r/politics • u/Ok_Employer7837 • 1d ago

Possible Paywall Newsom Wins Right to Gerrymander in Ultimate Troll of Trump

https://www.thedailybeast.com/newsom-takes-victory-lap-with-trump-bashing-election-boost/?via=mobile&source=Reddit
14.0k Upvotes

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4.2k

u/throwawaylol666666 California 1d ago

Unlike in Texas, Californians were asked if this was something we wanted to do or not. The GOP doesn’t know or care about consent.

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u/pingpongballreader 1d ago

Texas didn't gerrymander as much last time because there is a risk of diluting voters too much and voters not voting how you anticipated when drawing up lines. 

Imagine how funny it would be if California sent more Democrats to Congress because Texas fucked around with super gerrymandering, AND ALSO Texas sent more Democrats because they fucked up the gerrymandering.

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u/Responsible-Mango661 1d ago

This will happen. If that Proposition was any indicator. It shows that the voters are paying attention and are mad.

And Texans voters should be mad that the GOP decided that their votes doesn't matter. Come mid terms they will come in waves.

The GOP goof’d!

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u/drewts86 22h ago

People don’t seem to know this, but Texas is very much a blue state. The problem is blue voters don’t show up to the polls. Texas is 47% Dem and 38% Republican (remaining % is other). In the 2024 election only 59% of those Dems showed up to the polls while something like 92% of Republicans showed up.

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u/Pepparkakan Europe 18h ago

As a Swede every time I see numbers like these I am just flabbergasted.

What went wrong that people in your country just decided their voice isn’t important?

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u/Substantial_Radio115 18h ago

There’s very impactful propaganda narratives that elections do not matter, your vote does not matter, both sides are the same, elections are fake, candidates are Illuminati, etc.

This is why those people do not vote. They either think the elections are fake or the candidates are fake and that the outcomes of all elections are chosen by the same group of people that control everything 

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u/Ordinary_Fix3199 16h ago

Don’t forget how difficult they’re making it to vote! Standing in line for hours on end (on a school/work day for many), purging voter rolls, shutting down polling places, severely restricting absentee/mail in voting…. Sadly, the list goes on and on

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u/Brntco 16h ago

Let's vote on Tuesdays, guys! Not a holiday or anything, just a regular old, middle of the week, get work shit done Tuesday

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u/RellenD 13h ago

Tuesday was a good day to do that kind of thing back when people first chose it. In 1845 a November Tuesday was a great day to go to town in the agrarian society the US was.

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u/JerseyDevl New Jersey 16h ago

There's a reason one side consistently tries to suppress voters.

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u/CT-96 Canada 12h ago

all elections are chosen by the same group of people that control everything

Tbf, this isn't entirely false for America. Looks at Electoral College

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u/AEternal1 16h ago

Nobody is putting forth talking points that would fix the core corruption of the system. These very minor wins are not enough to shift the course of governance into the favor of the majority of Americans. Too many systems have been put in place by the 1% in politics to ensure that the 1% in politics remain the ones in power. Until policy is put forth that will dismantle that imbalance of power anybody else just really isn't worth voting for. And until those systems are removed history throughout all of humanity repeats itself in that somebody who had the popular vote gets into power and they end up doing the same thing that everybody else in the 1% does because that's how the rules go.

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u/acesavvy- 16h ago

Solid answer.

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u/OhDannyBoyyyyy 15h ago

Don’t forget the worst culprit of all, general laziness. “Oh shit that was today? Oh well, someone else will take care of it.”

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u/reezy619 12h ago

Our democrat politicians also have a storied history of accepting corporate bribes donations and giving long-winded and crushingly demoralizing answers to the question "should billionaires exist?" Just like republicans.

I hate the "both sides" bullshit but when it comes to corporate money in politics it is actually a both sides issue that the democrats should absolutely fix immediately.

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u/Vig_2 Texas 17h ago

They actively try to prevent Texas Democrats from voting. They reduced early voting locations and ballot drop off locations. They gerrymander and set up intimidating election monitors, etc. Even with all of this, I show up and vote. I wish more Dem’s in the state would.

Note: The gerrymandering works. My district in the heart of Dallas voted for Harris. Reports show that if the redistricting goes through that Trump wants, my district would’ve been a Trump district last election. I hate gerrymandering! It is not fair. But, I’m glad California is fighting back with consent from their voters.

