The superficial, court-ordered redistricting in Florida only scratches the surface of the prevalent culture of political corruption that permeates the state's two political parties. The judgment does not attempt to deals ith anything but two tiny and blatant cases of grotesque gerrymandering-- and that was all the state legislature dealt with.
Can you think of the last time we backed the DCCC on anything? I can't. And Steve Israel? Never. But in the case of Floridian gerrymandering, the DCCC is correct and the Congressional Black Caucus is wrong. CBC Chair Marcia Fudge may be right about Steve Israel not valuing minorities-- hello?
John Mica, the other Republican most likely to lose his House seat besides Taliban Dan WebsterYesterday, the Florida Supreme Court recommended that Tallahassee Judge Judith Hawkins be removed from the bench because she has exhibited a "disdain for the rule of the law." She was found guilty of running a side business, Gaza Road Ministries, from her judicial chambers, something about Ethiopian eunuchs in the courthouse.
NC-12, which snakes through the state looking for African-Americans, has a D+26 PVILast week, the whole country got a chance to look in behind the walls of the political sausage-making machine known as gerrymandering-- at least for Florida.
There was a virtual earthquake in Florida politics Thursday when Leon County Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis threw out Florida's congressional map.
With Steve Israel running the DCCC there is no chance of the Democrats winning back the House, literally, none whatsoever. Israel is leaving too many vulnerable Republicans on the table and squandering DCCC money on ridiculous races that aren't long shots, but NO SHOTS. People think I'm being apocryphal when I say he's flushing resources down a toilet with a PVI of R+15. But I'm being literal.
Over the weekend, E.J. Dionne suggested in the Washington Post that Democratic Party strategists are blowing the 2014 midterm cycle. "Listlessness is bad politics. Defensiveness is poor strategy. And resignation is never inspiring."
Over the weekend, Marilou Johanek took apart the Ohio Republicans' elaborate excuses for strangling voters' access to the polls and concluded that it's just plain old voter suppression.
Financiers of the far right's anti-democracy jihad: 2 KochsElizabeth Drew, in a fascinating piece for the NY Review of Books, The Stranglehold on Our Politics, talks about the determinative properties of voter turnout in midterm elections. Normally turnout sinks from between 51.7 to 61.6% for presidential elections into the high 30s for midterms.
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