Last Call For Rodent Intercourse 101

The GOP operation to take over state legislatures and House districts has been an unqualified success on a scale that defines just how impossible it will be for Democrats to ever have control of the US House for at least another decade, and probably two. This excerpt from author David Daley's new book shows us just what abandoning Obama in 2010 cost us: the House may not be in play for another 15 or 20 years at the least. 

In July 2009 Chris Jankowski sat down at his Richmond home with the morning New York Times. It had been eight months since Barack Obama defeated John McCain in the presidential election, capturing Republican stronghold after stronghold and helping to usher in a Democratic supermajority in the Senate. On television and on the front pages of newspapers, pundits had openly questioned how the GOP would survive to the next election. Even the brightest conservative thinkers thought the 2008 results signaled danger for the GOP. 

That July morning, buried inside a story about state legislatures and census projections, Jankowski read something that made him think 2008 wasn’t so fateful after all: “2010 is not just any election year,” wrote Timescorrespondent Adam Nagourney, “it is crucial given that this class of governors will be in charge as their states draw Congressional and state legislative districts as part of the reapportionment process after the next census.” Jankowski immediately recognized the opportunity. As written in the Constitution, every state redraws all of its lines every ten years. That means elections in “zero years” matter more than others. Jankowski realized it would be possible to target states where the legislature is in charge of redistricting, flip as many chambers as possible, take control of the process, and redraw the lines. Boom. Just like that — if Republicans could pull it off — the GOP would go from demographically challenged to the catbird seat for a decade. At least. 

“I read it and I thought we could do this,” Jankowski told me. As one of the leading tacticians behind the Republican State Leadership Committee, Jankowski had spent years trying to arm-twist GOP strategists and donors to spend more on down-ballot races: state houses, state attorneys general, local judges. Those might not be the sexy elections to invest in, but donations that would be a mere drop in the bucket to a presidential or Senate candidate might make all the difference at the local level. And unlike gridlocked Washington, D.C., policy outcomes could actually be influenced in state capitals. 

Every state handles creating their district maps a little differently. Arizona, Iowa, California, Washington, Idaho, and New Jersey all use various commission models. But the vast majority of states leave redistricting up to some combination of the legislature and the governor. Jankowski looked for states that were likely to gain or lose seats after reapportionment, and would therefore be tearing up the old maps and starting from scratch with a different number of districts. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Texas, and North Carolina made that list. He looked for states where control was tight, and swinging just a handful of districts might tip the chamber to the Republicans, such as Wisconsin, Ohio, and Virginia, even New York. Then he checked for states where Republicans might control the legislature and the governor’s office, and would therefore be able to lock the Democrats out of redistricting altogether. He didn’t want a Democratic governor, for example, to be able to veto a plan. 

The annual report by Jankowski’s organization, the Republican State Leadership Committee, laid out the mission for the world to see: “Drawing new district lines in states with the most redistricting activity presented the opportunity to solidify conservative policymaking at the state level and maintain a Republican stronghold in the U.S. House of Representatives for the next decade.” 

“Our pitch document said, look, there are 25 true swing congressional districts,” Jankowski told me as we sat in the conference room of his Richmond offices. “We went back to those races from 2002 to 2008, and we found that $115 million had been spent on those 25 congressional races. All hard dollars. We had a graphic on the screen: 115 million hard dollars or $20 million in soft and we can fix it. We can take control of these 25 districts. We can take them off the table.” They called their project REDMAP.

Obamacare became the wedge issue to win those 25 REDMAP districts, and the rest became history. Democrats were completely, totally unprepared to deal with countering REDMAP in any way. Taking 25 districts turned into taking more than 60, plus the state legislatures needed to gerrymander the districts to become permanently Republican.

And the Democrats got slaughtered. 2014 made it even worse.  Now best case scenario is that Donald Trump is such an awful candidate that the Dems make headway, but that headway will almost certainly be lost in 2018.

It will take two, maybe three census redistricting cycles to undo what the GOP has done at the state level. Ironically the rise of Trump and the death of Justice Scalia may do more to save the country than anything the Democrats have tried to do in the last six years, or the next sixteen.

Wicked Webb We Weave

If you had former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb on your betting slip on "Which Democrat would come to Andrew Jackson's rescue on the $20 bill first" congratulations, you're a winner.