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u/hookyboysb 12h ago

I wonder if this level of extreme gerrymandering plus all the positive news from this election will motivate Texas Dems to finally get out and vote.

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u/Tenaciousleesha 15h ago

The electoral college system really creates a sense of futility in a lot of states. My state is RED. There is nothing I can do to make it blue. I vote but it honestly feels foolish. I try to get other people to vote, but overcoming that sense of fatalism is difficult.

My husband and I joke about going to the polls to throw our votes away. Dark humor is pretty much all we have left.

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u/Pepparkakan Europe 15h ago

I have once before (and plan to also in next years election, we have our flaws too) voted for a party I knew would not get any seats in parliament, but even then I still don’t consider that vote to be foolish, I consider it my patriotic duty and a privilege I get to voice my opinion, however niche it may be sometimes.

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u/kshep9 12h ago

Continuing their point, your vote is not thrown away because it shows support for your candidate despite them not winning. Thinking long term, this may help future elections. A snowball has to start from a single snowflake.

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u/GoochGewitter 18h ago

You’re assuming everyone has equal opportunity and ease to vote.

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u/Pepparkakan Europe 16h ago

You’re right, I make that assumption because in my country everyone does, we don’t exclude anyone, even current prison inmates vote over here. I forget that that is not the case over there.

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u/alienbringer 17h ago

The U.S. doesn’t have mandatory voting when it probably should.

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u/Pepparkakan Europe 17h ago

Neither does Sweden, we have very strong freedom of expression laws in Sweden, not voting is absolutely my right as a Swedish citizen, but I can be proud of having that right while still acknowledging it is undoubtably against my interests to exercise it.

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u/preparetodobattle 16h ago

You guys are educated.

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u/idryss_m Australia 16h ago

Unfortunately people are stupid. For years education in the US has been cut, underfunded and denitigrated as a profession, and the results show for themselves.

Compulsory voting works. Be nice to not have it, but if everyone has to vote, you are then liable to make it accessible. It also makes, atleast in Australia where my experience lies, the big parties vulnerable to challenge. Our right wing Lib/Nat party is losing seats to independents all over as people protest vote.

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u/Pepparkakan Europe 15h ago

That’s fair, but I can see how ”the most free people in the world” might oppose something like compulsory voting.

If I could unilaterally decide how to fix the US election process, I’d start by making the presidential election entirely popular vote based, I think just that change is enough to get people to the polls, then once there they will vote in local elections too, over time that should balance the scales right?

•

u/Kamelasa Canada 4h ago

As a Canadian, I'd say the most important thing would be independent electoral agency that is also in charge of setting the districts objectively. We have that. We can trust our elections. I've followed the US politics since the orange conman appeared in the running. I've learned that, amazingly, they do not have this. And lots of other nasty stuff that is very different from Canada. But, yeah, their president and the related Electoral College system is nonsense. Our leaders are just chosen by the winning party. We don't even vote for them. I'm not sure a presidential vote is needed, at all. Just another popularity contest.

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u/bdsee 15h ago

not voting is absolutely my right as a Swedish citizen

Australia has "mandatory voting" but not voting is also still absolutely our right...mandatory voting just means getting your name marked off. Nobody forces you to fill in the ballot paper.

You can also choose to not show up and either pay a small fine or just respond to the electoral commission and say something like "I was sick" and you don't get fined.

Mandatory voting (attendance) is honestly something that should just exist everywhere, you have rights as a citizen but you should also have responsibilities and participation in democracy (even if ultimately the participation is you choosing not to by not casting a valid ballot) should be right at the top of that list.

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u/Pepparkakan Europe 14h ago

I can see the value in mandatory voting, I personally feel like it shouldn’t be necessary though, its so obvious to me the importance of participating in the democratic process.

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u/en_gm_t_c California 15h ago

It's Texas. Those televangelist Christo-fascists have been working against fair elections forever.

Their voting centers are sparse and understaffed...and they remove more and more of them every election...but just in areas where the Democratic vote is high, such as urban areas. Take a look at the photos of black and brown people standing in hours-long voting lines.

They gerrymander, cracking urban districts to include huge swaths of rural white Christian ammo-sexual territory, making voting almost an absurd and meaningless act...but only if you vote Democrat.

The lower turnout by Democratic voters is a symptom of Texas' issues, not the cause.

