DescentBB

Is anyone else just about sick of this stupid question?!?
The answer is, we are no more divided than we have been for at least the last 50 years!
Half of america is too young to vote...half of those old enough to vote don't even bother with it... so that leaves 25%, aproximately 12.5% on each side who are only slightly more equally divided than we were 12 or 16 or 20 years ago!

The reason for the more even division is probably due to the stagnation brought on by a two party system that has distilled our political process into the essence of mediocrity.
And the reason the division seems to be so prevalent now is because of the 24 hour 7 days a week news cycle that must feed itself like a flesh eating virus at a weight watchers convention.

Fortunately for the planet I've discovered a way to heal the nation!
There is a small button on the box-that-talks-with-pictures in your living rooms, if you find the right button you can turn the box off!!
Find the button and turn off the box. If everyone would leave it off for at least 6 months the bad men will go away!

Too bad the zombies wont ever do that, so we'll just have to do it for them

I'm gonna get one of those things so I can kill the damned rap blaring TV's in the college cafeteria here.

The media makes more money on a close race.

With respect to partisan politics, I've been hearing a lot about "gerrymandering" lately.

My vague understanding of this is that political parties will rearrange voting boundaries to better control the outcome of elections. The result of this is that you have congressional districts with more of the extremes, and less centrism. Both parties are guilty of this, apparently.

The follow-on theory I've heard is that over the past decade, gerrymandering of districts has polarized districts so much that politicians never have to appeal to the center.

In the past, elected officials would tend to moderate their right/left leanings after an election, to satisfy the moderate nature of their constituency (and probably also because it's just plain practical and sensible to be moderate. There are always devils in the details that idealism cannot account for). However, if your district leans heavily to the right or left, there's no need to balance the opposition, so the moderation never happens.

It's an interesting and disturbing idea at the same time, because it implies that the polarization we seem to be experiencing is permanent - and who knows what the long term effect will be.

MehYam, a good example of that very process you're speaking of was the situation in Texas where the Democrats left the state because of redistricting. It's common practice to redraw lines after a census but it's usually majority controlled, which of course, means nobody knows what to do. Both sides do it to their advantage.

But to the disadvantage of the system overall, it seems like.

I realize this is somewhat off topic, but I can't resist...

Redistricting is not "to the disadvantage of the system". However, redistricting in such a way as to artificially inflate one party's numbers is. That's what Gerrymandering is (named for "Gerry" - the guy who first did it, and "salamander" - which is what one of the districts he drew looked like on a map.)

Normally, district maps are drawn up so that each district has roughly the same number of people and so that people are from basically the same type of area (you don't want a district that has like, the eastern half of a large city, plus a whole bunch of farmland.) The goal, from a "fairness" perspective, is to have the legislature's makeup (party-wise) fairly closely resemble the makeup of the people.

Normally, the district lines are drawn up reasonably fairly after a census. But, sometimes, a partisan-controlled legislature will create an unfair advantage for their own party. This is what we call Gerrymandering.

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Take, for example, the mythical state of East Monkeyland (population 1000), and two parties, the Turtles and the Geese. About 600 of East Monkeylanders support the Turtles, and 400 support the Geese, so of the 10 districts in Monkeyland (each containing 10% of the population), you'd hope the Turtles get 6 representatives and the Geese get 4. But, a while back, the Geese gained control of the legislature (because back then there were only 500 people in the land, and 400 supported the Geese -- there's been a big influx in Turtle supporters recently.) They got to draw up district lines for the upcoming elections. Here's the way they did it:

Districts 1-7: 57 Geese supporters, 43 Turtle supporters each
Districts 8-10: 100 Turtle supporters

This means the Geese control 7 districts and the Turtles only control 3 (a 7-3 advantage for them) even though the breakdown should be a 4-6 disadvantage.

So, that's what a Gerrymander is: drawing district lines in order to give your party an advantage it really shouldn't have.

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With respect to what's going on in Texas: from what I understand, even though Texas is a pretty Republican state, the Democrats have controlled the legislature for quite a while, and after each census they've managed to put their own gerrymandered districts in place so as to hold that advantage. Now, very recently (but after the last census) the Republicans managed to gain control of the legislature, which they should've had a long time ago if the lines were drawn fairly. So, they've come up with their own plan to redistrict Texas.

Now, of course, they're doing the same thing to the Democrats that the Democrats did to them -- instead of getting 45% of the senators from their 55% of the vote (under the Democratic gerrymander) they'll get more like 65% of the senators from their 55% of the vote. (I googled this article, which describes the situation fairly reasonably, though the political theories at the end are questionable.) It's interesting to notice how big of a shift that leads to, and how quickly -- over time, control of the legislature should have been slowly shifting in the R direction, but instead, the D's held it for a lot longer than they should have, and have now suddenly lost it and the pendulum has swung too far the other way.

I think gerrymandering is lame, no matter who does it. But it's kind of nice to see the party that invented it (more accurately, the party that came from the party that invented it -- see here, which actually looks like a very good reference on gerrymandering) and abused it for decades is suddenly becoming the victim.

Texas was a sovereign nation for 9 years.

Birdseye wrote:Texas was a sovereign nation for 9 years.

And before that it was mexico

California was a soverign nation for 6 days (or something like that). What's your point?

Lothar you do a wonderful job of explaining issues and your research is second to none.


Good Grief!! GET A LIFE!! This is a web site based on a 10 year old video game!

Ford Prefect wrote:Lothar you do a wonderful job of explaining issues and your research is second to none....

Same with his wife. Can you imagine how smart their children will have to be to pull the wool over Mommy and Daddy's eyes?!?

Back on topic. The division we see presently may simply be due to the pendalum of ideology swinging back to a more conservative stance. Liberalism has had its sway since the 60's and now we are at the point where conservatism is gaining ascendancy. It may take another election cycle or two before we see a clear preference of our nations voting population but with at present a conservative president, senate and house it seems pretty clear what direction we are heading towards. It will be interesting to see how the final poll shakes out.

and it's funny, with the GOP in all places, we have the largest deficit, fewest jobs since the Depression, shall we continue?

Zuruck wrote:and it's funny, with the GOP in all places, we have the largest deficit, fewest jobs since the Depression, shall we continue?

With what? The economic recovery and fight against global terrorism? Sure, I'm all for it!
Or the demagoguery and blatent lies that you're spouting? Please, no thanks it's getting old and I'm embarrased for you.

Ummm...I am wrong about the deficit and the job situation? I guess I've been watching Al Franken every single day and not watching the real news huh Will? Obviously, whatever is streamed to your house wherever you may live is the real truth and everything looks good down there. Last time I heard, the budget deficit for this fiscal year is close to 450 billion? Am I wrong? You can't use the terrorist attacks to mask everythign Bush has done. Some of it was not his fault, I know the economic cycle was not in his grandest favor when he came in, but he has not done anything to help it. Have his tax cuts jump started the economy the way he said it would? I don't think so...

"With what? The economic recovery and fight against global terrorism? Sure, I'm all for it!
Or the demagoguery and blatent lies that you're spouting?"

Will I have explained several times why the president's tax cuts were not very effective and the jobs numbers back that. Blatant lies? Give me a break. Bush is an economic disaster, I'll prove it to you all die if you'd like.

Because half of it is populated by morons.

Mormons? Leave religion out of this.

With the country more polarized than ever and with the media making more money on the race, I'm curious how much the voter turnout will increase?