Redistricting: Home to Roost

Aggressive redistricting was one of the things that infuriated me about the Republican Congress. This article, focusing on Philadelphia and its suburbs, and points out how it may have backfired on them. Suhweet.

Redistricting: Home to Roost - WSJ.com: "Redistricting, the traditionally once-a-decade process of redrawing of House districts to adjust to population trends, has always been a contentious procedure. But Republicans, under the leadership of Mr. DeLay, took the opportunity to use it as a reward or punishment to new heights in 2002.

In so doing, Republicans created two new vulnerabilities: the dangerous dilution of core voters and the nurturing of a sense of invulnerability that contributes to corruption and scandal."

Death of Rovism?

First of all, YEAH! Finally, the nightmare of the past six years is coming to an end.

Analysis - how did the Dems win? This article in Slate below makes the point that the Dems didn't so much win as Bush gave it to them, from Katrina to Schiavo and of course Iraq.

But a big lesson being touted at least by the big papers is that the Dems won the center and the Rovian idea that you can win elections by focusing on your base to the exclusion of all else is over. Maybe the lesson is you can't ignore any part of the electorate forever, and oh yeah, you can't screw up really bad.

Happy Nights. - By Bruce Reed - Slate Magazine:

"Field marshals Rahm Emanuel and Chuck Schumer ignored the virtual industry of self-help nonsense that has paralyzed Democrats' chattering classes and went back to a simple, proven formula: From the suburbs to the heartland, elections are won in the center."

"Ever since watching Rove's success in 2002 and 2004, some on the left and in the blogosphere have been trying to persuade the Democratic Party to follow suit and develop our own smashmouth politics aimed less at persuasion and more at motivating our base. As Lamont discovered, that approach wins primaries—but as Joe Lieberman showed him, that's no match for pragmatic problem solving in a general election."