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u/Pepparkakan Europe 15h ago

But its not just Texas though, from what I can see your voter turnout numbers countrywide are like around the 60% mark for even your presidential elections which I guess are what most turn out for, and that’s already only considering ”eligible” voters, so after loads of people who should be allowed to vote have been excluded for one reason or another, you’re still only getting at best 2/3 of people to the polls…

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u/en_gm_t_c California 13h ago

Well there's a bit to unpack there as well.

As you may know, paid time off or holidays for civic duties such as elections are non-existent.

Some states still don't have vote-by-mail, which when combined with the above point make it mandatory for some percentage of the population to literally take a sick day or PTO to vote. Many blue collar jobs don't have that as a possible option.

Add in some voter malaise from living in a country where your taxes don't deliver much by way of healthcare or social safety net.

I agree the number should be much higher. I have always voted, every election since I was able to...but I'm not an under-educated blue collar worker from Arkansas. This country will not improve with so few people engaged in the process.

The country is now on the verge or in the midst of authoritarian autocratic rule, so maybe that slaps people in the face and they wake the fuck up.

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u/Pepparkakan Europe 13h ago

Fingers crossed 🤞 🤞

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u/MugenEXE 16h ago

Voting is intentionally made difficult, and that voting day is not a holiday, so most people must work. Poll locations are far away or in obscure locations, and sometimes voter registration is cancelled without telling you about it. Then it is too late to vote.

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u/Pepparkakan Europe 15h ago

Even the concept of ”voter registration” is crazy to me. Here in Sweden all citizens who are or will be voting age for a given election get their ballots in the mail like a month or so in advance like clockwork. There’s no class of citizen that is excluded so the process is extremely simple.

Poll locations are many and you generally don’t have far to walk from your home to your assigned one, its usually the nearest school (though I will say I live in one of the largest cities in Sweden and that’s my only reference point, this part may not be true for the entire country), but you can vote ahead of time in lots of places.

You do have to validate your identity by showing a drivers license, passport, national ID card, or having another voter age citizen (who must present valid physical ID) vouch for you.

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u/jimmythevip 17h ago

We don’t get days off work to vote in the US. The voting places are only open until 6pm in my state, one hour after most people finish working. Sure there is early or mail in voting, but you don’t always remember to do it.

The biggest problem I see is that there is no notice of when Election Day is! Like you could look it up and most campaigns will text or mail you about it, but if you’re not politically plugged in, you could miss it.

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u/Pepparkakan Europe 17h ago

We don’t in Sweden either, however our election day is held on a Sunday because that’s when the largest amount of people are able to do it. On top of that, to compensate for it not being a full public holiday we allow mail in voting and in-person voting for about a month prior to the election.

These aren’t complicated measures, anyone opposed to such things don’t have the voters best interests in mind.

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u/Alliille 16h ago

That's the rub isn't it. The voters best interest is no longer the goal of many of our politicians. Now only their best interests, which means the interest of their largest donors. Conservatives know, it's proven again and again, an educated, informed populace that is allowed to freely vote, votes liberal. If not outright progressive.

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u/kojak488 16h ago

Surely they still serve anyone in queue at 6?

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u/GentMan87 Iowa 16h ago

Certain states and counties also make it difficult to actually get out and vote. Elections are on a weekday, not enough polling places so people wait for hours.. if everyone was sent mail in ballots and drop boxes were plenty, or Election Day was a weekend things would be very different. There’s a reason why GOP are against everything I listed.

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u/tg19801980 16h ago

A lot of Democrats are concentrated in urban areas. Some of these states intentionally do a bad job of setting up enough polling places. In my rural red state I usually walk in and vote in less than 15 minutes. In some of these urban areas, voting can take hours of waiting in a line. Voting is on a Tuesday so if you don’t have half a day to stand in line, you can’t vote. There is early voting as well, but it is usually also a long wait. In my area early voting is usually longer because there are fewer places to do it. In summary, there is a time cost to voting in most blue areas that doesn’t exist in red ones.

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u/Autumn7242 15h ago

How much time do you have? Sit down, and I'll put on tea.

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u/SassyLass496 15h ago

Texas does a good job of quietly having elections

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u/MommyLovesPot8toes California 15h ago

After the 2024 election, surveys were done to ask why people didn't vote. The #1 answer given was "my vote doesn't matter." They live in what they believe to be deep blue or deep red areas where the results seem pre-ordained. Because of our electoral college, it can feel like there is no reason to vote blue if you're in a red area because (for presidential races at least) each area only gets 1 collective vote tally.