One would think we could celebrate the recognition that Harriet Tubman will be given on future $20 bills without demeaning former president Andrew Jackson as a “monster,” as a recent Huffington Post headline did. And summarizing his legendary tenure as being “known primarily for a brutal genocidal campaign against native Americans,” as reported in The Post, offers an indication of how far political correctness has invaded our educational system and skewed our national consciousness.

This dismissive characterization of one of our great presidents is not occurring in a vacuum. Any white person whose ancestral relations trace to the American South now risks being characterized as having roots based on bigotry and undeserved privilege. Meanwhile, race relations are at their worst point in decades.

Far too many of our most important discussions are being debated emotionally, without full regard for historical facts. The myth of universal white privilege and universal disadvantage among racial minorities has become a mantra, even though white and minority cultures alike vary greatly in their ethnic and geographic origins, in their experiences in the United States and in their educational and financial well-being.

Into this uninformed debate come the libels of “Old Hickory.” Not unlike the recently lionized Alexander Hamilton, Jackson was himself a “brilliant orphan.” A product of the Scots-Irish migration from war-torn Ulster into the Appalachian Mountains, his father died before he was born. His mother and both brothers died in the Revolutionary War, where he himself became a wounded combat veteran by age 13. Self-made and aggressive, he found wealth in the wilds of Tennessee and, like other plantation owners such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, owned slaves. He was a transformational president, hated by the reigning English American elites as he brought populist, frontier-style democracy to our political system.

I'm really not sure which is worse, Webb's revisionist views of Jackson, or Webb's revisionist views of race in 2016.  If you believe that white and black Americans share similar "educational and financial well-being" please do yourself a favor and go visit a black public school in your school district, and white one, and tell me they are in any way "similar".

Can't imagine why Webb got less than 1% of the Dem vote in this primary season, huh.

Bathrooms Going Bonkers

As predicted, after having lost on gay marriage, Republican bigots are rallying around state-level legislation denying trans rights in order to energize their hateful voters for 2016 contests and Ted Cruz is using it to try to save his failing campaign for the White House.

Transgender rights have become an unlikely and heated issue in the presidential campaign after North Carolina enacted a law that, among other things, mandated that people use the restroom that corresponds to the gender on their birth certificate.

Cruz has seized on Trump’s assertion that the North Carolina law, which also rolled back other protections for gay, lesbian and transgender people, was unnecessary and bad for business — corporations including PayPal and Deutsche Bank scrapped plans to create jobs in the state after the legislation was enacted. Trump said there has been “little trouble” with allowing people to use the restroom they want, though he later said that states should have the power to enact their own laws. Trump also said he would let transgender reality-television star Caitlyn Jenner use the women’s restroom at his properties.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich said he probably wouldn’t have signed the North Carolina law, while both Democratic candidates have condemned it.

“There’s been a significant amount of conversation about it on the presidential level,” said Cathryn Oakley, senior legislative counsel at the Human Rights Campaign, who said 50 anti-transgender bills have been filed nationwide this year. “In terms of it being new territory, the answer is yes.”

Cruz’s argument centers on the idea that allowing transgender women to use women’s restrooms would lead to deviants dressing up as women and preying on young girls. His campaign released an ad accusing Trump of capitulating to the “PC police” and asking viewers whether a grown man pretending to be a woman should use a restroom with your daughter or wife.

“Donald Trump thinks so,” the ad reads.

Cruz has woven his support of North Carolina’s law into his stump speech. There has been some backlash: A woman holding a “Trans lives matter” sign protested outside of a stop Cruz made in Allentown, Pa., on Friday.

Whether it's gay marriage 20 years ago or abortion issues ten years ago, the GOP has depended on measures designed to punish those people to get angry voters to the polls, especially in mid-terms.  It's worked in the past.  There's little reason to believe this won't continue to work in 2016, 2018 or beyond.

The notion that Trump-hating Republicans won't show up at the polls in order to get revenge on liberals is cute, but entirely wrong.  They'll show. They always do.
 

StupidiNews!

