Quo Vadis GOP?

[HisMajestyBOB]

To me it seemed like a blunder to focus so much on the infrastructure bill instead of protecting democracy.  So much political capital expended on a policy that ultimately won't matter if democracy falls.

The House did pass a bill to protect voting rights, but the Republicans in the Senate fillibustered it (or have said they will, so either way it needs 60 votes). Manchin, however, refuses to vote to change the Senate rules to remove the fillibuster in order to pass this, saying he wants a bill that has bipartisan support. Manchin's own attempt at a bipartisan bill failed, but maybe we can still find 10 Senate Republicans willing to protect democracy.

[HisMajestyBOB]

This is my routine reminder that you need to get involved ASAP in local politics. As well as prepare mentally for what you will do when the Republicans overthrow election results. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/01/january-6-insurrection-trump-coup-2024-election/620843/

Worth posting again at regular intervals.

[DGuller]

To me it seemed like a blunder to focus so much on the infrastructure bill instead of protecting democracy.  So much political capital expended on a policy that ultimately won't matter if democracy falls.

The House did pass a bill to protect voting rights, but the Republicans in the Senate fillibustered it (or have said they will, so either way it needs 60 votes). Manchin, however, refuses to vote to change the Senate rules to remove the fillibuster in order to pass this, saying he wants a bill that has bipartisan support. Manchin's own attempt at a bipartisan bill failed, but maybe we can still find 10 Senate Republicans willing to protect democracy.

Yeah, Manchin was going to be an obstacle to anything, that's why Democrats had to be intelligent in picking the battle with him.  I think infrastructure was a really irrelevant battle in the big scheme of things.

[HisMajestyBOB]

To me it seemed like a blunder to focus so much on the infrastructure bill instead of protecting democracy.  So much political capital expended on a policy that ultimately won't matter if democracy falls.

The House did pass a bill to protect voting rights, but the Republicans in the Senate fillibustered it (or have said they will, so either way it needs 60 votes). Manchin, however, refuses to vote to change the Senate rules to remove the fillibuster in order to pass this, saying he wants a bill that has bipartisan support. Manchin's own attempt at a bipartisan bill failed, but maybe we can still find 10 Senate Republicans willing to protect democracy.

Yeah, Manchin was going to be an obstacle to anything, that's why Democrats had to be intelligent in picking the battle with him.  I think infrastructure was a really irrelevant battle in the big scheme of things.

On the other hands, voters have expectations that Biden will actually deliver on things the Dems campaigned on, and a lot of the infrastructure bill and the Build Back Better plan are parts of that. It won't work to safeguard voting rights only for Dem-leaning voters to not turn out because the Democrats didn't deliver.

[Valmy]

Passing the infrastructure bill was absolutely essential.

Next up: decriminalize pot on a federal level. Make all those Republicans vote against it. That is one cultural issue among the white people that the Democrats have the advantage.

Then if the economy rebounds next year and they have some achievements to point to then maybe we have a chance...at least to hold the senate. What we cannot have is some 1994/2010 repeat.

[Razgovory]

To me it seemed like a blunder to focus so much on the infrastructure bill instead of protecting democracy.  So much political capital expended on a policy that ultimately won't matter if democracy falls.

The House did pass a bill to protect voting rights, but the Republicans in the Senate fillibustered it (or have said they will, so either way it needs 60 votes). Manchin, however, refuses to vote to change the Senate rules to remove the fillibuster in order to pass this, saying he wants a bill that has bipartisan support. Manchin's own attempt at a bipartisan bill failed, but maybe we can still find 10 Senate Republicans willing to protect democracy.

I'm all for Bipartisanship but the other side has to play ball.  Manchin wants to save himself next year but that is probably impossible.  The only way he could survive is to declare himself a Republican and get Trump's endorsement, something he may be trying to do...

[DGuller]

I decided to try my hand at Texas redistricting.  You never know what skills might come in handy one of these days.  I tried to create 38 districts with only geographical compactness as the criteria, as well as making sure that all of them have between 700,000 and 800,000 people.  I haven't figured out how to post images on the forum, however. 

One thing that I discovered is that apparently redistricting algorithmically is very hard computationally, NP-hard to be precise.  You can get a map that works, but it may not be optimal, or you won't be able to prove that it is optimal.  I imagine that the algorithms used in practice are all heuristic in nature, and give good enough solution rather than provably optimal ones.  It may not matter if you're still packing and cracking Democrats well enough to get the job done, but I wonder what the implications are for gerrymandering reforms that rely on some objective standard of compactness.  If you can't mathematically prove that given some criteria, your map is the most fair one, then is it viable prescribe how the districts are to be formed algorithmically?

[frunk]

If you can't mathematically prove that given some criteria, your map is the most fair one, then is it viable prescribe how the districts are to be formed algorithmically?

I don't think most efforts at more fair redistricting focus on being the most fair.  Rather they are trying to reduce or at least limit how unfair they can be.  That's much easier to prove, particularly when you see the maps that completely ignore geographical compactness.

[alfred russel]

I decided to try my hand at Texas redistricting.  You never know what skills might come in handy one of these days.  I tried to create 38 districts with only geographical compactness as the criteria, as well as making sure that all of them have between 700,000 and 800,000 people.  I haven't figured out how to post images on the forum, however. 

One thing that I discovered is that apparently redistricting algorithmically is very hard computationally, NP-hard to be precise.  You can get a map that works, but it may not be optimal, or you won't be able to prove that it is optimal.  I imagine that the algorithms used in practice are all heuristic in nature, and give good enough solution rather than provably optimal ones.  It may not matter if you're still packing and cracking Democrats well enough to get the job done, but I wonder what the implications are for gerrymandering reforms that rely on some objective standard of compactness.  If you can't mathematically prove that given some criteria, your map is the most fair one, then is it viable prescribe how the districts are to be formed algorithmically?

A massive hurdle is that there is no universally accepted metric of fairness.

If you mathematically proven that a given map is the most "compact", it may leave no one happy because the absence of compactness isn't the source of discontent.

[DGuller]

A massive hurdle is that there is no universally accepted metric of fairness.

If you mathematically proven that a given map is the most "compact", it may leave no one happy because the absence of compactness isn't the source of discontent.

Obviously there is no accepted metric, but that's something that can be negotiated.  The problem that I see, which may not be important, is that even given the accepted metrics, you may not have a single answer as to what map complies with them the best.  I guess if you flip the question as frunk stated, and instead declare that a map is invalid if certain conditions are not satisfied, then it's not an issue.  There is still going to be room to gerrymander within the acceptable parameters, however, so you have to make sure the metrics are not too lax.

[alfred russel]

Obviously there is no accepted metric, but that's something that can be negotiated. 

I doubt it. There aren't universally accepted negotiators, and even if there were, people are smart enough to look forward to the effect of any metric and aren't going to agree to something that conflicts with their agenda.

[The Brain]

What's best practice? How do other countries deal with this problem?

[alfred russel]

What's best practice? How do other countries deal with this problem?

Proportional representation?

[The Brain]

What's best practice? How do other countries deal with this problem?

Proportional representation?

There you go then.

[DGuller]

That actually sounds like a really good idea.  I'll write a letter to my Congressman with that proposal.