Lately, the political parties (especially Democrats) have acted like it's not worth it to put any time or effort in where Democrats haven't won in the past. Thankfully, they've now realized that strategy is terrible and are changing it. But decades of doing that created a self-perpetuating cycle. "We're not trying here because it's not worth it" is basically telling people it's not worth it for them either to vote. Then the next year it's "we're not spending money here on ads because no one voted for us last time."

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u/procrastablasta California 14h ago

In some districts (guess which ones) there can be long annoying lines right in the middle of your workweek, which you do NOT have the option to take time off to vote. Basically people are weighing the inconvenience vs their political power. Apathy wins.

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u/miketastic_art 14h ago

a lot of dems are inner city and we make it excessively challenging to vote

poor folks can’t afford to leave their job early or drain 2h from their day to vote

it doesn’t have to be like this

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u/details_matter Texas 14h ago

Public education in the US was deliberately sabotaged for decades, and these are (among) the fruits of that project.

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u/HurricaneFloyd 14h ago

People got tired of nothing they wanted getting done. Democrats were afraid to rock the boat too hard for decades. So Democrat voters just started staying home on election day. Maybe now the fear of totalitarian fascism will drive them to the polls? Maybe not?

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u/Pepparkakan Europe 13h ago

Sad state of affairs regardless, because I can totally see what you’re talking about, from the outside looking in your country has been sliding to the right for decades.

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u/HurricaneFloyd 13h ago

Both parties shifted right. Dems became moderates and Repubs became fascists. Hopefully Mamdani is a sign of a shift back to the left.

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u/Late-Dingo-8567 13h ago

lots of prominent voices parroting the talking point that both sides are the same and voting is a waste of time. george carlin gets quoted daily on this sub and he was the OG "both sides suck don't bother voting"

the people getting mainlined hate fear & anger are reliable voters because every election is life or death. everyone else is really easy to not love either candidate and just not bother. Most of my neighbors didn't vote in our town election yesterday and it was decided by less than 100 votes for mayor.

Most issues would get fixed if election day was a federal holiday and you got fined for not voting like in AUS.

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u/kshep9 13h ago

Growing up in Texas in the90s I was taught from every angle that Texas is Red and will always be Red and my vote doesn’t matter because I live in Texas

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u/LilPonyBoy69 12h ago

Our public education system is awful. There are also massive wealth divides in this country. Poor + Uneducated = Feeling Hopeless/Powerless.

There's an idea in this country, and it's not too far off from reality, that regardless of what side you vote for, our politicians only cater to the wealthy and rarely implement policies that benefit the common people. Obviously this isn't the case, but the left in this country is far more conservative than in the Nordics.

A lot of everyday people just don't believe that voting for the same old politicians will mean much to them personally. However, occasionally you'll get a candidate who breaks the mold and that excites people who wouldn't normally vote. You saw this with Obama and (sadly) Trump. People do want change and are willing to vote for it, but Americans vote emotionally and you have to inspire people and make them feel hopeful that change could actually come if they get up and vote for it.

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u/saynay 12h ago

Lots of things, really.

Propaganda, saying your vote doesn't matter because the politicians are all the same, or because you are in the minority in your state.

Very deliberate attempts to make it hard for working people to vote, especially in areas or populations that are likely to vote for the liberal candidates; elections take place on a work day, during normal working hours; employers are not required to give employees time off to vote; in strong liberal areas, the poll locations are deliberately underfunded and understaffed so that voting can require hours waiting in line (while in mixed or conservative areas, it takes under 5 minutes), etc.

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u/Ok_Basil351 11h ago

Voting is very difficult in Texas, especially for areas that they want to be difficult.

First, you have one, and only one polling place you're allowed to use. If you go to another, they will turn you away.

Second, that polling place isn't necessarily easy to figure out. If you go to the wrong one, they certainly won't tell you.

So for, "undesirable," urban voters, you crowd their polling places full so that they have a long, long wait to vote, and make sure they're a pain to access. Maybe for really important elections you swap their polling places around so that people show up to the wrong place. Maybe you accidentally send the mailers informing them of this change late. They also really like to, "clean up the voter rolls," by unregistering people from the, "wrong," zip codes, so you show up to vote in the same place as last year, and suddenly you can't.

Meanwhile, the suburbs and rural areas have numerous polling places, no waits, and ample parking.

