Deals that aren’t deals

benfell

Gun nuttery

Oh, gee. Who could have seen this[1] coming? Oh, wait.[2]

Richard Cowan and David Morgan, “U.S. Senate gun bill talks hit snag over mental illness, abuse provisions,” Reuters, June 15, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-gun-bill-talks-hit-snag-over-mental-illness-abuse-provisions-2022-06-15/

Ukraine

That united front against the Russian invasion of Ukraine? Not so united anymore.[3]

Jinjoo Lee, “Natural Gas Could Start to Melt United Front Against Russia,” Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/natural-gas-could-start-to-melt-united-front-against-russia-11655289000

Daniel Michaels, “Ukraine’s NATO Allies Strain to Keep Up Pressure on Russia,” Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraines-nato-allies-strain-to-keep-up-pressure-on-russia-11655279193

Right-wing dictatorship project

The following passage is not about what, by all accounts, will likely be a brutal—that is, if you think losing massively is brutal—midterm election for the Democrats, in part because the Democrats so plainly prefer being in the opposition,[4] in part because they’re incredibly unpopular about now,[5] and in part because of conservative efforts to effectively disenfranchise likely Democratic voters.[6] This is about redistricting and only about redistricting.[7]

[W]e see that more Democratic-held seats have been turned red this redistricting cycle than Republican-held seats have been turned blue. By my calculations, Republicans can expect a net gain of roughly three or four seats this November due to the effects of redistricting alone — not accounting for shifts in voter preference.[8][9]

Nathaniel Rakich, “The New National Congressional Map Is Biased Toward Republicans,” FiveThirtyEight, June 15, 2022, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-new-national-congressional-map-is-biased-toward-republicans/

  1. [1]Richard Cowan and David Morgan, “U.S. Senate gun bill talks hit snag over mental illness, abuse provisions,” Reuters, June 15, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-gun-bill-talks-hit-snag-over-mental-illness-abuse-provisions-2022-06-15/↩
  2. [2]Mike DeBonis and Leigh Ann Caldwell, “Senators strike bipartisan gun deal, heralding potential breakthrough,” Washington Post, June 12, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/12/senate-gun-deal-framework/↩
  3. [3]Jinjoo Lee, “Natural Gas Could Start to Melt United Front Against Russia,” Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/natural-gas-could-start-to-melt-united-front-against-russia-11655289000; Daniel Michaels, “Ukraine’s NATO Allies Strain to Keep Up Pressure on Russia,” Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraines-nato-allies-strain-to-keep-up-pressure-on-russia-11655279193↩
  4. [4]David Benfell, “The Democrats as the danger within, enabling the Republicans,” Not Housebroken, June 14, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/06/14/the-democrats-as-the-danger-within-enabling-the-republicans/↩
  5. [5]Benjamin Hart, “The Democratic Party Is Extremely Unpopular Right Now,” New York, May 16, 2022, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/05/the-democratic-party-is-extremely-unpopular-right-now.html↩
  6. [6]Philip Bump, “Despite GOP rhetoric, there have been fewer than two dozen charged cases of voter fraud since the election,” Washington Post, May 4, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/04/despite-gop-rhetoric-there-have-been-fewer-than-two-dozen-charged-cases-voter-fraud-since-election/; Marjorie Cohn, “Supreme Court Drives a Stake Through the Heart of the Voting Rights Act,” Truthout, July 2, 2021, https://truthout.org/articles/supreme-court-drives-a-stake-through-the-heart-of-the-voting-rights-act/; David Gans, “Selective originalism and selective textualism: How the Roberts court decimated the Voting Rights Act,” SCOTUSblog, July 7, 2021, https://www.scotusblog.com/2021/07/selective-originalism-and-selective-textualism-how-the-roberts-court-decimated-the-voting-rights-act/; James Hohmann, “Gov. Scott Walker defends voter ID law in first debate,” Politico, October 11, 2014, http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/scott-walker-wisconsin-voter-id-law-111804.html; Maya King, David Siders, and Daniel Lippman, “‘We’re f—ed’: Dems fear turnout catastrophe from GOP voting laws,” Politico, July 26, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/26/democrats-gop-voting-laws-crisis-500726; Scott Lemieux, “How the Supreme Court’s Arizona voting rights decision will affect challenges to Georgia’s law,” NBC News, July 1, 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/how-supreme-court-s-arizona-voting-rights-decision-will-impact-ncna1272928; Eva Ruth Moravec, “Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signs law creating new voting restrictions as opponents sue,” Washington Post, September 7, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/09/07/abbott-texas-voting-restrictions-signs-bill/; Nicholas Stephanopoulos, “The Supreme Court showcased its ‘textualist’ double standard on voting rights,” Washington Post, July 1, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/01/supreme-court-alito-voting-rights-act/; Daniel Strauss, “Scott Walker On Voter ID: ‘Doesn’t Matter If There’s One, 100, or 1,000’,” Talking Points Memo, October 11, 2014, http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/scott-walker-voter-id-law-debate↩
  7. [7]Nathaniel Rakich, “The New National Congressional Map Is Biased Toward Republicans,” FiveThirtyEight, June 15, 2022, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-new-national-congressional-map-is-biased-toward-republicans/; Sarina Vij, “Why Minority Voters Have a Lower Voter Turnout: An Analysis of Current Restrictions,” American Bar Association, June 26, 2020, https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/voting-in-2020/why-minority-voters-have-a-lower-voter-turnout/↩
  8. [8][footnote in original] Here’s the gory math behind that calculation. Between nine and 12 Democratic-held districts have been redrawn to favor Republicans (two in Arizona, three in Florida, one in Georgia, one in Michigan, one in Ohio, one in Tennessee and potentially one each in Kansas, Maryland and New Jersey), while between four and seven Republican-held districts have been redrawn to favor Democrats (two in California, one in Illinois, one in Michigan and potentially one each in Louisiana, New Mexico and Ohio). That’s a net gain of five seats for Republicans, give or take. However, Republicans also lost one or two seats on net from reapportionment: Population trends added one red seat in Florida, one in Montana, one in Texas and potentially one in Colorado, but they also subtracted one from Illinois, one from Michigan, one from New York, one from Pennsylvania and one from West Virginia.↩
  9. [9]Nathaniel Rakich, “The New National Congressional Map Is Biased Toward Republicans,” FiveThirtyEight, June 15, 2022, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-new-national-congressional-map-is-biased-toward-republicans/↩

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