Why the Democrats Will Keep Losing (Mother Jones)

[Amaryllis]

This doesn't address the primary issue of elecion fraud but still makes important points.


Why the Democrats Will Keep Losing
Biases built in to our electoral institutions hurt the Democratic Party every time.

Steven Hill
June 10 , 2005
Mother Jones

Since the 2004 elections, many have been debating "why Kerry lost," and more broadly "why the Democrats have been losing ground." Much of the debate has focused on the never-ending seesaw of "swing voters vs. base voters," or cultural/religious/"What's the Matter with Kansas?" issues, even George Lakoff-type "reframing" of key concepts and themes.

But what has been completely missing from the conversation is the fact that even when the Democrats win more votes, they don't necessarily win more seats. That's true in the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House, and the Electoral College. That's because there is a structural disadvantage for Democrats resulting from regional partisan demographics in red versus blue America that now are strongly embedded into our fundamental electoral institutions. This unfair structural disadvantage makes it more difficult for Democrats to win than Republicans. It's like having a foot race in which one side begins 10 meters in front of the other, election after election.

Yet practically no one is talking about it. Even though this bias undercuts any attempts by liberals and Democrats to gain control over the government, and will continue to do so for years to come, no matter how many volunteers Democrats mobilize or how much money they raise, these sorts of structural barriers are being ignored.

Here are the numbers in the U.S. that reveal the mountain that the Democrats must climb. Let's look at what happens if Democrats and Republicans win exactly the same number of nationwide votes for elections to the U.S. House. The picture isn't pretty.

More:
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2005/06/why_the_democrats_will_keep_losing.html

[NoodleBoy]

1. don't know if it says this, but

Half of US Senate seats are elected by app. 16% of US citizens.

But that's what we get with a 215 year old system where people are elected to represent bits of dirt instead of other people.

[Webster Green]

2. I've never seen it framed that way before....

That is really depressing to think about.

[Amaryllis]

3. What's the source of your image?

[Webster Green]

5. Which image? (n/t)

[TwentyFive]

4. Another way the republicans cheat.

They only represent about 10% of Americans, but through wedge issues, scapegoating groups of people, stealing elections, corporate mega donations, right wing radio...they somehow sneak into power.

All these rural people...liberals brought them electricity, phone, schools, roads, police, fire, hospitals, etc....and when it was their time to return the favor....they kicked the ladder out from under somebody else.

[rwenos]

8. "We made them Republicans"

Tip O'Neill used to say the Democrats gave the old blue-collar middle class in the rural mid-south, on the farm, and in the old ethnic neighbor flush toilets, rural electrification, houses in the suburbs financed by Fanny Mae mortgages . . .

And then those people became Republicans.

[TwentyFive]

10. Rethugs would still be using outhouses & dirt roads, if not for Liberals

These people can't give immigrants, uninsured, urban poor a dime. Selfish bastards...it will come back on them someday.

[Warpy]

12. Right, because the Democrats stopped offering them much of

anything. The party has spent the last few decades pretending we're a country of yuppies. That's a fine tactic if you want to keep LOSING.

The fact is that we're a country of working people who put in more hours with less help every year and fall farther behind financially. The Democrats have simply failed to energize working people, to give them any sort of hope for a better future as they see themselves doing much worse than their parents did. They've failed to address the concentration of wealth away from the people at the bottom who create it and toward the people who simply hoard it. They've failed to address how the military is sucking money out of everything to the point that we're jouncing over crumbling roads, our power grid is unreliable, our schools are falling apart, and all the agencies we deal with are underfunded and understaffed.

The Democrats failed to address the fact that social security is underfunded because the lavish tax cuts to themselves and the richest 1% in this country have caused Congress to keep robbing 40% of every worker's OASDI payment to mask the shortfall.

The Democrats have a lot to be proud of before 1968. Since then, they've been the rest on the laurels, ignore the base, do nothing party. The GOP has walked all over them because the GOP offered people tax cuts. The Democrats offered them NOTHING.

[Peace Patriot]

15. Warpy, while I agree with your criticisms of the Democratic Party,

I don't agree that that is why the Democrats lost elections in 2000, 2002 and 2004. See my post below. The MJ author is missing the obvious.