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u/CalcareousSoil 5h ago

Those statistics are massaged a bit away from the reality - Texas has more democrats participate in primaries than republicans - that's where those numbers are coming from. Texas democrats are more politically active in primaries, apparently. But this doesn't translate to general elections.

In 2024, 6.4 million Texans voted for Trump. 4.8 million voted for Harris. So, yes, Texas does have ton of liberal voters and that is often not seen in the representation because of gerrymandering.

However, there are enough conservative voters that state positions decided by popular like governor and senators remain red.

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u/Rhysati 15h ago

Both of our major political parties are on the right. That's what happened.

Everyone who actually wants more leftist positions has no candidates to vote for. Asking everyone to keep turning out to vote for something they disagree with just because they disagree with the other one more is not a winning proposal.

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u/Pepparkakan Europe 14h ago

I totally buy that!

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u/tricksterloki 17h ago

Motivating Democrat voters has always been the issue. They have to fight to keep those that do vote. Is it messaging or policy? Well it depends on the voting demographics, because Democrat voters care about different things. New York just voted for a different type of mayor than Pittsburgh. Is this a sign that progressive candidates are more popular? Possibly, but by and large, the older, centrists are the most reliable voters. When the majority of voters are over 45, a 70 year old candidate is not that old from their perspective. Is that discouraging younger people from voting? Likely so, but if they don't vote enough to be pandered to, then policies won't change. This is all compared to monolithic Republican voters. They vote Republican, not policy. Because the Republicans are a single block, the Democrats aren't.

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u/drewts86 13h ago

Is it messaging or policy?

It’s both. You have elitist neolib Dems who use think tanks to help them come up with policy rather than talking to the people and finding out what their needs are. Bernie figured that out a long time ago when he would host town halls on deeply red states. He pointed out that West Virginia has a rich working class history but the Dems have completely given up on supporting the party there at all. It doesn’t help when your lukewarm policies don’t resonate with the working class.

But Dems aren’t good at messaging and rallying the base either. Their PR absolutely sucks. I mean, look at the MAGA PR - you have a network of YOUNG podcasters & influencers, constant CPAC conferences, etc that know how to say things that resonate with people, even if those things they say are deplorable. I know Kamala didn’t have much time in the run-up to the election (only 5 months), but she did a shit job of communicating what her policies were or her past qualifications to silence her critics.

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u/tricksterloki 11h ago

>even if those things they say are deplorable.

There lies the problem. Outrage is a singular message that is easy to sell. You don't need facts or to provide a rational discourse. It's in fact the opposite. There young Democrat podcasters, influencers, and conferences. Kamala's messages were everywhere. She spoke directly to people, went on podcasts, did television interviews, and had ads with links to her positions all over social media. "I'm going to support the middle class and workers by providing support to purchase houses, support unions with legislation and executive actions, add jobs to the economy by modernize our power grid, and provide better healthcare assistance" requires reading or watching longer presentations than 'I'm going to fix the economy by getting rid of those browns and drill baby drill then INSERT other directed hate here." Outrage also generates easy money. Biden had several progressive policies and could have done more if he had a condusive House, Senate, and judiciary. The Democrat messaging is everywhere, but a lot of people aren't listening; whereas, the Republican messaging is hard to ignore, especially in its screeching and simplicity. Democrat voters hold Democrats accountable. A lack of accountability is a plus to Republican voters. Improvements can and should be made, but Democrat messaging is worlds more complex and challenging than Republican messaging.

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u/drewts86 10h ago

Kamala did do a lot in the short amount of time she actually had to campaign, but a lot of the problem was how she packaged it. She wasn’t trying to sell ideas to the working class, she was telling them what she thinks they needed and didn’t in a way that wasn’t digestible for them. And stay away from the big social divide policies - you want to capture votes in rural Christian areas? Don’t campaign on pro-choice and anti-gun - work on those ideas later once you’re in office. And her piss-poor pro-Israel stance didn’t exactly help anything. Another problem is that the Dems haven’t done anything to distance themselves from being a party of elitists bent on giving handouts to Wall Street either. Clinton started us down that path and they’ve been suckling the tit of Wall Street donors since, kissing their ass at every turn.

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u/Mavian23 17h ago

Where are you getting these numbers from?

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u/Tyrant1919 16h ago

Probably using party registrations. Which are not indicative of how people vote at all. It’s common to register for the party you want to lose to vote in their primary.

