Mother Jones' Adam Serwer, Jaeah Lee, and Zaineb Mohammed published this gem today, pointing to an important trend in the 2012 elections: more voters in key battleground states turned out in support of Democratic congressional candidates, but those states are nevertheless sending more Republican congressional candidates to Washington.
The gap between the raw congressional popular votes and the partisan breakdown of the delegations really isn't close.
As a practical matter, this has limited applied value. It's a bit like a presidential candidate who loses the electoral vote pointing to the popular vote -- there's nothing wrong with having bragging rights, but that candidate still won't take the oath of office. The same is true with these U.S. House votes -- Democrats can take some solace in the raw popular vote, but John Boehner will still be Speaker, and Republicans will still enjoy about a 35-seat majority.
It matters, though, to the extent that House GOP officials believe they have a "mandate" by virtue of the election results. Indeed, Paul Ryan insisted this week that President Obama doesn't have a mandate because voters elected a House Republican majority.
And that's where bragging rights start to have some meaning. Republicans benefited, not from a groundswell of electoral support, but from gerrymandering and lines drawn to maximize a post-2010 advantage. That's a legitimate use of political power under our system, but GOP policymakers shouldn't interpret it as the basis for broad national support.
Leave a Comment:
And every Democrat who wants to cry in their beer about this situation need look no further than the bathroom mirror to find out what caused the situation: every Democrat who didn't vote in 2010 for whatever reason, created this.
Nonetheless, I have a bit problem with this statement:
That sense of the term legitimacy is absurd. Consider that sense used in the sort of statement heard around 1860:
Conforming to law and tradition is not the core measure of legitimacy. Fairness is. While at one time regional representation in a state was meaningful, mass transportation makes these boundaries within a state largely meaningless.
Congress could use its authority under article 1 section 4 of the constitution to specify the manner in which congressional representatives are elected.
We could require that if Dems got 55% of the popular vote for representatives, that 55% of the representatives be allocated to them. This is known as proportional representation.
Regional representation is no longer legitimate, and we should not blindly accept it as such simply because that has been convention for the last 200 years.
Times change.
As legitimacy has never automatically equated to fairness, I fail to see your point. Slavery, in 1860 was legal, therefore slavery was legitimate. What the Republicans did was legal, hence it too was legitimate.
Just because you, or I, dislike an outcome does not negate the legitimacy of the action that produced that outcome.
What matters is what is done to move the two concepts closer together. Hopefully, in regard to better re-districting, we may do so without resorting to having to put down an insurrection.
We agree on the meaning of conforming to laws or rules. The question is, which laws. Genocidal acts, which may be legitimate under the laws of a country may be illegitimate under international law.
International law is not the highest law. Hanna Arendt points out that legitimacy of power derives from active consent of the people. Whether or not you agree with her views on the relationship of morality to power and politics in this formulation of legitimacy, she is clearly not making reference to particular laws on the books, but unwritten ethical law.
That is why Bennen's formulation is absurd. To continue, by that formulation, a German in Nazi Germany could claim it was legitimate under German law to send the Jews to the gas chambers. Hanna Arendt and other philosophers of politics show why that particular notion of legitimacy is nuts.
There is no such thing as unwritten ethical law. It's a right wing fallacy that people buy into, because the don't take the time to understand what it means. At best we have unwritten ethical customs and standards. Regardless all laws, customs, and standards are valid and dependent on the culture that issues them. Slavery was legitimate before the 1800's because the world considered it a legitimate social position. Then in the 1800's the customs and standards began to change on the legitimacy of slavery as valid social construct.
What is and isn't acceptable as a social standard, written or otherwise, is not something that is static through time. And it's the height of egotism to believe that one's veiws on morals and ethics now are the only set of morals and ethics that are legitimate.
