John Greenan

We don’t need just the people who still have brains, we need a majority. (Paraphrasing Adlai Stevenson)

Would make a great TED Talk 🤔

Because he’s ENTITLED to those seats!!!

So really only eight states in play? California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, New York, Washington, and ?

When your goal is 1850, that’s what you end up with

Thank you

Yes. But still less than the 10s of millions of Stalin and Mao

Why imagine when you can just look at the United States?

I’m not making any case. The numbers are what they are.

I doubt that I could. I probably could if I just assumed every state with a trifecta gerrymandered every seat for the majority party and compared that to the current situation, but I don’t think that’s accurate. For example New York would require a constitutional amendment and that takes time

Is it possible for you to show your work? Or a source if it isn’t your own work? I’d like to see how it falls out

I imagine that both parties have someone doing the work to determine what each party could do in the way of gerrymandering. It would be interesting to know

That was the point of my parenthetical remark. It does take a change to existing law but it’s reasonable to assume that will happen

Only if they still don’t vote for it

Yes, at least in theory (if the Supreme Court allows minority districts to be eliminated). I think completely eliminating the representation of the minority party may be more difficult in practice. There’s always the risk of creating competitive districts that could be lost.

Interesting but it wouldn’t be a trivial task to determine the most each party could gerrymander. It depends on state population, laws and the extent to which they are already gerrymandered, along with other factors that I am probably not aware of

Not often I run into someone substantially more pessimistic about the future in the US than I am. But I think we’re looking at numbers more in the range of Putin, Erdogen or maybe even Orban (if we’re lucky), not Stalin or Mao.

Yes, but you can’t gerrymander Wyoming

Kamala never managed to do that

So far

My state is completely screwed. I am worrying about the national government

I understand your opinion as a resident of Ohio, but I hope you can understand that those of us in the rest of the country feel differently

Another person who prefers virtue signaling rather than accomplishing anything of substance. It’s this waste of effort and misunderstanding of process that will cause us to lose again.

So, your idea is just to pretend 47>53?

Talk about a losing strategy.

Could be worse. We didn’t opt for Soylent Green.

My whole point is those votes aren’t anything that matters. You can make a case either way, depending on the state you represent, your relationship with your Republican colleagues (or lack of one), whatever. But since I don’t think it’s important, I don’t think I’ll spend more time discussing it.

I think it was a reluctance to break the norms of the Senate’s method of operation, same as retaining blue slips on nominees for US attorneys. I don’t have any way of knowing the source of that reluctance.

Not much at the moment in the Senate but working with Hawley to get the ban on stock trading was something. The Texas House breaking quorum is important. Pritzker’s support is important. Newsom trying or at least threatening to redistrict matters. Forcing Johnson to adjourn the House matters

No. But the Republicans could have, and didn’t, overrule the Parliamentarian with a simple majority vote.

The Democrats used the Byrd Rule to eliminate a number of noxious provisions from the Reconciliation Bill. It was still a terrible bill but it could have been even worse. I don’t have time to go into all of the changes but the information is out there if you really want it