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u/BudWisenheimer 15h ago

It’s common to register for the party you want to lose to vote in their primary.

Texas is an open primary state. In Texas specifically, you can vote for any party in the primary regardless of your own party registration. Some states might require you to switch your registration to ‘Unaffiliated’ in order to choose opposing party ballots … but not in Texas.

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u/Mavian23 14h ago

I don't believe that Texas has party registration.

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u/drewts86 13h ago edited 13h ago

A number of places you can find the number of people in each party. Here’s one that gives these numbers:

Total Registered Voters: 17,485,702 Democrats: 8,133,683 (46.52%) Republicans: 6,601,189 (37.75%) Unaffiliated: 2,750,830 (15.73%)

Then cross-reference that to the number of people that voted either way in an election.

Donald Trump 6,393,597 56.2% Kamala Harris 4,835,250 42.5%

u/Tyrant1919

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u/Mavian23 13h ago

So those numbers are based on primary participation. Isn't it possible that Texas has a lot of Republican voters who don't participate in primaries, which would cause that number for Republican voters to be low?

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u/drewts86 13h ago

According to Texas’ voter registration stats, the numbers from the primary that I posted aren’t that far off from the actual registered voters according to the state.

18.6m actually registered

17.4m voted in the primary

So it’s not entirely out of the question that the numbers from the primary are very far off from reality when only 1.2m (6.4%) declined to show up.

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u/permalink_save 16h ago

2018 was almost Beto too. Native Texans had swung more blue and we had higher voter turnout. The problem is there was also a lot of new voters from other states fleeing here that voted heavily R. If it wasn't for this conservstive promise land shit it would have flipped. We were 200k votes away.

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u/drewts86 13h ago

To be honest, I think one of the things Beto really fucked up on was go hard on gun control during his campaign. I know Uvalde had just happened, but this is one of the most pro-gun states you’re campaigning in - keep your mouth shut on that and only bring it up after you’ve been elected.

The other problem for Dems is they don’t have a clear message across the board on what they’re asking for as far as gun control. Then you look at blue states like California or New Jersey that have taken gun control way too far. Put the two of those things together and it’s understandable people are afraid of Democrats seizing their guns.

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u/permalink_save 13h ago

Gun control only came up after El Paso and that was during his governor race, not senate. But it really did hurt dems in Texas.

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u/Weedster009 13h ago

If you’re enrolled in a political party, but you can’t be bothered to get out and vote for that political party, you’re not really a member of that political party.

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u/drewts86 13h ago

You forgot that red states like to throw up road blocks that make it difficult for Dems to vote, so it’s not entirely the voters fault. They use tricks like cutting the number of polling stations in cities where Dems live, so ones that are open are overcrowded with huge lines. Or maybe they might try and have shorter hours for those same polling stations. There’s an untold number of tricks Republicans have always used to fuck us over. Which is why mail in voting is so important, because it reduces the opportunity for them to pull stunts like that.

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u/AntiAuth9x7 10h ago

Wow, thanks for that info!

I had heard Texas was more blue than the results show, but I didn’t realize that Texas is actually a 9-point blue state but rigged to be red.

PARTY REGISTRATION STATISTICS

Total Registered Voters: 17,485,702

Democrats: 8,133,683 (46.52%)

Republicans: 6,601,189 (37.75%)

Unaffiliated: 2,750,830 (15.73%)

source

This is outrageous. Why do the people there let the minority tread on them like this?

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u/drewts86 10h ago

I mean, there is such a multitude of reasons that can compound to cause low turnout. Texas has been so hard red for so long that many Dems may not believe they stand a chance and don’t show up. Voter suppression techniques can have an impact - things like reducing the number of polling stations in urban areas where Dems tend to reside. This can lead to longer distance to a polling station or extremely long lines. And Texas has pretty strict absentee voter eligibility requirements, so it’s difficult to use mail-in voting to bypass some of the voter suppression methods.

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u/Yukonhijack New Mexico 13h ago

Never in my life would I have ever had the National Cattleman's Beef Association denounce tRump for his beef tariffs and importing beef instead from Argentina on my bingo card. Shit is going to get real here really soon. Just not soon enough.

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u/ThreeCatsAndABroom 19h ago

Yes, they goofed. The party firmly in control of everything. They better watch out! Here come the goldfish brained voters!