I would also like to remind you that the so called unwritten ethical laws you're talking about regarding Nazi Germany simply didn't exist. The world had not yet made up it's mind that genocide was something we wouldn't tolerate. Hell we still have not made up our minds on how far we are willing to go to prevent said genocides. Even worse, we as a species have not even finished a definition of who exactly are counted as people for determining if it is a genocide!
Btw, I'm horribly amused at you calling on an absolute unwritten ethical law as the basis of your objection to the use of the word legitimate in this case after your post the other day calling me an absolute perfectionist. Stay classy sir.
Yes yes, I know I know. Abolitionists were wrong to call slavery illegitimate because they based their belief in the spaghetti monsters of Christianity. MLK believed segregation laws were illegitimate because he based his argument on moral law. They were drinking Right wing Kool aid. How foolish and deluded of them to call these unjust systems illegitimate.
So walk me through your argument. Was the German action legitimate in every sense of the word? If it was an illegitimate action to murder millions of Jews, then which laws did it violate?
By the way, it is true my gloss of Arendt was unfair. She wrote of universal principles about ethical systems. Hannah Arendt made a forumulation dealing specifically with extremes such as the Holocaust that attempted to span moral systems. Like Eichmann she follows Kant and believes there is no unwritten moral laws. Eichmann was not mad nor uneducated and did believe that his actions in the Final solution were legitimate. Arendt pointed out why he was wrong.
In the words of Inigo Montoya: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
le·git·i·mate
As to the actual philosophical point, I will state once again that you are seeing what I write, but reading what you want what I write to mean, not what it actually says by just the definition of words.
I specifically said that societal customs, standards, ethics, and norms change over time. Before the Abolitionist and Civil Rights Movements those view on slavery, however egregious and grotesque, were the legitimate view of the society of the time. Then that changed from being the uncontested view of the society. Conflict arose and then was settled, relatively speaking. Then the new point of view on these issues, that does not have to be one of the original points of view, held reign until challenged and defeated.
That's the way it has been through out history. And claiming that it was legitimate German law and custom is exactly what the Nazi's did. But that isn't what matters in that case, because after the war German law and custom were not the legitimate laws and customs in rule over the German people because they were a defeated and conquered people. If the Nazi's had won WWII then the Nazi's would have got to set what was legitimate.
That authority is legitimate doesn't make it right. It just makes it acceptable to the entity that currently holds control of the social customs, laws, norms, and ethics of the society. The whole reason we are having this conversation is because while it is legitimate under the current social rule, large numbers of people are questioning why that is so and a good portion if not all who question it are seeking to change the acceptable and legitimate social rules.
Societies do not always run as a majority rule democracy, and really shouldn't. But the people of a society will almost always implicitly consent to things they don't explicitly agree with because the alternatives are usually much worse. (No society or constant never ending civil warfare are the major ones I worry about in the US. But there are societies like Iraq pre 2003 and Syria today, Iran, and North Korea where those who govern do so because they have power that the majority can not over come due to things like worry over what the other coalitions will do to them once the larger authority they don't like is gone, being crushed militarily by people who believe those in opposition have no right to life, or because they have been economically starved, sometimes literally, into submission.)
You keep talking about sense #1, a principle I myself acknowledged before in my first note. Yes, granted. The legalistic sense stands. But in using it, Benen becomes a little Eichmann.
Was the German action legitimate under senses #2 and 3? We don't know, because you continue to evade the question if there is a profound on which the holocaust was not simply unjust, it was illegitimate.
Arendt says that under sense 3, Eichman's understanding of the categorical imperative was flawed. She points out that the Nazi's had removed obstacles from laws (sense #1) and norms (#2) through a Fox like communication bubble which made the formerly unacceptable now the banally accepted. But they failed with the 3rd hurdle. His participation in the banality of evil was illegitimate because it was not based on sound reasoning.
I did actually address the def #2 and #3 concerns. There is no guarantee that the forces of societal change must win, nor that the change that is being implemented is what we would call 'good.' You're trying to deny that the explanation given did not meet def #2 because they changed the system in a way we both think is bad and crazy.
