On today’s BradCast: If the Republican Party wins a narrow majority in the U.S. House following this week’s nowhere-near-a-red-wave midterm elections, will it have been because of gerrymandering? Our guest today explains why the answer to that question is unequivocal. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]
First up, however, a few observations on how Fox “News” uses its smartphone app to insidiously further brain-poison followers with rightwing propaganda and disinformation. Today’s example: How very encouraging news from the federal government on the economy, with signs that inflation may be easing, sent the stock market soaring. But for duped users of the Fox “News” app, it became just more terrible news about the economy injected straight into their brains.
Next, we get caught up on the latest reported results from the ongoing tabulation of very tight Senate (and Gubernatorial) races in Arizona and Nevada, which, along with the critical December 6th U.S. Senate runoff election in Georgia will determine control of the upper chamber of Congress for the next two years.
Also, an update on the vote counting in Colorado‘s 3rd Congressional District where far-right Rep. Lauren Boebert — listed in the New York Times’ “Republicans expected to win easily” column this year — has regained a razor-thin 0.38% lead over Democratic challenger Adam Frisch. That, after she was losing by just 64 votes overnight out of more than 300,000 counted.
In all of those states — Arizona, Nevada and Colorado — Democratic advocates are suggesting confidence that remaining untallied votes will secure victories for their candidates in most of those races, including those in which tallies show them trailing at the moment or just barely ahead. I’m dubious about some of those claims, but we’ll see if they’re right and which of the races end up in recounts as the grueling battles for narrow control of both chambers of Congress continues.
When it comes to the House, however, given the limp performance by Republicans on Tuesday, it’s become clear that if they regain a majority there, it will only be due to gaming the electorate through both extreme partisan and racial gerrymandering…with the help of corrupt courts at both the state and federal level.
We’re joined once again today by redistricting expert and author DAVID DALEY, a Senior Fellow at FairVote. In an article on this today at The Nation he describes how aggressive — and frequently unlawful and unconstitutional — gerrymandering by GOP legislatures in several “red” states following the 2020 Census, in concert with corrupt rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court and several state high courts, is to be credited for what most currently see as a likely, if very narrow, GOP takeover of the U.S. House. He calls it a “rigged House majority.’
“Republicans really won the redistricting wars,” Daley tells me today. “Their partisan and racial gerrymanders won them more than enough seats to make up the difference between the two parties in what was essentially a jump ball election. By having gerrymandered maps in Florida, Ohio, Texas, Georgia; by having courts put a thumb on the scales for them in Alabama, Wisconsin, Louisiana and elsewhere; and by having blue state courts not allow Democrats to engage in the same kind of anti-democratic behavior, Republicans were able to take enough seats to take the House.”
He explains: “Once you start adding up all of the states that Republicans claimed either through extreme partisan gerrymandering, and what the federal courts and the state courts gifted them; when you take the four seats in Florida, a couple seats in Ohio, a couple in Texas, in Tennessee, and Wisconsin; when you take the seats that Republicans bulldozed or hijacked from independent commissions in Arizona and Iowa, you’re looking at somewhere between 12 and 14 seats — which, I think, will probably end up being something close to twice what the ultimate majority in the House ends up being.”
Finally today, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with news on the rare, late-season Hurricane Nicole, which slammed into Florida’s eastern seaboard overnight and a round-up of climate related victories and losses in Tuesday’s midterm elections…
“In ‘ancient’ history (January 2009) Dredd Blog began to warn of a political overthrow of the machinations of voting in the U.S.A.” (Gerrymandering – Geological Deceit? – 7).
I need to correct one thing too many people, including you, have been saying about our new governor, Maura Healey. She is the first woman elected governor in Massachusetts, but not the first to serve.
Jane Swift was the pregnant lieutenant governor back when her boss, Paul Cellucci, was named Ambassador to Canada by W. I believe she’s the first governor ever to give birth in office (to twins, no less). She ran for election but was rudely elbowed out of the way by Mitt Romney. I used to give my Republican friends grief that the reason they didn’t support her for governor was because she actually wanted to be governor, unlike the other Republicans who won that office. Charlie Baker, our soon-to-be-former governor, finally broke that rule.
There’s one silly difference between Charlie Baker and Maura Healey. Charlie Baker is 6’6″, but Maura Healey, a foot shorter, was the professional basketball player.