It occurs to me that it's been a while since I posted some good news, which I obligated myself to do weekly awhile back. It seems I just can't stop slipping into my pessimistic mode. So here's some good news, though it has to be taken with a pillar of salt.
If the election were held today, the Democrats would take back the House.
Now, mind you, given the attention span and memories of American voters, the shutdown will have to last until October 31 of next year and/or we will have to be plunged into a major depression and/or the media will have to assign blame where it belongs (least likely possibility) in order for these numbers to hold or get better, but still, in this day and age this is good news.
In the linked article, Sam Wang opines that the Democrats may avoid the usual mid-term losses (something, by the way, that the Dems also avoided in Clinton's second term). I would argue that this is quite likely precisely because of the gerrymandering that handed the House to the party that got beaten in the aggregate by 1.5 million votes. In order to get a majority for a minority party, it is necessary, especially in the bigger states, to create massively Democratic districts to assure that the Republicans win the rest. The process practically guarantees a floor for the Democrats below which they can't go. The Republicans, on the other hand, have to make do with districts in which they are in the majority, but not as much in the majority as are the safe Democrats in their massively gerrymandered districts. Mathematically, they are more at risk, even if they are in districts designed for them to win, because in order to get enough of them to win you have to accept a number of districts in which your advantage is good, but not great. If you then proceed to destroy the economy and the republican form of government, you run the risk of some blowback-big enough, perhaps, to destroy your majority.
That's my opinion, anyway, and it's the good news for today.
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