Beto O’Rourke’s Message to Blue-State Governors on Redistricting: “Quit F—ing Around and Waiting”
“There’s no consequence or penalty for Trump redrawing the maps in Texas mid-decade,” the former statewide hopeful tells Texas Monthly. “Stop pretending like there is.”
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Beto O’Rourke: Governors in [blue] states all say some variation of “You better watch out what you do. If you do that, we’re going to strike back.” I would love, and I think the country would love, if Democrats got off the back foot and stopped reacting and responding with “If you do this, then I’m going to do that.” F— that. Take the offense—go after these guys. This is the game now. There are no refs; no fouls are going to be called. There’s no consequence or penalty for Trump redrawing the maps in Texas mid-decade. Stop pretending like there is. Stop waiting for them to do it when clearly, that’s what they’re going to do if we’re unsuccessful in this quorum break. We have an opportunity with Democratic governors to seize the initiative and not just wait to be hit and then to hit back, but start that redistricting process now, in California, in New York, and any state where Democrats control the governor’s mansion and the legislature. Quit f—ing around and waiting when you know exactly where this thing is going.
Yep
They want to focus on one battle at a time, because they don't want to win the war. The Dems he's complaining about take most of the same bribes as Republicans.
We passed the point of "hitting back" being enough decades ago.
Doesn't matter if Texas pulls this off, every blue state needs to start proactively fighting back
Like Beto said, if so.eone doesn't want to fight, they can get the fuck out of office. All they're doing is stopping someone else from fighting.
because they don't want to win the war.
[Citation needed]
We must do everything to tear down the republican traitor filth.
Yeah it really is fight fire with fire time
yes! Become the thing you wish to overcome.
Oh shut up.
We're past the point of being able to handle this any other way. We took the high road so many times the right can now set their watch to it. They understand that bad behavior will never be punished and "setting precedent" will mean nothing because Democrats will never use that precedent to act in a way that will give them any sort of unfair advantage.
If anyone has a way to defeat Republicans in a meaningful way without stooping to their level (gerrymandering, election denialism, obstruction, etc.) then I'd love to hear it. Otherwise, it's time for the Democrats to roll up their sleeves and prepare to fight in the mud to save what little is left of American democracy. There's still a chance to save the union without another civil war, but not if the opposition party doesn't show the willingness to fight.
Gerrymandering has been an obvious problem for decades. The only people that didn't see a problem are those congress critters that got elected to one. ("Well, it worked to get me elected so it's obviously not broken.")
The shape of my very blue congressional district in a very blue state most closely resembles projectile vomit on a linoleum floor.
Democrats have had multiple opportunities to fix this shit over the decades, and instead they've just been using it to their advantage wherever possible. The Fair Representation Act has been our best opportunity to fix gerrymandering, and it died in committee in every congressional session since 2017.
I would argue most of the elected representatives at the state and federal levels have no interest in fixing gerrymandering, because gerrymandering is what got them elected.
Missouri voted to get rid of gerrymandering. Of course the state overthrew it, and are now trying to crack another district because having a chokehold isn't enough of an advantage.
I'm pretty sure if the Democrats started playing the same game the Republicans are playing they'd dominate. They need to grow up, put on their big girl pants, and get back to governing instead of letting the republicans steal their lunch.
Democrats have already been playing this game. Illinois already only has 2 Republicans in the house, California uses a jungle primary that helps prevent Republicans from winning. New York has a lot of close districts already.
I wonder how many Republicans would be unseated with rank choice voting....
Probably not as many as you think. People simply underestimate the amount of stupid people in the US and the extend to which people hate Democrats because of their spinelessness.
Even now, at the night of Trump's bullshit, people hate Trump they don't love Democrats.
Because the current democratic leadership has no ideas, has no vision other than the status quo.
They are fucking opposing progressive candidates like the NY mayor.
We're truly fucked, stuck between fascists and neo cons disguised as Democrats.
The iron silo was erected in 1996 and we know they were working on it at least as far back as the '70s with Nixon, Ailes, Weyrich, et. al. The current conflict has not been contained within a culture war because the GOP does not want it to.
