In 2012, Democratic candidates for Congress received more votes than Republican candidates. For the first time in 40 years, the party that received the most votes failed to take control of the House. The people did vote for candidates who believed in gun-control reforms. Obama had it backward: it’s the Republican mapmakers who gerrymandered our democracy so effectively after the GOP’s historic 2010 victory who have made it hard for the voters to affect elections. The strategy was dubbed REDMAP, for Redistricting Majority Project, and it was brilliant in its execution. With $30 million or less than the cost of some losing Senate races — smartly spent in the right districts in the right states — Republican strategists turned the House of Representatives red for a decade, and maybe longer.It paid immediate dividends. If the 2012 election had been fought without the GOP’s redistricting firewall, some form of the gun-control reform which failed to make it through Congress after Sandy Hook likely would have been enacted. On issue after issue—climate change, immigration, reproductive rights, guns, the minimum wage—public-opinion polling shows broad support for the president’s proposals. They have been stymied not because they are unpopular but because our politics have become paralyzed, held hostage by the most extreme wing of a minority party which figured out how to rig the game in its favor.
Just the Sin City Saint THINKING OUT LOUD!