 736,000 people per rep. North Dakota has 1 representative and 760,000 people.
> https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/09/report-more-tha... > https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/02/texas-pollin... > https://www.salon.com/2019/09/12/report-reveals-nearly-1700-...
These sites are peddlers of election falsehoods, just like Breitbart or Newsmax.
The irony of all this is that progressive election lies are used to disenfranchise minorities within the Democratic Party. Disproportionately white progressives invoke the notion that Democrats have overwhelming popular support but elections are close because of dirty tricks, to boost their own power within the party. That happens at the expense of disproportionately conservative and moderate democrats, who are disproportionately minorities.
Political parties aren’t one big happy family. The truth is that there’s trade offs between the interests of different factions and we should be honest about those. If Obama hadn’t run to the right on social issues in 2008, we wouldn’t have Obamacare today (which cut the number of uninsured Black people by half). That’s the reality of the trade offs between different factions of the party.
Sure. My point is that the party made this choice deliberately. Trying to pin the blame on Joe Manchin, who is doing yeoman’s work holding onto a key part of the old FDR coalition, is disingenuous.
> Democrats consistently hold majority views on a wide range of policy issues and consistently have more votes in national elections.
The views of the party leadership and donor base and closely affiliated NGOs do not have consistent majority support. For example, Dems have basically allowed NARAL, etc., to be the voice of the party on abortion. But a strong majority of Americans oppose second trimester abortions, which are guaranteed by Roe, and a quarter of democrats identify as “pro life.” That’s more than ones who identify as “very liberal.” The party used to get that, carving out a space for folks like Manchin in WV and Tom Daschle in SD.
> Gerrymandering so that urban centers lose their voting power and other election rigging techniques is what is holding back Democratic policies.
Republicans have won the Congressional popular vote slightly more than half of the time since 1990. They’re about to do it again. Gerrymandering doesn’t affect that.
Even in the electoral college, it benefitted Democrats not only throughout the 1960s-1980s, but as recently as 2012. Obama would have been able to win a second term even if he lost the popular vote.
> The Democratic Party should not abandon its highly popular core principles to cater to the deranged apportionment that the U.S. has.
Democratic leaders and donors are deeply confused about what those “core principles” are, and who is in their coalition. The coalition is one of urban liberals who vote democrat for ideological reasons, and minorities and immigrants who vote Democrat out of self interest. My parents are the type of immigrant who turned Virginia blue. They care about Obamacare. They’ll accommodate some things the urban liberals want to get that. But that doesn’t mean they agree with college educated urban white people about what kids should learn in schools.
The fact is that a big chunk of the Democratic coalition has social values closer to Republicans than to liberal Democrats. Moreover, those are the party’s marginal votes in states like Arizona and Nevada and Georgia. Urban Democrats should live in that reality.