As to def #3, you're making a very common mistake in that well thought out and reasoned must be moral or even 'good.' You can very easily make some very logical and reasoned arguments for the lethal elimination for entire groups of people. The most simple way is to start your logic with a tautology. But you don't have to do so.
Every single human on the planet makes rational, reasonable, and well thought out judgements on the value of individual lives on a daily basis. And the most damning thing to your position is that we should make many of those judgements. We decide that newborns are not capable of being independent beings and that those who hurt them are less deserving of their freedoms. We decide that some people are less responsible for their actions because we can scientifically prove they are not completely capable of full rational and reasonable judgement.
To put it bluntly we do nuance and differentiation. We acknowledge we are different from each other. Once you acknowledge that we are different you can start making all kinds of logical and rational judgements about people. From that point it's all down hill to talking yourself into eventual genocide if your society doesn't have as a principle that just because people are different or even unequal that it doesn't make you greater or them lesser.
As to the ultimate question of the Nazi's and the legitimacy of their "Final Solution," at the end of the day as in any conflict might makes right. If the Nazi's conquered the world their society would get to set the social norms. It's not right, or just. But it is the way that things work. And I'll say again, you're confusing well reasoned and sincere with just and/or moral.
I said #3 is the crucial point yet you give it very little attention.
Arendt's position is that what Eichmann believes is rational, reasonable and well thought out proposition is nothing of the kind. Therefore he is making an illegitimate argument, therefore the action based on that reasoning is illegitimate.
Where did she err?
I'm not intimately familiar with Arendt's work. But from what you've portrayed it as, you and she are making the mistake of believing that well reasoned, rational, and reasonable must be moral and/or just. And there is no such link. I dove deeper into that in the 4th post, but it's covered as an explicit statement in post 3 as broad statement that legitimate doesn't mean right or just. Post 4 goes into more detail about how you can get there.
I however have no interest in actually explicitly diving into the morally bankrupt logic of the Nazi's, and so I won't.
No. It is not a moral argument. You don't understand the categorical imperative basis for Eichmann's argument. This has to do with Kant, and the main reason for the reference to the Nazi's is that this was the particular example of the legitimacy of the application of power that Arendt used in her book that examining this question.
Never mind.
As John Adams saw danger in faction within our body politic, so too might he have seen such danger in gerrymandering! -Kevo
Is there anything that can be done about this gerrymandering now since it clearly shows that it does not represent the population in a fair and balanced manner? Where a minority can be represented more than the majority. I mean hell, the country is not the senate...or is it?
Anybody know what can be done if anything
Recruitment of better opposition candidates from grass-roots activism....Knock on each and every door, and knock some more - and then make sure the people VOTE!
That's a legitimate use of political power under our system,
I think I speak for Steve when I say that, by "legitimate use of political power," he means that gerrymandering is not illegal. Gerrymandering, is not, however, a justifiable use of political power.
That's what happens when all our attention and efforts are concentrated on national elections, ignoring the state legislature ones. In Virginia, where we have state elections in odd-numbered years, some candidates were warning about the potential problem in '09 -- census was coming, and with it redistricting. But Dems were still drunk on the '08 victory, and most people met those warnings with blank stares. Looking that far ahead seemed like too much effort. To me, that's similar to people who talk about this or that attribute of the presidential candidate, while ignoring his power to nominate Supreme Court Justices, thus changing the course of the whole country for far more years than the 4 (or even 8) that their own tenure gives them.
I must admit though that, to a great extent, I'm that way myself. I don't even know, for example, which organisation (or even whether there is one) is in charge of making securing Dem majorities in state legislatures. I'm regularly dunned by the Senatorial Committee, and the Congressional one, and the DNC, but never by... ?
Funny thing about gerrymandering, the "fiscal cliff" and tax rates on the middle class.
