Rising Hegemon
House Republicans argue that voters handed their members a mandate as well, granting the party control of the House for another two years and with it the right to stick to their own views, even when they clash strongly with the president’s.
From Rutherford B. Hayes to George W. Bush to the present GOP House, Republicans -- like seemingly everything -- have a strange definition of mandate...a 180 degree from reality one:
More than a month after the election, the Democrats’ popular vote lead expanded significantly. Based on current tallies, Democrats now lead Republicans 59,343,447 to 58,178,393 in total votes cast for their House candidates — meaning that the American people preferred Democrats over Republicans by nearly a full percentage point of the total vote. Yet, despite clearly losing the popular vote, Republicans will control nearly 54 percent of the seats in the House in the 113th Congress.
This disparity between the will of the American people and the actual outcome of the election did not happen by accident — it is largely the product of massive gerrymandering by Republican state officials.
9 comments:
Obviously they have a mandate to cheat even more in their ongoing effort to thwart the will of the American people.
Before the 1990 redistricting, the "undemocratic skew" was heavily Democratic. This year the Republicans got 48.1% of the popular vote, and ended up with 53.7% of the Representatives, an "undemocratic skew" of 5.6% in their favor.
In the first post-Watergate election in 1976, Republican candidates for the House garnered a cumulative 42.2% of the popular vote, but only ended up with 32.8% of the Representatives, an "undemocratic skew" of 9.4% favoring the Democrats. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the "skew" consistently favored Democrats by 4 or 5%.
And I would guess (not wanting to poke around Wikipedia anymore while there's still shopping to be done) that the Republicans had the skew working for them in the '20s, and the Democratic party had it going for them in the '40s.
Gerrymandering. It's what the party in power does. When the results cause the party in power to overreach, that makes flipping them that much easier.
Quick note: the winner in "undemocratic skew" (at least as far as Wikipedia provides raw vote totals) is 1964, when Republicans got 42.4% of the popular vote, but ended up with 32.1% of the Representatives (post-Kennedy assassination). That's a skew of 10.3%, almost double today's level of popular misrepresentation.
Voters MUST HAVE photo ID...!
Assault weapons purchasers... not so much...
you can't get a mandate if you play calvinball.
Ah, well, we can look forward to the House Repugs becoming even crazier than their constituents.
Not even rats will swim toward a sinking ship. It may take several cycles (and a white male President), but even the Repugs will figure out that a government stalemated by petulant assholes doesn't get them what they want.
Montag -
I think you give them too much credit for rationality. Most of the actually rational voters have already left the party.
Well, interesting spin by the Republicans.
And truth be told, it is sort of surprising that voters would (after billions of campaign dollars and two years) send almost exactly the same bunch back to DC that were so dysfunctional the first time.
Based on the past month, I have to think the next two years aren't going to be any smoother...
sore winners make th worst sore losers.
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