The redistricting war must happen next/now. Battle lines must be drawn out in open to reflect what the GOP has already implemented in secret in across the country. Bring it out in the open. Everything should be loud and obvious so nobody can hide from the reality of what happens next.
I've been screaming this since 2009.
Others have been screaming longer.
/signed.
Make it hurt. Stick it to the hilt and twist it.
There's an internal cost to gerrymandering that the moderate Republicans are paying in spades. The Dick Cheney wing of the party drew all these cloistered bright-red districts, only to see neoconservatives forced out of the party by their distilled MAGA base 20 years later.
I think conservative Democrats (of which Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochul are increasingly aligned) see a gerrymandered blue state majority presenting a similar threat. Rather than a rump caucus of Pelosis and Durbins and Cuomos, they'd be threatened with upstart campaigns from more Mamdanis and Soto-Martinezes and Ilhan Omars.
Who wants that?
So liberals will make noise about fighting fire with fire. But then they'll sit on their hands, fully aware that a MAGA majority benefits conservative Dems who can present themselves as "the only other viable alternative" in purple districts. They don't want to run more AOCs or Sanderses. They want more Slotkins and Schiffs and John Delaneys.
This is the game now. There are no refs; no fouls are going to be called. There’s no consequence or penalty for Trump redrawing the maps in Texas mid-decade. Stop pretending like there is.
The danger is not that Republicans will win. The danger is that the American tradition of democracy will be permanently damaged. Democrats can't avert that by becoming part of the problem. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that the only victory possible is a victory won despite refusing to resort to tactics of this sort. Anything else is a defeat.
Do you think the American tradition of democracy has not been permanently damaged and will not continue to be permanently damaged by Republicans in the future? These are completely legal tactics as adjudicated by the Supreme Court. There are no prizes for going high except watching the country descend further into authoritarianism.
The American tradition of democracy is exactly that - a set of traditions built up over centuries. It is more than just the law. Republicans have done and continue to do serious, permanent damage, and the main way in which they do that damage is by violating those traditions. If the goal is to stop the damage, the means of attaining that goal has to include the defense of traditions.
The danger is not that Republicans will win.
We literally have a masked police squad with more funding than most armies roaming the streets disappearing people including US citizens. Get your head out of the sand.
If only Democrats would actually fight like they believe in something more important than "the process".
America's tradition of democracy is dead, and it was always kind of a joke anyways. If the Democrats want to revive democracy then let them start with their own fucked up primary process. They have complete control over that, and it's even worse than the electoral collage fuckery.
It would be ideal to win without gerrymandering like it would've been ideal to become a nation without fighting a war with England.
Massive nitpick: Ideally America wouldn't have become a nation at all, or at least not when it did. The reason the War of Independence happened was because Parliament massively bungled the issues the colonies had with tax policy, not because America was fulfilling its destiny of independence against the wishes of Great Britain. It was only after Britain thoroughly and consistently messed up that the independence movement started gaining real steam.
The danger is that the American tradition of democracy will be permanently damaged
Republicans gaining power does damage, likely permanent damage. People will die. There's a concentration camp. Like, what are you even thinking
What traditions? The ones where “democracy” has been a long, bloody fight for anyone isn’t a specific kind of white person to get the right to vote? The ones where people vote for representatives that largely ignore them in favour of whichever rich person bribes them? The ones where gerrymandering have led to the GOP consistently losing the popular vote and still winning? The ones that saw Al Gore get the election stolen from under him in broad daylight with no consequences? The one that allows absurd levels of propaganda to flow and poison the country like raw sewage down a well?
The US wouldn’t know democracy if it were a freight train at full steam and the country was tied to the tracks. It’s a thin veneer we all know is full of shit.
Nah, that's horseshit. Sherman showed us how to respond to these traitorous freaks.
Democrats can’t avert that
by becoming part of the problem.
FTFY
The problem is already there: always was. Government was founded on sand: the rules for allocating votes were always unsound.