Yeah Gerrymandering generally works off the idea that you give your opponents one insane district and yourself a ton of solid districts.
You make them so they get one D +30 and yourself like 8 R +5s or the like. Which means you always win. Unless you fuck up so bad that your +5’s lose, in which case you’re boned, but that basically never happens.
Same boat. Activists believe a House flip is a done deal. It’s not. But, and not to dis our time travelling forum members, nor is it impossible.
Reasons for optimism:
Reasons for pessimism
Also - young people don’t vote.
Voter disenfranchising in red states.
Past performance does not predict future results :P (see VA.)
That’s a good point, and one largely ignored in the past election. Voter registration and (as usual) GOTV is a must.
Exclusive: As elections near, many older, educated, white voters shift away from Trump’s party - Reuters
I’ll believe it when I see it. The Russian troll machine hasn’t even started up again yet.
This could be another attempt to have everyone else not bother to show up at the polls. People are too lazy. Give them an excuse not to go, and they won’t go.
There’s also a bit of sandbagging happening at all levels. Even McConnell is talking about how hard it’s going to be for Republicans to hold the House.
My first thought exactly. I believe lots of people stayed home because they didn’t like Hillary as a candidate and that Trump had zero chance to win anyway.
Yep, and if we get enough of this, the voters will say I don’t have to go because I don’t have to. They can’t win. We also to keep in mind that there are areas in this country that purposefully make it difficult to vote, and yes, for the last election the majority voice said Trump could not win. People absolutely did not go because they didn’t think Trump could ever win. And now they’re doing it again.
An important difference here is that the Republicans haven’t had two decades to demonize the candidates running for the midterms. If they want to persuade voters to hate specific Democratic candidates, or even just to mildly dislike/distrust them enough to stay home, they have their work cut out for them.
Gah, there I go again, getting my hopes up.
-Tom
Yeah, the GOP failed to get people to hate Connor Lamb, because all they had was some suggestion that he was somehow going to be like Pelosi.
Get that hopey-changey stuff out of here! It will only leave you broken-hearted. True happiness lies entirely in complete despair.
You and me both. I’m going to ignore the naysayers and bask in the glow of this and the Trump lawyer thing. Grab your joy when you can.
Bah I fell for that once. Everyone should fear for their lives, the lives of their neighbors and all that is good in the world and get their ass out to vote because if they don’t we’re stuck again.
In addition to voting, educate, support local community efforts and somehow we have to figure out how to get rid of Sinclair.
I do not see an article about older Trump followers abandoning him to be the same as now young folks can sit back and not vote. There are a lot of ridiculous assumptions there. Maybe it’s just a good thing? So we can still GOTV. And indeed use this as a rallying point? Really people, what’s with the negative waves?
What do you mean? Young people don’t vote. It’s not unique to Trump or anything. Some of the people that are walking out and marching right now may not show up at the polls in a couple of years. If the media runs around telling other people it’s a done thing, they don’t show up either.
The most optimistic thing to do is fear the worse and get people to the polls to try and avoid that, and hopefully before the big vote, do grassroots to educate and push the importance.
Maybe in the past. Now it’s happening. You watch.
Like all the articles, tweets, snapchats, and forum posts about “All these Hillary supporters showing up to vote; there’s hours and hours and hours and hours of waiting in line at the polls ahead of these people because of just how darn popular she is!”