[LightningFlash]

16. They have done more then that by re-districting....

The re-districting laws must be changed. :thumbsdown: :mad: :mad:

[xray s]

6. is your 16% figure based on the population of half of the states?

If so, those 50 Senate seats are actually elected by about 8% of US citizens, since only about 50 to 60% of the public votes.

[NoodleBoy]

7. got the figure from a Paul Krugman column, haven't sourced.

[Peace Patriot]

9. I don't know. Any article entitled, "Why Democrats Will Keep Losing," that

doesn't begin with major Bush donors and campaign chairs owning and controlling all vote tabulation with secret, proprietary software, is like an article entitled, "Why Slaves Remain Slaves" that fails to note that slave-owning was "legal" and was enforced on pain of death. You could argue that slaves didn't have the skills necessary to survive as free people, that illiteracy kept them from understanding and asserting their rights, that they owned no property, that they were easily identifiable by their skin color and thus couldn't "blend in" to white populations elsewhere, that the deck was stacked against them, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc. All good reasons for why most slaves didn't rebel or flee. But if you left out their condition of being "legally" owned by their slavemasters--a condition enforced by the entire violent power of the white minority and its government--and the mortal penalties for rebelling or fleeing, you have left out just about everything, haven't you?

The Democrats will keep losing because Bush partisans own the voting system. It's that simple. With valid and transparent elections, Democrats would control the White House and the Congress, and the governments of most of the states, because Democrats and Democratic Party policies are favored by the great majority of people in the country (as all polls attest--60% to 70% of Americans disapprove of every major Bush policy, foreign and domestic--from the Iraq war, to Social Security, to the federal deficit, to torturing prisoners. You name it; Bush does NOT reflect majority opinion on it).

The Democrats blew the Republicans away in new voter registration in 2004, nearly 60/40. You can't tell me that we wouldn't have won an honest election--and this in spite of the deck being stacked against urban areas and Democrats in numerous ways.

So, once again, the lib press just doesn't get it. And it continues to amaze me that they don't. How could supposedly smart people be so dense?

[rwenos]

11. It's Like How the PAN took Down the PRI in Mexico

Who'd a thought an American political party would look to a Mexican one for inspiration? But in fact the PAN -- Vicente Fox et al. -- decided they' have to win an election by at least ten percentage points to take down the PRI. As you will recall, the PRI ran Mexico like Al Capone ran South Chicago, for about 70 years. The PAN probably won a Presidential election in the late 1980's, but for PRI fraud. Finally, the PAN took the PRI down the old-fashioned way -- by getting so many votes it would be too obvious for the PRI to fix the election again.

We've had two straight fixed presidential elections. It's time for us Dem's to find a winner candidate and UNITE! Another election like the last two and the Pub's are going to cancel elections outright.

[kster]

14. Thanks Peace Patriot

tell them like it is, electronic vote eating machines controlled by the republicans.Thats why the Dems lost period, F*ck all this gibber gabbish.

[glitch]

17. This post is so good - you should send it to MJ. nt

[Time for change]

19. So true

The issues discussed in this article are miniscule compared to the evidence of election fraud in 2004 and its potential for future elections.

The disadvantage of the Dems in the Electoral College accounts for about 20 electoral votes. Few presidential elections are decided by that margin, and it is highly unlikely that a popular vote victory of 1-2% will result in less than that margin. But we have no idea what percentage of votes the Republicans now have the capability of stealing. I would be unconfident of any election where our REAL margin of victory is less than 10%.

[LightningFlash]

13. Demand that they rebuke these laws for re-districting!!!!

Immediately start picketing, rioting, and demanding they take back the laws for this god-awful hubris!!!!

http://houseofscandal.org

Make your outrage heard loud and clear!!!!! http://www.democrats.org

:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: Fix this problem with FULL election reform!!!!!! :banghead: :thumbsdown:

[Name removed]

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[MelissaB]

20. Powerman, welcome to DU.

:hi: I hope you spend time reading in this forum.

Kerry wasn't a good candidate? humm....