• President Obama will send around 250 special operations troops to Syria to battle ISIS in Syria by training and assisting local Syrian rebels.
• Convicted former Virginia GOP Gov. Bob McDonnell will appeal his conviction on federal corruption and bribery charges to the US Supreme Court this week.
• Republican presidential hopefuls Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. John Kasich have reached an agreement to team up to stop GOP front runner Donald Trump.
• Puerto Rico's economic crisis continues to worsen as the island's recession shows no signs of lifting and legislation in Congress to allow debt restructuring languishes in the GOP House.
• A federal appeals court has dismissed a lawsuit by Kansas parents to stop federal science standards based on evolution's "absence of religion" being "religious indoctrination."

Last Call For Open Threat Season

The closer we get to a Clinton v. Trump blowout that costs the Republicans the Senate and maybe even the House, the more open the threats get from the GOP towards Hillary Clinton.

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley suggested on Friday that the FBI might leak reports of its investigation into presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state.

Grassley, Iowa’s senior senator and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said an anonymous and unauthorized release of FBI investigative materials could result if officials at the agency believed prosecution of Clinton was stymied for political reasons.

“Is there going to be political interference? If there’s enough evidence to prosecute, will there be political interference?” Grassley wondered aloud during a breakfast meeting with the Des Moines A.M. Rotary club on Friday. “And if there’s political interference, then I assume that somebody in the FBI is going to leak these reports and it’s either going to have an effect politically or it’s going to lead to prosecution if there’s enough evidence.”

The senior senator’s musing came in response to a long answer to a very general question from one of the Rotarians about the status on inquiries into the email server and Clinton’s handling of the 2012 terrorist attack on a diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya.

Both issues for years have plagued Clinton, the leading Democratic presidential candidate.

When asked by Radio Iowa reporter O. Kay Henderson after the breakfast if he was suggesting the FBI should leak investigative findings, Grassley expounded on his comment.

“I wouldn’t be encouraging it because if it’s a violation of law, I can’t be encouraging a violation of law,” he said. “This is kind of my own opinion, this is something I’ve heard.”

Will no one rid Chuck of this troublesome Clinton?

Sure would be a shame if someone involved in the Clinton email nonsense went to the Republicans and laid everything out in order to try to affect the 2016 election.  Sure would be illegal if that happened but what can you do oh well wink wink.

If there was any actual evidence, don't you think we would have heard it by now, after nearly four years of this?  If the smoking gun existed, why not get rid of Hilary now and throw the Democrats into chaos?

Or are we waiting for an October surprise?

That's Some Class Sick Bernie

We've reached the "recriminations and blame" part of the Sanders campaign now that Bernie has finally figured out he's not going to win the nomination.

Confronted with poor performance in states with higher populations of low-income people, Bernie Sanders said his losses are due to those people not voting. 

"Well, because poor people don't vote. I mean, that's just a fact. That's a sad reality of American society," Sanders said in an interview with MSNBC's "Meet the Press" set to air in full on Sunday.

Stupid Poors! Why for you not vote Bernie more?

Host Chuck Todd had asked about rival Hillary Clinton's victory in 16 of 17 primary contests in states with the highest levels of income inequality.

“If we can significantly increase voter turnout so that low-income people and working people and young people participated in the political process, if we got a voter turnout of 75 percent, this country would be radically transformed,” Sanders said.

Sanders has often pinned his success rate to voter turnout. But he has lost among Democratic voters with household incomes below $50,000, 55 percent to 44 percent, across primaries where network exit polls have been conducted, according to the Washington Post.

Oh, so people making under 50k are voting for Hillary.  I guess they're not "real progressives" either, joining the ranks of the impure and unclean such as red state Democrats (who don't count), Southern Democrats (who reall really don't count), Democrats over 40 (who don't count), Dems making over $50,000 (who don't count and are probably all paid shills) and black Democrats (who never counted but if they would only do exactly what we tell them to do maybe they would).

Clinton still has massive problems, and I'm still wondering whether or not I even want to vote in next month's KY primary (as I fit into a number of groups above that mean I don't count), but Bernie needs to move into "graciously taking the loss mode" here and this is not how to do it. Even if he does have a point about 75% turnout, acting like people who don't vote for you are some sort of plague isn't the way to get people to turn out.

Sunday Long Read: Tiger By The Tale

This week's Sunday Long Read is Wright Thompson's fascinating ESPN piece on golf prodigy and legend Tiger Woods, and his fall from the heavens over the last ten years into despair and numerous affairs, and how the death of his father Earl, a former Green Beret, in 2006 all but broke one of the greatest to ever play the game.

