Most American Voters Elected a Democratic House, But We Got a Tea Party Congress

[buzzman]

http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17656-most-american-voters-elected-a-democratic-house-but-we-got-a-tea-party-congress

Take Pennsylvania, for instance, the Democrats received 2,710,827 votes for congressional candidates; the Republicans, 2,642,952. Although it was a slim victory, the Dems won the popular vote in Pennsylvania as far as electing representatives to Congress.

Astonishingly, however, due to gerrymandering from the Tea Party tsunami election of 2010, which left the Pennsylvania legislature and governor in full control of the GOP, only 5 Democratic reps to Congress were elected in 2012, while the Republicans will send 13 reps to DC!

In Ohio, Secretary of State John Husted – who unrelentingly tried to suppress Democratic votes in the 2012 election – has denied he was proposing to change the allocation of electoral votes in the Buckeye State to winners of congressional districts. (Only Nebraska and Maine currently employ such a presidential election system.) But you can't blame him for launching such a partisan trial balloon, given that his allegiance is to the Republican Party, not the people of Ohio. Under such a system for Ohio in 2012, Romney would have been awarded 12 of the 18 electoral votes in the state (due once again to gerrymandering).

In summary, citizens of the United States elected a Democratic President and a Democratic Senate. Minus the partisan tactic of gerrymandering, the American people also elected a Democratic House.

President Obama should remember this when he deals with the Tea Party tilt of the gerrymandered Republican House. John Boehner does not represent the majority of the United States voters; he represents the pathology of a minority.

[bluestate10]

1. Blame the people that sat on their asses during the 2010 mid-terms.

We are going to have a big fight over the next 8 years to regain control of the House and avoid losing the Senate. All because of purists that wanted everything to go as they demanded after the 2008 election that gave democrats the House, Senate and the Presidency, despite the filibuster in the Senate and a majority in the House that included lots of conservative blue-dog democrats.

People, where ever you are during the 2020 election, don't sit it out. That election happens before the next census and if we lose it, republicans will gerrymander even more aggressively to keep their party from dying.

[Scuba]

2. You know why the Republicans get away with their shit?

Because we let them!