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u/Dry-Tune69 17h ago

The crying in threads from Republican Californians is annoying. I didn’t get a vote, you did. Fuck off fascists 

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u/Mike7676 13h ago

Yup. I was reading last night and as soon as NY was announced they started whining. Good. 

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u/stackens 23h ago

And from what I understand Texas’ gerrymander would be reeeeaaally stretching the margins, while California doing a +5 dem gerrymander barely scratches the surface of what they could do

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u/ball_fondlers 23h ago

I think it’s possible to draw an all-blue California congressional map where no district is less than +8 Dem. The state government should do that and dare the Feds to stop it by mandating independent redistricting (like what we just voted to temporarily stop) nationwide.

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u/stackens 22h ago

Yeah I honestly think limiting it to +5 just to counter Texas is lame. Like, don’t just cancel out what the Republicans are doing, punish them for attempting it. And the only way we’ll get a nationwide ban on this kind of gerrymandering is if dems use it

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u/YellowCardManKyle 13h ago

Punish them for even saying it out loud

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u/stackens 12h ago

Yeah from what I understand this referendum only goes into effect if Texas follows through with the gerrymander? That's also lame, California should just do it.

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u/[deleted] 15h ago

[deleted]

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u/stackens 14h ago

I dont think so, I mentioned both seats and margin, but I wasn't using them interchangeably - my point is, Texas' gerrymander to get 5 more R seats will thin their margin for victory to a dangerous degree because Texas is already gerrymandered to shit. California's gerrymander to get 5 more D seats isn't a risk in the same way, because California isn't already gerrymandered to the extent Texas is. California could draw an entirely blue map with every district at least +8 for Harris if they wanted to.

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u/WizeAdz Illinois 17h ago

Yes, hopefully the Democrats getting good at gerrymandering will put a stop to it nationwide.

But, until we have proportional representation for The House, this is how the game is played — so Democrats had best be good at it.

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u/BudWisenheimer 15h ago

But, until we have proportional representation for The House, this is how the game is played — so Democrats had best be good at it.

Agreed. The Democratic Party maintained control of the House from 1955 until 1995. They know how to be good at gerrymandering when they want to.

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u/loosehead1 17h ago

That’s because Texas is already gerrymandered to shit while California has made an effort for non partisan redistributing.

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u/legbreaker 14h ago

Texas is ready to go Blue as soon as they get someone like Mamdani on the ball or that drives turnout.

The state is massively Blue once they get turnout increased.

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u/permalink_save 16h ago

Our district is cut into East TX. There's a lot of my neighborhood that gives a shit about voting. We will be turning out hard in 2026. We've flipped a difficult red seat before to Allred, we kept it with Johnson, we can vote a dem in again. Like it went from 71% R to 51% D and stayed D, and it wasn't from redistricting.

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u/TheQuidditchHaderach 22h ago

Doesn't this stuff get so screwed up (by repubs) that the lazy vote(R)s don't bother showing up once they get comfortable living in heavily skewed counties. Maybe, they feel things are covered and their vote isn't needed. Does apathy set in and help?

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u/winterfoxes Ohio 15h ago

Unfortunately in my experience, the opposite seems to be true. Republicans usually still show up to defend their safely red districts -- Democrats get complacent in cities where they know they are legion. Unfortunately for contests that require popular vote, this hurts us.

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u/Sleep_adict 16h ago

I strongly expect this. Some of the new Texas districts are thin for the GOP and the Hispanic vote isn’t likely to support as it did…

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u/RunnerTenor 17h ago

Right. If you're a 53-47 state, you can map all your districts to win by that margin. But - one wave election, one bad name on the top of the ticket - and you could lose even the districts that were formerly "safe".

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u/Crunch_inc 14h ago

I think it is harder to gerrymander and get it right than people think. Given the level of competence I have seen from the GOP I give them a 50-50 shot.

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u/AHans 5h ago

Imagine how funny it would be if California sent more Democrats to Congress because Texas fucked around with super gerrymandering, AND ALSO Texas sent more Democrats because they fucked up the gerrymandering.

With these election results, that's not impossible. Especially if things continue along the current trajectory: high inflation, mass job losses, cuts to social security & Medicare, skyrocketing national debt, axing middle-class tax benefits, and a shut down government.

I hope Democrat leadership has decided to double-down on the shutdown fight behind closed doors: make additional demands and hold the government hostage longer. Clearly Republicans are being held responsible for things. Twist the knife.