THE DECADE SEPARATING the cemetery in Kansas and the marina in the Bahamas has seen Tiger lose many of the things most important to him, and the more time passes, the more it's clear he left some essential part of himself there in the ground between Miles and Maude Woods. How did all he'd built come undone so quickly and so completely? That's the question that will shadow him for the rest of his life. The answer is complicated and layered. He fell victim to many things, some well-known and others deeply private: grief, loneliness, desire, freedom and his fixation with his father's profession, the military. These forces started working in Tiger's life almost as soon as his G-IV landed back in Orange County after he buried his father's ashes. The forces kept working until finally his wife found text messages from Rachel Uchitel on his phone and he ran his Cadillac Escalade into a fire hydrant (that car, incidentally, is owned by a man in rural Arkansas, who bought it used from a local dealer, neither of whom knew its own secret history).

After Thanksgiving in 2009, his life split open in the most public and embarrassing way -- can you imagine having to talk about your sex life in a news conference with your mom in the front row? -- but that car crash wasn't the beginning of his unraveling. In an odd way, it was the end. Everything he's endured these past seven years, including admitting that his golf career might be finished, is a consequence of decisions he made in the three years after he lost Earl. He'd been hurtling toward that fire hydrant for a long time. On some level, he even understood what was happening to him, or at least was invested in understanding. There was a book in his car the night of the wreck, and it ended up on the floorboard, covered in shards of glass. Its title was Get a Grip on Physics.

The topic fascinated Woods. He'd long struggled to sleep, and when he wasn't texting or playing video games, he'd read, often military books about lone men facing impossible odds, such as Roberts Ridge or Lone Survivor, or books about theoretical physics and cosmology. The intro to Get a Grip laid out the basic rules of early science, from Newton and Galileo, focused on the concepts of friction and gravity. These had long interested him. Five-year-old Tiger once made a drawing that showed stickmen swinging different clubs, with the clubface sketched, as well as the flight path of the ball, including distance and apex.

That drawing is a window into something Woods himself perhaps still can't articulate; even at that age, he was curious enough to be thinking about physics. From the beginning, his golf talent has seemed to be an expression of his genius, not the genius itself. He is a remarkable person, and not because he once won 14 important golf tournaments, but because he thinks about how he came to occupy his particular space in the world. "He certainly had his mind open to big questions, such as who he was, or who anyone was," says a close friend who requested anonymity, "and had his mind open to the idea that sometimes the question is the answer." Six pages into Get a Grip, author John Gribbin sums up a truth governing both the world and the relationship between Earl and Tiger Woods: "There was a fundamental law of nature which said that, left to their own devices, things move in circles."

I am always reminded that Tiger is just a few months younger than myself and has been through more than I'll ever imagine.  My life is pretty sane compared to his at pretty much any point along the line, and I wonder just how high a cost the man has paid over the years to accomplish what he has.

He's lost a lot along that road, more than I would be willing to pay, which is probably why he's got 14 major golf championships and I have a 2nd place junior league bowling trophy from 30 years ago.

2016 Is Probably All Her Fault Anyway

As awful as the 2016 campaign season has been, it's good to know that eventually every pundit will come around to clickbaiting an article that's framed as blaming Hillary Clinton for everything that's wrong in our current political system.

At this point, even amid one of the most captivating political upheavals in recent memory, the election process of 2016 is starting to feel like an extended car ride with a group of people after the conversational possibilities have run out. We’re all buckled up, with a long way to go, but everyone’s most irritating habits are already out in force. We’re feeling candidate fatigue, a malady first observed in the 1980s, perhaps earlier, and it’s the inevitable consequence of an exceptionally drawn-out political process combined with ample media coverage.

Candidate fatigue strikes people at different times. People were already complaining of Al Gore fatigue in 1999, and the complaints were deafening by 2000. John Kerry fatigue—yes, there was that in 2004. But it plagues everyone eventually: Barack Obama, John McCain, Mitt Romney. Yes, yes, yes. And now it’s all-of-them fatigue. Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich rotate seats regularly, each of them taking turns at the wheel. Each takes a different approach to driving, all of them tiresome.

The author is tired of everyone. Now, here's the headline at Vanity Fair for this article:





Still think there's no "Clinton Rules" about bashing her whenever possible?