If the Republicans play chicken and drive us over the fiscal "cliff" screwing the 98% in Republicans attempt to coddle the 2% those Republican districts better be made up of 51% of the 2% or their going to be dead meat.
And that math doesn't add up.
.
Not really, the sheeple will vote for them and against their own best interests....They've done it before....
Steve,
It should be noted that the opposite - gerrymandering that favors Democratic candidates happened in Illinois. They won a couple of new seats from incumbent Republicans - including at least one that was red for a pretty long time. They also benefitted in the state races as well. This practice is bad, no matter which party does it. I cannot believe that this still continues.
Did the Republicans also gerrymander the state legislative districts as well? If yes, then it will be almost improbable, if not downright impossible, to elect the Democrats as the majority party in the state legislatures. If the Democrats cannot obtain majority control of the state legislatures, then the GOP would have succeeded in making the Republican Party the permanent majority in the United States House as Karl Rove said.
Which in turn derives from a groundswell two years ago. The design of the Senate is to filter out swings in popular opinion; it could be argued that the 10-year redistricting cycle serves the same function.
I don't expect the defenders of gerrymandering to actually make that argument; if nothing else it's over the heads of their base. But they could.
Of course the Republicans gerrymandered their way into the majority. What else are they to do?
1) They can't recruit electable presidential candidates (remember the primary debates?), and ...
2) come 2016 the GOP will have 24 senators up for reelection during a presidential year where Hillary Clinton will trounce whatever wacko the tea party forces on the GOP. (24 is more than half of the current GOP population in the Senate.)
The bitter truth is that gerrymandering the House is the only hope for GOP relevancy for the foreseeable future.
What else is a party terrified of their own base to do?
The only problem is the Democratic Party has anothe 20 something of 33 seats up in the 2014 Midterms, and most of the Republican seats in the 2016 race are deep red state seats. Super Majority status for the Democratic Party in the Senate is still likely a long way off.
If you keep using facts in your arguments, you will never convince the Republicans that the electorate really agrees with them.
Gerrymandering is an age old problem that BOTH parties use to increase their power. Until congressional districts are drawn along county lines based on population numbers, it will always be a problem.
just saying...
The people spoke the loudest and clearest that they have spoken in 80 years, when they, quite literally, cleaned house, and tossed dozens of incumbent Democrats out of the House in 2010. These are once-in-a-lifetime events that have real meaning.
The results of the most personal federal elections the country undertakes every 2 years (elections of the House of Representatives) changed little from 2 years ago. Quite obviously, this IS what the 435 individual congressional districts continue to want in 2012.
To claim any prejudice from redistricting just brings more attention to, and underscores, the fact that about 2/3 of the governorships in this country are now Republican-held and that the legislatures are moving in that direction, as well. On the most local governance level, the country seems to want more conservative leadership. This may be due to the fact that citizens are beginning to realize that their city and state governments may go bankrupt, unable to pay out city/state pensions (Illinois and California come to mind) and that only Republicans offer a way out.
On the federal level, voters realize that the U.S. doesn't have to balance its budget like states do, and that the federal government just needs to crank up the printing presses when it needs more money, leading to inflation (the states can't do this). This leads voters to vote for the candidate that hands out the most candy....Obama, most recently.
This needs to be stopped. The creeps who represent themselves have rigged it to insure they will always be a problem. Correct the gerrymandering and send the adult children home.
legal or "legitimate" is not the same thing a ethical.
Do we know what the House would look like if it reflected the popular vote?
This graph needs to be spread far and wide in all the blogs that quote this bit about winning the House means that there is a republican mandate.
Dems should work harder in red states. Most districts have at least 38% willing to vote against the GOP, some even more. If you can close that gap in enough states they can win. On a state popular vote level without this bogus redistricting - they would have.
http://ballotlines.wordpress.com/2012/11/16/no-contest-the-less-discussed-impact-of-house-re-districting-and-why-it-matters-for-future-elections/